REMa Grace

Expect shapeshifting, ex-centricity, and TREE-SON

(originally published on Substack Feb 2025 – Don’t follow there, I’m using this website instead).

Today I was talking with my partner about our broken mental health services. I ruminated about a mental health nurse who did (another) pre-assessment on my complicated scribble-minded brain. We sat in a white-grey room with cold strip lights decorated with blue-black bodies of flies who’d buzzed themselves to death. She was wearing a sterile white uniform, and writing notes on pages with pale blue lines.

At one point, she asked me ‘What do you do for work?’

Without thinking enough, I went on a extensive ramble along the lines of; how I commune with fungi, and the other-than-human world to create art (I use the term “art” in a beyond disciplines way). How the underground mycelial networks are my muse. How they hold metaphors for how we might reimagine a more connected relationship with our inner landscapes, outer landscapes, and each other….maybe I went as far as telling her about the multiple types of mushroom hats I wear, how I plug into oyster mushrooms grown from old books, and like to talk a lot about compost heaps and holy worms…

Whatever I said about my work. I probably followed by cackling with manic joy about my strange feral practice. She clearly didn’t fully connect with my-celial network. Oh for fucksake, I’ve done it again…she thinks I’m completely unhinged. She sorta smiled, but one eyebrow was raised in an unpleasant way. I was reminded of my place, and many other past places; of being forced to suffer through classrooms where I didn’t belong; of telling people ‘I’m an artist’ (to be discredited if they realised I wasn’t paid yet); of being an artist alone in my room because that was only the place in the world I felt safe to fully express my strangeness.

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I imagine what she was scribbling on those neat blue lines;

Delusional ideas

Thinks can commune with fungus

Hyper-fixated

Strange obsessions

[all true]

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‘So…you do mushroom drawings in your bedroom? Upload them on the computer or something?’

My immediate urge was to call her an unprofessional judge-y cunt-face. But I didn’t want lines in the little notepad: aggressive, anti-social disorder, non-compliant.

Instead, I justified myself as an Artist. Told her well actually I exist full-time in the creative sector; working part-time as a Mycelial Artist, part-time as a Creative Director. Went on about the impressive commissions I’d won, how I got a competitive Art Council grant to be an artist for 9-months, that people PAID for my services…

YEAH, I’M A REAL ARTIST NOW, BITCH. Couple years ago you would have ‘got me’. HA! But not now…

All these things were true. At the time. I didn’t say that following these dreams could be painful, unnecessarily oppressive, and often spirit-breaking. That I’d earned nearly the same working, and relatively more easily, as a waitress. But it made me feel powerful to say—no, I’m not ‘just’ some obsessive lunatic drawing images of mushrooms in my parent’s bedroom.

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Now. I’m re-emerging after breaking down last December. After applying to the Arts Council project grant, after a year of non-stop working, after a year of mostly abandoning myself, after constantly ignoring my bodymind needs.

Running a CIC venture has been the most meaningful experience in my life, and the most exhausting. Especially since it’s a niche artsy company that many might struggle to pronounce or ‘get’; that straddles between community artivism & environ(mental) sectors; in a small Cumbrian town many people have never even heard of (Ulverston). Filling in funding forms is an excruciating gamble, and I found out last month that—like most other small arts organisations—all our (largest) funding applications were unsuccessful. After many thousands of hours of pure grit, and often demented suffering…here we go again, almost knocked back to the beginning
[it’s exactly where I need to be].

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The bedroom artist

The funniest thing is I’m most ‘well’ when I’m being an artistic lunatic in my bedroom. Without that solitary time I don’t ‘recharge’ enough for my work work. I now have an ‘artist date’ every week where I’m only allowed to play. Early this year, on 10th January, I created a soundscape called ‘Happy Birth Day’, it was improvised and unexpected. The soundscape was like the feeling of entering the world as a child for the first time, leaving the womb-warmth, to be exposed to an excruciating amount of noise, light, and feeling. I cried and cried, felt naked and liberated. Then wrote down—this is my artist birth day. I’m reborn as an Artist. Not the months I worked full-time, and finally felt like I wasn’t being a liar for saying ‘I’m An Artist’. This was the first full-day, in well over a year, of pure expressive creativity. Not creating for a deadline, assessment, commission, grant award, or to add to my portfolio. Not wrestling with my inner critic, self-doubt, or a broken need for perfection. This was a return to being the artist [that I always have been, & always will be].

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Calling all the unhinged…

So, I’m trying to be the artist who isn’t defined by what I’m paid. I’m sick to death of Instagram where I feel pressured to be neat, and have a tidy easily consumable grid. I left Facebook months ago because I want a slower place that feels more liberating and real. I’m tired of click-bait, mind over shitty matter, ads, ‘here’s how I became a millionaire in X months’ with pictures posing on some posh looking staircase of a mansion that’s probably hired, and if it’s not, it’s really fucking ugly, excessive, and has a stupidly boring lawn. There’s a lot of assumption people can’t succeed without social media. ALL of my/our income last year came from grant applications and old fashioned word-of-mouth. None of that required posting content. But, even then, I’m exhausted from endless admin, boring reports, taking huge gambles of filling in soul-killing grant forms that have a 10-20% success rate…

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My motives

So, I’m coming back to play, and I’m planning to gamble some more: what happens if I ‘just’ try be the artist who isn’t defined by what I’m paid?

I’ve been an extremely frugal saver, but it doesn’t take me long to run out of money-time. Still, I’m not coming here with a plot to one day charge subscription. This is not a Mycelium Thinking CIC space (the not-for-profit company I co-founded). Though I’ll probably talk / refer to that a lot. I hate ulterior motives, so I’ll be honest upfront: I hope by being real & true this *might attract deep online relationships, and if I/we have stuff to sell through our website, you *might have found such richness in my free artistic gifts that you decide to support financially.

[**I’m sick to death of artists/anyone being shamed for asking for money, or daring to promote ourselves. I neither condone or celebrate it—we all have to keep the lights on somehow. Many people like myself face multiple barriers, and struggle to survive as it is. So please don’t shame us over fair pay/money, unfortunately not everyone has the privilege to not think about money…]

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I want to do The Work & survive

I don’t like to even call it ‘work’, I’ve started to call it The Work. I’m not *trying to be an artist; I am an artist. I’m not turning up to work; I am The Work. This is my calling, every part of me is devoted. This doesn’t stop at the moment I have to return to a day job, or fail some grant applications. My belonging is unconditional.

So, if I could go back, and return to her question ‘What do you do for work?’

I’d tell that judgemental bint something like this;

I’m a mycelial priestess. I’m shadowmancer, connector, myth-maker, radical fungalist. I’m an everything-ist. My work is tending to my worms, and finding a deeper appreciation of the invisible work decomposers do to keep our world from falling apart. I’m forever hopelessly rooted, and, so, I’m painfully receptive to the extinction of dreams all around me. I’m endlessly restless and unsettled. Like a mother losing her children, but she’s losing the whole world too. I need care and therapy, but only to carry on trying to be the medicine that myself & others need. I’m broken in many ways, often falling apart, but, still, I have the audacity to express my weird imperfect self. This isn’t my sickness; this is my main form of liberation.

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II

Some of my curiosities;

Ex-centric, marginal, and minority knowledge

Rot and revolution

Climate and biodiversity crisis

Shadowmancing & dreamwork

Fucked up systems we live within

Joyful “artivism” (art as activism)

Reciprocity, connectedness, mutual aid

Oneness, spiritual nontheism, animism

Beyond human worlds

Environ(mental) health

TREE-SON

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III

Expect a lot of shapeshifting;

Hybrid creative non-fiction that won’t behave. Fragmentary musings. Trans-genre experiments. Rants and overshares (I won’t be sorry). The most filthy rotten psalms. Speculative fiction for the future-makers. Fungalist soundscapes. Creaturely noise art. Guided visualisations of mycelial madness. Dreamscapes. Odes to compost heaps. Acidic spoken word. Toad impressions at midnight.

& If you’re all nice, I *might introduce you to my pet worms.

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Lastly, my face + a couple of pics I like

REma Grace x