SCOBY: Growing, Molding, Fabricating

Two-Session Workshop:

Saturday, February 28th, 10AM - 1PM

Saturday, March 21st, 10AM - 1PM

What if your next art material could grow itself?

SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) has been used for over 5,000 years to ferment tea into kombucha. But today, this ancient biofilm is gaining new life as a sustainable textile, biomaterial, and medium for sculpture, fashion, and fine art.

In this 2-session workshop, we will grow, care for, and create bioart with SCOBY. Each participant will grow a pellicle and dry it into SCOBY leather, a water-resistant yet biodegradable material that ranges from thin and delicate to a hardy thick textile.

In this workshop, participants will:

• Receive a SCOBY starter culture, or “mother,” and grow their own SCOBY pellicle at Genspace.
• Explore SCOBY hands-on as a sustainable textile and fine art medium.
• After 3 weeks, return to biofabricate with your wet pellicle – this will dry into versatile SCOBY leather.
• Incorporate traditional art-making techniques such as painting, sculpting, and sewing to create art pieces to take home.
• Take home a jar of starter culture to grow endless SCOBY after the workshop ends!

Alongside growing and biofabricating, we will dive into the research and history of SCOBY as a sustainable textile and fine art medium.

Whether you're an artist, designer, or new to biomaterials, this course offers a start-to-finish guide to growing your own SCOBY.

Lily Xiao (they, she) is a Brooklyn-based sculptor, bioartist, and educator. Xiao crafts an interdisciplinary ecosystem, exploring the connections between biomaterial research and queer theory. They attended the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, garnering their first solo exhibition, Faithful Rind. Xiao curated The Space Between Us at Gallery CA, a community exhibition working to decolonize abstraction. Their team at MICA, Mother Nacre, earned the overall prize at the Biodesign Challenge for their research of biomineralized nacre-like materials. Xiao has exhibited their work in galleries spanning New York and Baltimore. BmoreArt has reviewed their work in curation and sculpture. Xiao is currently a project lead for the Genspace Biomaterials Studio, where they host community biomaterial research, bioart workshops, and exhibitions.

Info: Participants will grow their own SCOBY from a (provided!) mother and starter culture. Additionally, we will experiment with pregrown pellicles and learn about the history of SCOBY as well as current material research developments.

Info: Participants will learn techniques to sculpt, dye, paint, and mold their wet SCOBY, drying it into SCOBY leather sculptures, garments, and paintings. This is an open-ended class where participants are encouraged to bring additional found objects, dyes, molds, and other artmaking materials to incorporate into their pieces.

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Host or Publisher Genspace NYC