The creation process for my art piece: Mossarium World: Arthropod Stones.

1. MOSSARIUM WORLD:
ARTHROPOD STONES
Keygan Sands
ART H 597
Final Creative Project

2. Project Overview
• Invitation for viewers to peer close, discover
worldbuilding clues
• Moss and arthropods, and a fictional peaceful
relationship/reverence for them, build empathy
for and connection to otherness
• Highlight uniqueness of overlooked, tiny
organisms by allowing them to dominate a
fictional world

3. STAGE 1: THE
NATURALIST’S
RELATIONSHIP

4. -Robin Wall
Kimmerer“I’ve found mosses to be a vehicle for intimacy with the
landscape, like a secret knowledge of the forest.”
“Mosses and other small beings issue an invitation to dwell for a
time right at the limits of ordinary perception.”
In Gathering Moss

5. Everett Casey Nature Reserve
• Source of moss
• Relationship built over three years
• Features forested riparian slopes, upland
prairie, perennial stream with flood plain,
cedar groves

6. Everett Casey Views/Details/Observations

7. Soil Arthropods
• Vital to functioning soil
ecosystem
• Varieties: rain bugs,
millipedes, isopods,
pseudoscorpions,
springtails, centipedes,
spiders, ants, etc.

8. STAGE 2: SET-UP

9. Moss
Collection

10. Notetaking

11. Propagation
Rhodobryum
Plagiomnium
Hypnum
Fissidens
Thuidium
Hypnum
(extra)
Unk.
small
mosses

12. Stratification
Drainage Layer (pebbles)
Purification Layer (charcoal)
Separator (window screen)
Substrate Layer (potting soil)

13. STAGE 3:
WORLDBUILDING

14. -Kathryn Yusoff
and Jennifer
Gabrys“The work of the imagination is a will to become; in many
different ways the imagination extends, pushes, challenges, and
confides to us what the human is.”
“The arts and humanities play an important role in thinking
through our representations of environmental change and give
tangible form to the imagination of different worlds outside of
the constraints of the given present”
From “Climate change and
the imagination” 2011

15. World Inspiration:
Nausicaa of the
Valley of the Wind
by Hayao Miyazaki
• Humans have
contentious relationships
with giant arthropods
and spreading toxic
jungle
• Miyazaki uses visual cues
to build empathy with
nonhumans (“green visual
rhetoric” from Ledwon
2015)

16. Worldbuilding Goals:
1. Create scene with depth (foreground/background)
2. Setting is dominated by moss with signs of human presence
3. Construct a sacred space (standing stones, art, offerings)
4. Show use/care (site is not ruins, but active)
5. Show coexistence between humans and giant arthropods
6. Possibility for liveliness (house live isopods/springtails)

17. STAGE 4: FINAL
MOSSARIUM

18. Wide Views
Shows the jar with scene
inside

19. Internal Views
View of scene showing
foreground, mid-ground,
background

20. Detail:
Standing
Stones
Human figures intermingle
with giant arthropods,
handprints stain surface;
reveals a reverence and
sacred space

21. Detail:
Offering
Bowls
Full: shows active presence
of people; also denotes
sacred space

22. Detail:
Springtails
Active inhabitants add
liveliness but are also
secretive (appearances are
special);
Consume mold spores and
rot

23. Detail: Cicada
Husk
Sign of “giant arthropod”
presence, adds an element
of mystery, possibly
unsettling to some viewers

24. Future Goals/Directions
• Continue to monitor/care for mossarium
• Construct more scenes from this world (an ongoing project)
• Experiment with other materials (insect parts, more human objects,
more small plants like liverwort)

25. Links to Similar Work
Miniaturization
http://www.spoon-tamago.com/2018/10/03/miyu-kojima-miniature-kodokushi/
Miyu Kojima’s rooms
https://www.uvm.edu/fleming/small-worlds-miniatures-contemporary-art
“Small Worlds” exhibit at Fleming Museum of Art, University of Vermont
http://www.tokyogoodidea.com/bonsai-series/
Takanori Aiba’s bonsai worlds
https://kendalmurray.net/album.php?s=renewal-1
Kendal Murray’s scenes
http://www.charles-simonds.com/dwellings.html
Charles Simonds “Dwellings”
Moss
http://jackiebrookner.com/project-cat/projects/
Jackie Brookner’s moss and stone
http://serpadesign.com/
Tanner Serpa’s terrariums