Wilder Gardens October 2025

Wilder Gardens is an outdoor sculpture gallery and art giveaway located on the public trails around Jewell Falls in the Fore River Sanctuary. The gallery contains 50 original stoneware sculptures representing mushroom species found in Maine. All of the sculptures are staged naturally outdoors. Once the giveaway begins on October 18th, the pieces will be hidden off-trail for hikers and foragers to find. Foragers will be encouraged to “harvest” the art and take it home.

My ultimate hope of “Wilder Gardens” is to connect locals with their public land by encouraging the playful act of exploration. I have found much refuge, and many meals around the trails and parks of Greater Portland. I hope to use my connection with clay to express the love I have for Maine’s natural abundance, which can only be accessed through careful attention. Foraging can be intimidating, especially mushroom foraging. The pieces themselves, when discovered, will come to represent the sorts of small successes necessary to remember our own agency in collaboration with the generative power of Earth.