Two big things are happening in the same season: Mushy-Lisa — the giant mushroom sculpture I built for Imaginarium Albany — is out in the world, and I'm opening a low-key brick-and-mortar Ep2 Art gallery in Troy, NY on August 14 for the Strange Art event. They're different projects, but they rhyme. Both are about making room for weird, honest work in the Capital Region — work that doesn't fit a neat category and doesn't apologize for it.

Where Mushy-Lisa started

The mushroom began as a joke that got serious. I wanted something festival-scale — tall enough to change the feel of a room, playful enough that kids and adults would both walk up to it. The name is a wink (Mushy-Lisa), but the engineering was real: chicken wire, kraft paper, papier-mâché, fabric, a wood frame, and eventually resin lamination outdoors under a blue canopy when the living room wasn't big enough anymore.

If you open the Mushy-Lisa album in the gallery, you can follow the whole arc. Early photos show the stem wrapped in newspaper and brown paper on the drop cloth — messy, human scale. Later shots show the white fabric cap on a four-post frame, the red rim taking shape, crew hands adjusting the piece under Imaginarium's pink-and-blue ceiling install. There's video of Mushy on the move — transporting something this tall is its own art form. Nobody teaches you how to get a twelve-foot mushroom through a doorway. You learn by doing it once and swearing a lot.

Materials and honest process

I'm an artistic engineer — I paint, I weld, I fix small engines through Genius Repair, and I build immersive stuff when an idea demands it. Mushy-Lisa sat at the intersection of all of that. Papier-mâché is patience work: layer, dry, sand, doubt yourself, add another layer. Resin outdoors means watching weather and bugs and cure times. The white stem photos on the hardwood floor are the "almost there" moments — when the shape reads as a mushroom in your head before anyone else sees it.

I didn't hide the process. Some of the best shots in the album are mid-build: wire mesh cylinder, fabric tests, lamination plastic gleaming in sun. That's intentional. I want people to see that big work is just small decisions stacked up — not magic, not a factory. If you've ever looked at a festival piece and thought "I could never," I promise you the first day of Mushy-Lisa looked like craft supplies exploded in a living room.

Imaginarium Albany and community

Imaginarium Albany gave the piece a home and a context. Immersive art isn't only the object — it's the room, the lighting, the people walking through. Seeing Mushy-Lisa under install lighting with crew around it hits different than a solo yard photo (though I love the yard photo too — me standing next to it, baby in frame, red-and-white cap against trees). Both matter. One is documentation; one is life.

The Ep2Art Misfit Collective grew out of the same instinct: people who want more than a scroll. Live chat when I'm streaming, movie nights, gallery comments, regional makers and fixers in one thread. Membership is free. If Mushy-Lisa is the big physical object, the Collective is the ongoing room for conversation.

Opening Ep2 Art in Troy — August 14

The Troy gallery is the next room. Low-key brick-and-mortar — not a white-cube pretense, a place for art to live and be seen. Grand opening: August 14 with the Strange Art event, showcasing all types of work. Paintings from the studio, sculpture, marbling, leaf prints, welded figures — the same multi-medium practice I've always run, now with walls in Troy.

If you're an artist with work you'd like displayed, reach out. If you want to view art, you can make an appointment or come through for live painting, poetry, or self-care events we're lining up for all ages. Details are accumulating on Troy events and in the gallery announcement. Strange Art is the right name. The work has never been normal.

What I'm learning from both builds

Mushy-Lisa taught me scale and patience. The gallery teaches me permanence — a door that opens on a schedule, a street someone can walk down. Online, this site is my studio out loud: albums, articles, live stream, shop. In Troy, it's the physical handshake with the same story.

If you're reading this before August 14, you're early — thank you for paying attention while things are still coming together. If you're reading after, I hope you came through the door. Either way, the gallery folder and the articles will keep growing. Making things is never finished; it just moves to the next wall, the next weld, the next layer of paper on wire.

Questions, commissions, or "hey I want to help"? Contact me or show up on live when the stream's on. I'd rather meet you in the room than keep it one-way.