About the Artwork:

This original letterpress print is a part of my Lungs of the Earth Collection about my time spent deep in the Peruvian rainforest for an artist residency with the ACEER Foundation. My goal with this artist residency was to create colorful artwork that shares the story of the vulnerable biodiverse rainforest and the Indigenous Maijuna community in their fight against the proposed road construction threatening their land and livelihood.

This print is inspired by a rare and seemingly magical sight on a night hike in the rainforest.

We were told by our lodge guide, Roldán, that there was a surprise for us down the trail, but we’d have to go at night to see it. Excited and a little nervous, I headed out into the night, headlamp in tow, with the group of researchers and conservationists. We walked quiet and slow, noting a new insect discovery at nearly every turn. The rainforest does not sleep! 

Eventually, our guide told us we had made it to the spot of the surprise. We looked around confused, wondering if we had missed something. “Turn your lights off,”  Roldán hinted. In the middle of the dense rainforest at night, we hesitated, chuckled nervously, then obliged.  

“Look up, you’ll see the stars…” The dense swath of stars shone brightly through the gaps in the canopy. “...now look down at the stars…” 

We shifted our focus to the forest floor and were met with amazement and confusion— the shining stars were… on the ground? No… they weren’t stars. All around us were small scattered shapes shining in a cool blue faint glow in the stark darkness.

They were leaves with bioluminescent fungus, scattered on the ground in a halo around a single tree in the vast forest. It is the only tree with this glowing fungus that Roldán has ever found in his decades in the rainforest. My eyes misted over while we all picked up the leaves and began waving them around in the darkness like little kids with glowsticks. 

According to our group’s tropical biologist, Riley, the glowing fungus eats leaf litter and he has seen it elsewhere in the tropics, but never near as bright as the glow we saw that night, and never around a single tree like this. Roldán has found other Terminalia trees like the one he took us to that glows, but the others don’t have the glowing fungus. It remains a mystery why this one Terminalia tree hosts this vibrant bioluminescent fungus on its fallen leaves, but I like to believe that somewhere out there in the vast forest, there are other trees basking in the glowing halo of their fallen leaves on the darkest of nights.

$15 of every print sold will be donated to the ACEER Foundation and designated for the fight against the proposed highway corridor threatening the survival of the Maijuna Indigenous Community. If you would like to help the Maijuna, the rainforest and help fight climate change, please also consider signing the petition at change.org — thank you kindly!