Lichens: Marie Huard, Polyester and Cotton Thread, Hand Made Paper, and Watercolor.

 

An Algae and a Fungus That Took a Lichen to Each Other: What Can Lichen Science Teach Art Educators?

Marie Huard

Above the tree line where vegetation is fragile, lichens cling tenaciously to wind-worn rock, their blue-grey edges curly and ancient. These are the lichens I admired at the top of Mt. Mansfield, in Vermont. But, lichens come in many forms, from the kind I am familiar with to seaweedy clumps to hairy yellow tresses hanging from trees (U.S. Forest Service). In fact, lichens grow in every climate, deserts, alpine tundra, and rainforests, and on every continent, including Antarctica. There are 18,000 species of lichens and scientists are still finding more (Yong. 2014).

Lichens cover about 7% of the Earths’ surface (National Geographic, 2018). But, scientists are still not completely sure what lichen are (Yong. 2014). For many years the explanation seemed straightforward. “Lichens are a complex life form that is a symbiotic partnership of two separate organisms, a fungus and an alga” (U.S. Forest Service). It was thought that in providing many of the lichen’s physical characteristics that the fungus was the dominant partner. Fungi have no way to make their own food so they rely on other organisms that can. Alga, or rather, cyanobacteria use photosynthesis to make food. The fungus in return protects the alga by retaining water (U.S. Forest Service). 

But as scientists learn more about the DNA of lichens, the story gets more complex. Many lichens may have more than two partners in symbiosis – often more than one fungus and more than one alga or cyanobacteria benefit each other or at least coexist without harm (Yong, 2019). The story of how lichens continue to challenge scientists to reexamine what they think they know has much to teach art educators about classroom practice, art education research, and curriculum. I will come back to the story in a bit, here I begin with metaphor.  

The clusters of round lichens that I often see on rocks when I walk in the woods, remind me of the hexagon-shaped tables in the art room at Greene Street. I ordered these tables so that students could sit in groups and face each other while they worked. I believe that symbiosis, mutually benefitting each other, is the foundation of learning.  

Claire Penketh describes the art room “as a space where the learner both performs and encounters a particular and potentially (although not always) transformative pedagogy.” She observes that the art room has the potential to feel inclusive or exclusive, transformative or harmful, sometimes simultaneously. In sharing student narratives, Penketh shows, so much of creating a caring community of learners is in the way we interact with each other in the moments of every day (2016). I have found that fostering positive interactions often means simple things like modeling how to share, how to give advice, and how to negotiate roles to complete a task together.

As a new teacher, I assumed that students would be able to share a bin of markers without coaching. My naivety caused many tears. It took years for me to learn to finesse a marker grabbing situation and even longer to learn how to pre-empt it by demonstrating a marker sharing routine. For many projects, I would provide each table with little bins of supplies, like yarn, fabric scraps, and fancy papers. As I transitioned the class from discussion to art making I might ask, “What do you do when two people at your table want to use the same piece of fabric? What are some ideas?” 

In cultivating kindness, I learned to listen. I set a goal to spend time sitting down and working with the students at a different table each class. This helped me to build relationships with my students and foster relationships between students. I continued this practice of working alongside my students for at least a few minutes every class throughout my teaching career.

Back to lichen science. Wolf lichens, one of the most intensely studied lichens, are a hot topic right now because Lichenologists are discovering the presence an unclear number of fungi within them. One particular fungus, Tremella, is under new scrutiny. Once thought to be a parasite, Tremella was heartily ignored, now scientists wonder could it be an intrinsic part of the wolf lichen? They intend to use gene-editing techniques to find out. “Language matters,” lichenologist Toby Spribille warns “If we set up our language so that our definition of a lichen is fixed, and these other elements are extrinsic, we’re setting ourselves up to find that they’re extrinsic” (Yong, 2019). In other words, we often find what we expect to find. Spribille cautions against fixed labels. That is good advice for teachers too.

Childhood studies advocate Christine Thompson points out that how we as educators imagine children, or an individual child, to be, directly impacts our behavior towards them. For white teachers, it is especially important to examine our biases because as The Guide for White Women Who Teach Black Boys tells us, “Negative perceptions of Black boys begins as early as kindergarten, and their behaviors are often ‘adultified’ during later stages of childhood […] These constructions often lead to the maintenance of classroom and campus management practices that have harmful effects on Black boys.” (Michael. Moore, Penick-Parks, & Smith, 2018, p.2).

Can there really be 18,000 species of lichens?  Yes.  And more.  In many cases lichens that scientists thought all belonged to a single species are, upon further inspection, not the same at all.  Oddly, National Geographic reports, many of lichens that were classified as one species actually looked very different from one another, “it really shouldn’t have taken a genetic analysis to tell them apart.”  The problem was that scientists had been studying dried lichens in the lab, which took on a rather wrinkled and drab homogeny compared to the same brilliantly colored lichens in the wild.  Also confusing the matter of identification is that, “Lichens can look very different depending on where and how they grow, so a single species can take on many guises” (Yong, 2014).  This is also a good reminder to that research in art education, and any planning we do, must take real children in real classrooms into account.  

In her article, Listening for Stories: Childhood Studies and Art Education, Thompson makes the case for reinvigorating art education research with childhood studies, which views children as active agents in their lives (2017). Similarly, Chris Schulte advocates for the centering of experiences of children in art education research and pedagogy in his Wild Encounters: A More-Than-Human Approach to Children’s Drawing (2019).

As we have seen, Lichen science illuminates how our assumptions about the world limit the questions we ask. The beginnings of lichenology make this even more clear. 150 years ago the word “symbiosis” did not yet exist. Lichens were believed to be plants and certainly many lichens look like they could be. When Swiss botanist, Simon Schwendener suggested that they were not plants, but made up of fungi and microscopic algae, he was laughed at. Darwin’s theories about the survival of the fittest, new at the time and all the rage, curtailed any thought that different organisms could coexist in mutual benefit. “We can only ask questions that we have the imagination for,” Spribille said referring to this history, he continues, “today, such a relationship is called a “symbiosis,” and it’s considered the norm rather than the exception” (Yong, 2019). Can we use this same lens to examine art history?

I am calling to mind The Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.  As the collection of a single person, The Barnes showcases works by impressionist and post-impressionist painters in a purposeful arrangement intended to guide the viewer in making connections related to elements of art.  The museum also contains a number of small artworks from African countries, jammed into glass display cases.  In one ensemble, a case of African masks and sculptures is placed beneath two paintings by Pablo Picasso.  For many years this seemed normal to me, but… “If Picasso stole from African woodcarvers, why is he considered the genius?” the editors of The Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education ask us to consider this question and its implications of curriculum (p. 15).  They show us that “racism is foundational to Eurocentric understandings of culture and cultural production, it is always implicit in how the arts and artists are recognized and valued” (Kraehe, et al. p. 2).  The time has come for a reimagining of how we teach art history.

Conclusion

I have shown in this writing how lichens can inspire cooperation and how lichen science can be used to critique systems of thought.  In doing so I have opened up these questions: How do we show our students they matter?  How do we place the lived experiences of children at the center of our thinking about art education.  Which artists and ideas do we recognize and value in our curriculums?   Now I will further complicate matters.  Lichens often grow near mosses which help lichens retain water allowing them to grow in places they otherwise might not (U.S. Forest Service).  I wonder what other questions we might ask.

I have included a short video about lichen science and my bibliography below.

Schulte, C.M. (2019). Wild encounters: A more-than-human approach to children’s drawing. Studies in Art Education. 60(2). 92-102.

Michael, A., Moore, E. Penick-Parks, M.W., Smith E.J. (2018). Introduction. (Eds. Michael, A., Moore, E. Penick-Parks, M.W.) the guide for white women who teach black boys. Corwin. 1-13.

National Geographic (2018, Jan 25) What’s in a Lichen? How Scientists Got It Wrong for 150 Years | Short Film Showcase. Retrieved from

Penketh, C. (2016). Inclusion and art education: ‘Welcome to the big room, everything’s alright’. International Journal of Art & Design. 36(20), 153-163.

Thompson, C.M. (2017) Listening for stories: Childhood studies and art education. Studies in Art Education. 58(1). 7-6.

United Sates Department of Agriculture. U.S. Forest Service. About Lichens. Retrieved from https://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/beauty/lichens/about.shtml

Yong, E, (2014, June 30) Science not exactly rocket science: One lichen species is actually 126, and probably more. National Geographic. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/one-lichen-species-is-actually-126-and-probably-more

Yong, E. (2019, January 17). The Overlooked Organisms That Keep Challenging Our Assumptions About Life. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/how-lichens-explain-and-re-explain-world/580681/