Natural Death
Curated by Rino Kodama & Dav Bell

Nov 8th - Feb 9th
Opening Reception Nov 8th (5-7pm)

slow sauntering with the summer’s last gifts 
our excess, evidence of life lived to its limits
we keep driving, slow cooking and sharing tea
chemically rearranging our fears over dinner
i ask for a real hug and you invite me into plein air

we remind each other, it can all be gone so quickly
so we’re left with the fullness of the now
we nestle into tangents
meet in the metal

steeping time like a whale who moves
between hot and cold waters
opposite the direction the world turns, against the tides
doing all that it can
to move us to a halt
their outbreath a reminder for us to breathe 
as they place clouds into the sky with their warm exhales,
a lingering fog to nurse the trees,
bridging histories bonded by all our much ness, laid out on the table

We have all lost something. The earth reminds us of our mortality daily. As the season shifts, we approach darker months, the colors around get painted anew through natural abscission. Many of us return to art and poetry to grapple with the immense grief, because answering to, How are you? Without pause, is beyond one. So we attempt to elaborate those caverns in our connections, collaborating with the earth, touching clay, shapeshifting and code switching to new worlds. 

Perhaps a natural death does not mean a long life, only a life lived in coexistence and in honor of each other and all things living deep within the planet. Immense grief means there was immense love. Choosing to love again after we grieve is one of the greatest gifts we can give to each other. There is not enough language to communicate what catastrophic loss feels like in the body and no perfect word to describe the ones we lose and continue to hold space for. Perhaps, they become a part of us, always in a state of becoming. Like the whale, we emit them back into the world around us, an exhalation of divine love.

Natural Death is a story, threaded together through the work of 13 artists: Noura Alhariri, Anne Beck, Dan Clauson, Cirilo Domine, Rosemary Hall, Cat Lauigan, Jas Lin, Jules Pierce, yétúndé ọlágbajú, taisha paggett, Laurie Palmer, Grace Potter and Sarita Doe. Each artist looks deeply into the aliveness of the world’s fissures, through its entanglements, rearrangements, beauty, and persistence to keep going. 

Rino & Dav

An exhibit of drawings, prints, artists’ books, and experimental film, both collaborative and solo, from the deep past to the extreme present.

Felicia Rice

Felicia Rice is an artist, letterpress printer, publisher, and educator. A native Californian rarely found far from the coast, she founded Moving Parts Press in Santa Cruz in 1977. Her letterpress studio was destroyed in the CZU Lightning Complex Fire in August 2020. With the help of over 800 supporters, she was able to reestablish Moving Parts Press in her childhood home in Mendocino. 

In close collaboration with visual and performing artists, writers, and philosophers, Rice has published books, broadsides, and prints. For almost 50 years Her work is held in library and museum collections worldwide, and has been included in exhibitions from Mexico City to New York and Japan. The complete Moving Parts Press archive is housed at UC Santa Barbara.

As a solo artist, Felicia’s focus is on unique drawings rather than multilayered print editions, using the hand as opposed to other mitigating technologies. She digs into negative space and exposes the positive in pen and ink. She reaches into the natural world to reveal its nocturnal residents, invisible currents, and seldom-seen elements.

Rice has been the recipient of awards and grants, from the National Endowment for the Arts to the French Ministry of Culture. Her interview in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art is available online. She is featured in the award-winning Craft in America documentary series in the episode Visionaries.

www.movingpartspress.com

www.docundoc.com

This exhibit features textiles of all kinds, prints, paintings, handmade paper, sculpture, and experiments using mushroom dye and pigments.

Selected works by contemporary artists and makers will be shown alongside notebooks and drawings by science illustrator Dorothy Beebee, who worked closely with dye pioneer Miriam C. Rice to unlock the full spectrum of color from mushrooms. Other artworks draw from Miriam’s personal collection and that of members of the non-profit organization Miriam founded in 1985, the International Mushroom Dye Institute (IMDI).

Dorothy recorded and illustrated the fungi Miriam explored in mushroom dyes, polypore paper, and mushroom pigment for watercolors and crayons. Their work together culminated with Miriam’s last book, Mushrooms for Dye, Paper, Pigments & Myco-Stix™. Their history is documented in the film, Try It & See: The Story Behind Mushroom Dyes, which will be shown during the run of the exhibit.

MUSHROOMS & COLOR is hosted by the International Mushroom Dye Institute (IMDI).

View full gallery here: https://www.mushroomsforcolor.com/gallery/

OPEN CALL TO ARTISTS!

Seeking textiles of all kinds, prints, paintings, handmade paper, sculpture.
Share your experiments using mushroom dye and pigments! Surprise us!

Submissions deadline Sunday, February 1st.

Submit your application through the IMDI online gallery here.

There is a $20 application fee for up to 3 items. For those in need of having the application fee waived, email Felicia Rice at mushroomsforcolor@gmail.com.

All works submitted will be showcased on IMDI’s online gallery.
Notification by Wednesday, February 4
Drop off at Mendocino Art Center February 8/9

FILM SCREENING

TRY IT AND SEE: THE STORY BEHIND MUSHROOM DYES

Directed by Martin Beebee
Saturday, February 28th at 6pm

Mushrooms are now widely used as a source for natural dyes. Many dyers today may not know that it all began with an accidental discovery by Miriam Rice, an artist from Mendocino, California. Miriam would later write the first book on using mushrooms as a source of natural dyes in the 1970’s called “Let’s Try Mushrooms for Color.” This groundbreaking dye book was illustrated by artist and friend, Dorothy Beebee. Here, Dorothy gives a behind the scenes look into one slice of the early history of mushroom dyes, the expansion of their work into two additional books, and her thoughts on the future of mushroom dyes.

Exhibition - Mushroom & Color:  February 14-March 8, 2026
Questions? Contact Felicia Rice mushroomsforcolor@gmail.com