The White Mulberry Project: A Silk Road Runs Through It is part of Serena Kovalosky’s Eco-Garden Project, a multi-year, multi-disciplinary exploration of plants, history and humanity.
The Eco-Garden Project
Since 2020, Serena has identified over 70 plant species through rewilding efforts on her property in rural upstate New York. These discoveries move beyond the science of identification and are further explored through eco-sculpture, storytelling and culinary experiments. See The Eco-Garden Project
Discovery of White Mulberry Trees
The most surprising botanical discovery was a small grove of white mulberry trees that appeared when Serena allowed a section of the backyard to grow wild. Further research revealed strong connections to the local silk industry and immigration from the 1800s to the early 1900s.
The White Mulberry Project
Serena Kovalosky’s The White Mulberry Project: A Silk Road Runs Through It takes a deep dive into creating from a “sense of place” through the lens of the natural world in the artist’s own backyard in Whitehall, NY, resulting in sculptures and stories that connect people with art and the land in this rural community.
In 2023 Serena was awarded a $10,000 New York State Rural & Traditional Arts Fellowship, administered by the Arts Council for Wyoming County in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts, to further her research into The White Mulberry Project and to create artwork from her explorations.
The Artwork
White Mulberry Earthpod is one of two works of art created for the Fellowship. It reflects the “science” of the white mulberry discovery, focusing on its most identifiable characteristics: its bark, leaves and berries. This piece is comprised of foraged materials from my own mulberry tree and other trees in the region: mulberry leaves, bark, and ink produced from the berries.
The second artwork, Weavers of Dreams is a more contemporary sculptural piece reflecting the tree’s link to the silk industry. The white mulberry leaf is the preferred food of the Bombyx mori silkworm which weaves cocoons that are spun into threads used to create the finest silk in the world. Real silkworm cocoons are interspersed among foraged white mulberry tree branches in a way that reflects how they would form their cocoons in the wild, with their dreams of flight once they emerge as moths. The Bombyx mori silk moth was bred from a wild moth in China and domesticated for over 4,000 years. It is no longer found in the wild and the moth emerges blind, flighless and dependent on humans for survival.
Read Bombyx Mori Silk Moths: The Dreamweavers of Silk
The Story-Box
To document the entire creative process of the project, Serena created a “Story-Box” that includes stories on the research, history, science and artwork from the very beginning of the project.
Exhibition and Presentation: A Mulberry Experience
A public exhibition of the artwork and a presentation of The White Mulberry Project was held in the artist’s white mulberry grove at her Eco-Garden in Whitehall, NY in August 2023. The event offered a “full mulberry experience” including a tasting of a custom blended white mulberry tea and white mulberry snacks.
Click image below to view the video of the 2023 presentation:
The Weavers of Dreams sculpture was later exhibited at the Whitehall Free Library through November 2023.
“The discovery of white mulberry on my property after decades of being hidden beneath the soil is symbolic of how our history has been lost with subsequent generations. I hope this project inspires people to go home to their own backyards to see what stories they can find under their feet that can connect them with their own places through the land.”
Funding for this project is made possible with support from the New York State Council on the Arts with support from the Governor’s office and the New York State Legislature.
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Serena Kovalosky 