REBECCA SMITH

American, b. 1954

Maquette for Weather Watch, 2013

Steel, plywood, and mycelium by Ecovative
Overall dimensions 66 x 28 x 28 in. (167.6 x 71.1 x 71.1 cm)
Courtesy the artist

Rebecca Smith’s Maquette for Weather Watch is one of a series of sculptures the artist created in response to novelist Margaret Atwood’s climate-focused trilogy MaddAddam. In Atwood’s apocalyptic landscape, disasters resulting from climate change have devastated the livable areas of Earth, and the characters in the novels bear witness to extreme environmental collapse. Smith envisions her work as a depiction of the sole structure to survive in the books’ radically disrupted setting. The base is made of mycelium, a sustainable material made with mushroom fiber, produced by Ecovative, a company outside of Albany, New York.