PUNCH gallery has sprouted new life. Clusters of faux moss nestle into cracks and corners; small creatures extend from the walls and ceilings. These new organisms inhabiting the gallery were created by Renee Adams, Ariana Boussard-Reifel, Shannon Conroy, Misako Inaoka, Kristina Lewis, and Amber Stucke.

The group show, titled Homegrown, addresses biology on a very fundamental level: the creation of organisms. Artist and curator Renee Adams chose work that conveyed “a sort of invented biology,” with subjects that fall into the category of animal, mineral, or vegetable, but don’t mimic anything pre-existing.

Adams’s own creatures—Blowpod, Bindybop, Flinderspindle, Suckerling, and my personal favorite, Pufferpot—are made of clay, wood, sea pods, shoe polish, and leather. They mix imagination with such detail that they could just as easily be archaic bugs as organisms from the future.

An Accumulation of Small Things I and II by Shannon Conroy are two pieces of concentrated, embroidered knots on an expanse of white paper. The slight variations of color, the shapes of the clusters, and the way the knots overlap conjure thoughts of beautiful bacteria in a petri dish, a small colony of life slowly multiplying.

^{Shannon Conroy}

Kristina Lewis also accumulates materials to suggest life forms but uses zippers and drinking straws. Her zipper pieces, such as Specimen #3, do not hide the recognizable form of the material, but by using so many of them, Lewis suggests that the zippers have taken on a life of their own and are determined to continue multiplying.

The straw sculptures are more complex and mask their material almost completely. By slicing lateral layers of brightly colored straws, Lewis creates colonies and cross sections of organisms. The small magnifying glasses incorporated into these pieces nod to the scientific realm and reinforce the references to biology. Lewis falls short, though, of fully exploiting the potential of the instrument: the magnification is low and the piece can easily be seen without it. If it were a true specimen, much more would be happening on a microscopic level.

^{Kristina Lewis}

Ariana Boussard-Reifel’s Litost begins with a rope tied to the rafters, from which all sorts of organisms emerge. Some look like new species of seaweed pods, others are more like organs or complete specimens. They transition in color and grow more complex as they extend further away from the rope, achieving their own type of evolution.

Misako Inaoka’s moss piece, Untitled, is the only one that involves movement. A small sprout grows from an artificial moss cluster and swivels back and forth waving at passersby. The way the clusters are sporadically placed on the wall replicates the seemingly spontaneous and rapid growth of moss and algae, presenting the most convincing example of a living, multiplying organism.

^{Misako Inaoka}

In a show about biology, it’s surprising that movement, or even implied motion, is not incorporated into more of the pieces. Movement, however slow or fast, is an inherent quality of something living. The fact that most of the pieces are so static makes them feel more fabricated and contrived. Accordingly the show does feel Homegrown, a title Adams felt gave a quaint feeling of domesticity, like “something handmade that you might cob together in your basement.” And it does succeed in being a lovely, organic interpretation of the world of biology, even if these “basement” experiments don’t exactly breathe life.

—Lauren Klenow