Mushroom People Can’t Be Trusted; Part 2

By Lawrence Pevec

The combination of natural science, art and pageantry may be unique to the world of mycology and the annual Telluride Mushroom Festival exploits it wonderfully. If you saw last week’s post here, it’s clear that those mushroom folks know how to mix business with pleasure. 

When Hamilton’s Mushrooms won the 2023 Best in Show Costume Competition and liberated the title from the former four-time winner, the battle was on and the bar for concept, creativity, and craft was raised.

We started actively planning our approach for the 2024 competition in January with the confidence that we could win again. This year the event organizers gave the parade a theme, identity. That was a little daunting and we spent several moments contemplating what it could mean in the mycology community. One’s identity and fungi aren’t an easy mix. Well, maybe if you’re a fungus professional.

Mycology as a science has its own identity problems. Usually referred to as a branch of botany, recent research reveals fungi may be more closely related to animals than plants. With that information we could sense we were getting closer to a solution. Animals move and plants don’t. So, what happens when an organism is a bit of both? This may be the essence of why mushroom people want to dress up as a favorite fungi species and acknowledge it for the extraordinary thing it is. 

And this identification has gone on for a long time. Five to eight thousand years ago a North African hunter-gatherer (and artist) scratched an image on a cave wall in what is now Algeria, that has survived to the present. The image somewhat abstractly depicts a human figure outlined with an unknown species of cap mushrooms and sporting what looks like a ‘bee’ mask. I won’t go into the various anthropological theories and speculations about the image here. You can read it about it on several Wikipedia pages if you’re interested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tassili_n%27Ajjer 

We decided the image would be a terrific costume entry because if it does depict a shaman, healer or a ritual dancer covered with mushrooms, it is also very topical. The use of medicinal mushrooms is growing. Therapeutic psychedelic use has been legalized in many states – including mine. (under certain circumstances, please check with your local shaman). Best of all none of the Hamilton’s Mushrooms gang remember seeing it being used in the Telluride parade. And everyone in the industry knows about it and will recognize it; your basic no-brainer.

In March, after making several concept sketches and solving various mechanical challenges using models, I went to work making molds from plasteline clay models. 

We didn’t win the Best in Show this year. The pink foot with toenail fungus seen in the parade video, by the same group of artists that held the title prior to being beaten by us last year, won it. Clever, maybe, but not much to do with ‘identity’. It’s likely that’s why they dubbed their entry “Hamilton’s Foot.” 

Hamilton’s Mushrooms did receive a special, first ever, Executive Directors Award for all the enthusiasm, work and joy, he contributes to all aspects of the festival. His sponsorship is helping the mycology industry develop. He’s a mushroom icon.

See our 2024 entry here:

And a link to the Parade video here: