Sam Shoemaker | Ochi Gallery

Sam Shoemaker is an interdisciplinary artist and mycologist making work inspired by ecosystems, radical pedagogy, architectural design, and environmental psychology—by facilitating ongoing collaborations with rare, native, and medicinal fungi. Drawn to responsive and relational objects that behave, react, change, grow, and carry rhythm, Shoemaker collects and propagates mushrooms, manipulating them in a highly controlled environment of his design—a laboratory workspace constructed in the basement below his studio. Shoemaker has developed unique substrate materials that he casts into molds or embeds within hand-built ceramic or blown glass vessels, enabling reishi growth for several months. Comparable to long exposure photography, Shoemaker carefully moves LED lights, adjusts the temperature, or changes the saturation of CO2—in order to choreograph growth from within each vessel. Archiving reishi reactions to environmental change, Shoemaker captures good moods, tantrums, or other unanticipated expressions of mushroom fruiting body language.Shoemaker (b. 1991, Orlando, FL) received an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from California Institute of the Arts. From 2015-18 Shoemaker organized and curated JACE SPACE, an artist-run space in downtown Los Angeles, and in 2020 he founded Myco Myco, a studio and laboratory dedicated to mushroom cultivation, sculpture, mushroom materials, and experimental mycology. In fall 2024, Shoemaker's work will be included in World Without End: The George Washington Carver Project, a group exhibition co-curated by Cameron Shaw and Yael Lipschutz at the California African American Museum, an official exhibition of Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative. Shoemaker's work has been exhibited at venues including the Craft Contemporary, Armory Center for the Arts, Vielmetter, David Horvitz’s Garden, Make Room, Emma Gray HQ, and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA; House of Seiko in San Francisco, CA; Lubov in New York, NY; Human Interest Group in Dallas, TX; and Kunstverein Letschebach and Espace Nalon, both in Germany. Shoemaker’s work and practice has been featured in publications including Los Angeles Times, Galerie Magazine, W Magazine, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles, KCRW, KPFK, Graphite, and in myriad mycology journals. Shoemaker has led numerous mushroom cultivation and mycomaterial workshops across Southern California, at venues including Claremont Botanical Garden, Los Angeles Mycological Society, Pitzer College, South Coast Botanic Garden, and Hahamongna Native Plant Nursery. Shoemaker lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by OCHI.