EXPLORING NEW CREATIVE FRONTIERS: BIOMATERIALS & MAKING MYCELIUM ART WITH VAN 👩🏻🔬
Meet Anh Van: a biochemical engineer who operates at the intersection of technology, biology, art, architecture, and design. Find out how mycelium and art can come together and create magic ⚡️
Welcome to the second edition of Exploring New Creative Frontiers, a series in which we introduce you to and highlight the magic that happens at the intersections of worlds, such as the arts and STEM, the metaverse and fashion design, or, in this edition, the intersection of biomaterials and art.
Anh Van is a biochemical engineer who operates at the intersection of technology, biology, art, architecture, and design. Born and raised in Vietnam, Van emigrated to Australia when she was 16.
“One of the big things I learned when I came to Australia is that in Vietnam, there’s not a lot of creative outlets for young people. Being able to try out art and explore my artistic perspective and other hobbies is something I don’t have a chance to do in Vietnam.”
Van graduated from the University of Queensland with a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Chemical Engineering and a Minor in Biological Engineering.
“A lot of the stuff that I do involves big processes, like turning a raw material into a final product that people can use on a daily basis.”
We first met Van when she applied for a Protostars grant for her passion project, Bất Danh. Through Bất Danh, Van explored the theme of lost identity among the different ethnic groups in Vietnam by creating art and an interactive website exhibition.
Van is also one of the founders of an exciting new UQ Ventures-backed startup called La Foundary (Instagram | Website). This startup aims to source raw materials and harness them to craft sustainable products with a clear end-of-life cycle. Her second Protostars project was an exhibition showcasing the art she’d created at La Foundary using mycelium and biomaterials.
Outside of her passion projects and La Foundary, Van collects vintage digital cameras and loves all things design, style and fashion.
👉 You can find Van on Instagram and LinkedIn. She also has a startup called La Foundary and they’ve just launched a crowdfunding campaign via Lift Women.
The head of Blackbird Foundation, Joel Connolly, recently sat down with Van and talked about passion projects, biomaterials, creativity, and creating mycelium houses on Mars?!
Keep reading to learn more, or listen to the conversation by hitting play!
👩🏻🔬 La Foundary and Biomaterials
Joel: “La Foundary is your startup. You make vases from mushrooms or mycelium. Can you explain that to me? How do you create a vase from a mushroom?”
Van: “Mushrooms come from the fungi line tree; basically, they can pass through anything that grows underneath our feet. One of the things they’re very good at is digesting stuff on the ground and also binding things together. So one of the things that we do is we make use of that characteristic and feed it with food waste.
There’s a lot of waste in Australia, and one of the things that we use a lot is coffee grounds, sawdust, and a lot of holes coming from the agricultural sector. First, we clean it up. Then, we use a form that we 3D printed using biodegradable POA. We then mix all that waste material with our mushroom ball, put it into that form, and let it grow in there.
The mushroom will then digest it simultaneously and bind all the materials together.”
Joel: Mycelium processes food well, and the byproducts of that processing bond stuff together. Why would you do this? Why make art and other objects out of mycelium or biomaterial?
Van: “In my Year 12 art class, I liked discovering new ways to do mixed media. It’s a big interest for me — making my own clay and mixtures to create textures and forms on canvases and sculptures. Back then, I did a lot with food waste and binding corn starch or bioplastic, which is essentially gelatin or glycerin.
My art always deals with time and progress. Before La Foundary, there was this one problem in the world that I wanted to address, which is single-use plastic pollution. I came across people who used mushrooms a lot in their work, and the mushrooms turned out to be capable of acting similarly to styrofoam.
But I also wanted to solve another problem: agricultural waste and the world's waste. So all of those things are bound together and are the reason why I want to use mushrooms in the end: to bring this material to the general public so they can see what you can do and what it can replace.”
Joel: It's fascinating that the things you make with biomaterials are not static and will change over time. How do you think about that when you’re creating an object? Will it change over time? Will it degrade or decay in any way?Do you see that as adding to the piece's quality, or should everything have a lifespan?
Van: “I think I lean more towards the second idea. In my generation, there’s a big cycle of new trends and products. I like buying new stuff and changing things in my room every year. And I think that owning something that can be degraded nicely would be great later on. A definite lifetime would be good. It would make us think about the consumerism mindset, where we always want to get something new and throw the old stuff away.”
Joel: Thinking of the future of this form of creativity, what could be made with biomaterials like mycelium? What do you think the future of this creative field is?
Van: “I think many artists are trying to find new mediums to work with. Around the world, like outside of Australia, people have been doing a lot of crazy things with mycelium. People build big houses and structures using this material, and they just see how it degrades over time for the mycelium structure.
I think that’s a big interest for me: to see big structures and how people interact with the biomaterial surrounding them. One of the big things I want to see is mycelium material in architecture. If you bring the biomaterial into a living space, how do people observe and interact with it?”
Joel: Wouldn’t it be interesting if you intentionally designed a room, and part of that room was made with biomaterial? The intention was that it would change, degrade, and live, and over time, you would have to create some action that would make sure it didn’t totally die but kept growing. That’s a really interesting idea.
What is the ultimate vision of what you could make at La Foundary?
Van: “Definitely a house. Like a house completely made of mycelium and the supporting structure and furniture inside it. Another thing that I have seen from NASA research is that they want to print a mycelium home on Mars. So one day, if La Foundary does well, maybe we build something out in space.”
Joel: If you could paint a picture for me, what is your vision for La Foundary in the future? If everything goes perfectly well and you’re super successful, what do you hope it looks like in a few years?
Van: “Initially, it was made for me to have a creative outlet to create biomaterial art pieces. Later on, we acknowledged that this material can function as something to serve daily life through protective packaging.
One of our goals is to eliminate single-use plastic and styrofoam. If we are successful, we want to create a lab for people to try and come inside to grow their own biomaterial using mushrooms or other bio-organisms.”
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⚡️ Passion Projects and Creativity
Joel: I’d like to discuss some of the other things you work on. La Foundary was one of your passion projects from Protostars. You also had a completely different project in a previous season.
Van: “My project in season three was a prototype called Bất Danh, which means no identity in Vietnamese. Like I said earlier, I was born and raised in Vietnam in a very rural area, and the ethnic minority people used to babysit me. My mum and dad were very busy with their work, and I’d grown up seeing the ethnic minority culture and living with them.
As I grew up, there was a disconnection between me and, I guess, that ethnic group. Vietnamese ethnic cultures are slowly vanishing away because of modernisation. The younger generation doesn’t want to live how our ancestors used to live before. Because of that they don’t practice what the elders used to do before.
It’s such a beautiful thing to celebrate your culture, but I always thought that the passion project wasn’t worth pursuing. Mainly because I didn’t have the time, I didn’t have the finances to do it. So when I saw the Protostars advertising, I pushed myself to do it.
The website is coming together. I want to put 3D scan models of the art I have made. I want to combine my art and my biomaterials and then represent the ethnic minority so that people can have an interest and learn about it.”
Joel: The beautiful thing to me about that your story is that all of these things are this unique collision of things from your life that have all come together. The unique experience that you’ve had are just not replicable by another person.
Out of that comes this form of creativity and expression that is just entirely a response to your own life and a reflection of your identity and personality.
While we’re talking about where you grew up, what was the very first thing that you remember creating or making as a young person?
Van: “This is going to sound really weird. So, coming back again to my childhood, my dad is an electrical engineer and he used to have a shop where he sells a lot of lights, lamps, electric circuits and stuff like that…I was very passionate about how buttons worked. I really loved ATMs. So the first thing I ever remember making was an ATM box. It was twenty centimetres big, and I used my mum’s scrap plastic boxes. I was like four-years-old back then.
So I just stick and glue everything together and I just asked my dad if he had a keyboard that he was throwing out. So I took everything apart and just chuck it on there because I really liked the tactile feeling of it.
And then whenever my mum would say, ‘oh I need to go to the ATM to get money now,’ I would bring out my box and was like, ‘Mum you can do it here now!’”
💛 Support Van’s Work
Joel: This has been incredible. I’ve just got one more question. How can our audience support you, follow you? How can they help you on your journey?
Van: “Right now, La Foundary is a startup, we were founded in June last year. We are launching a crowdfunding campaign on the 27th of March where we are selling our unique limited edition art pieces that we’ve made from mycelium. But we are also making posters, shirts and other smaller trinkets like stickers that you can buy to support us.
The whole thing is a campaign so we can raise money to help us raise the funds for research and development so that we can turn our technology into something that in 2025 you guys will see much more from packaging to everywhere.
You can go and follow us on Instagram, join our email list and we’ll keep you guys updated!”
👉 Support La Foundary’s crowdfunding campaign
👉 Check out the La Foundary website and follow on Instagram
👉 Follow Van on Instagram, LinkedIn
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