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We’re Living in a Mushroom Kingdom
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of Reasons to be Cheerful
Posted: October 25th, 2025
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/mushroom-kingdom-mycelium-...
It wouldn’t be wrong to say Sam Shoemaker crossed the ocean on a mushroom. This August, the Californian artist launched his 14-foot kayak off Catalina Island and paddled for 12 hours across the 26.5-mile Catalina Channel to San Pedro. The brownish-white boat itself [was] “a boat made entirely from a single mushroom growing outside my studio,” Shoemaker explains — the world’s largest mushroom boat. He built it from wild Ganoderma polypore collected near his LA studio, propagated in a hemp-and-sawdust substrate for about four weeks, molded into kayak form and dried until it became “a strong, hydrophobic and inert, cork-like material.” Mycelium, the interconnected root network of a fungus such as Ganoderma polypore, can grow to hundreds of acres. The boat was sealed with locally sourced beeswax, using no synthetic materials. Shoemaker’s multiyear project wasn’t commercial — he is simply interested in demonstrating mushrooms’ potential. His invention is part of AquaFung, a term coined — and a movement inspired — by artist Phil Ross that hopes to one day replace Styrofoam and other materials that go into water with fungi, as part of the nonprofit Open Fung. In their quest, Shoemaker and Ross are members of a sprouting global community of artists, engineers, high-end designers and environmentalists, intent on producing sustainable inventions from mushrooms. For Ross, mycelium is not just a material but a mystery and companion.
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