Variations and Combinations
When: June 27 – August 15, 2025
Where: Toomey Lobby
Artist: Seri Robinson
Symbols can embolden, as well as act as touchstones during turbulent moments. The iconic rainbow flag broadly symbolizes the diversity of human sexuality and gender and is a clarion for the LGBTQIA+ movement—a movement that currently faces increasing pressures to be silent, be invisible, and to conform.
There are numerous iterations of the rainbow, spanning from the original with pink striping (representing same-sex attraction), to the more modern progressive flag which includes black and brown stripes in solidarity with LGBTQIA+ People of Color. Variations also include those with a pink and blue chevron (trans inclusion), and/or a purple ring on a yellow background (intersex inclusion).
Regardless of iteration, the Pride flag itself is usually made from synthetic materials with synthetic colorants. The message is bright, but symbolically imperfect.
Variations and Combinations celebrates the evolution of this powerful symbol of queer joy and queer resistance with a new version—one made using natural wood and fungal colorants.
The wood species used are specifically from ‘unusual’ trees—those whose grain is no longer ‘straight’. The fungi selected for the coloring are from the ‘problematic’ wood decay group, known more for the way they live instead of the beauty they create (and despite centuries of use in historic wood art).
Together, these deviant, living materials blend together in celebration of the colorful variations of life, and offer a Pride flag that showcases diversity, and worth, across phylogenetic kingdoms.
Artist and faculty member Dr. Seri Robinson is an associate professor of renewable material anatomy in the college of Forestry, teaching turning, sculpture, and wood identification. They research spalting fungi and their effects on wood. Seri is the author of The Lindquist Legacy, a scholarly look at the U.S. studio woodturning movement; Living with Wood, a practical guide to wood science; and Spalting 101, a guide to DIY wood spalting, among other works.
