Despite the chill in Marina Bay Saturday morning, Richmonders are out in droves. Bikers, hikers and wanderers traverse the Bay Trail, braving the wind whipping in from the water and taking in the foggy views. To the untrained eye, it looks like a normal weekend day. But for local artist Gemma Geluz, there’s something more whimsical afoot.
This morning, Geluz is hiding her mushroom art.
“I think I’ll leave one here,” she says, bending down to place a tin intricately decorated with fungi on a waterfront bench.
Geluz, who lives in the neighborhood, is among artists worldwide who play the Game of Shrooms, an “art-n-seek” style treasure hunt founded in 2019 by Richmond-based artist Daniel “Attaboy” Seifert. The concept is simple: Every June artists take their mushroom-themed pieces — everything from sculpture, metalwork and drawings to hand-knit sweaters (“as long as it’s not perishable or edible it’s pretty much fair game,” Seifert says) — and hide them for anyone to find. Artists post clues to their shrooms’ whereabouts online, and hunters scramble to be the first to track them down.
If you find it, you keep it. It’s like a high-stakes geo-cache, only slightly more zany and much more whimsical.
“I don’t use the word scavenger hunt because that feels different, like you’re winning a prize,” Seifert told Richmondside. “In this, the artist is putting something out into the world. It’s become more of a holiday of sharing.”
One of the main principles behind the game is inclusivity. Anyone can create a piece to hide. Seifert encourages people to create for the sake of creating, separate from any promotional or self-serving goal.
“I encourage people to avoid brand-building,” he said. “Take a day off … We live in a time where businesses are pretending to be artists and artists are pretending to be businesses. It reminds us why we do this sort of stuff in the first place.”
The Game of Shrooms started with Seifert in 2019. Struggling with existential depression, he began to hide mushroom art in public places to take back some control and bring lightness into his day.
“I was kind of in a deep, dark place,” Seifert said. “I figured I’d hide a piece of art to kind of change the narrative of the day . . . to reframe the day so I wasn’t just responding to negative stuff all of the time. So at least something was positive.” He posted his exploits to social media and ended up getting a fair amount of attention. Artists in the area began to copy him, hiding their own mycological creations in bookstores, cafes, parks, and libraries. “At first I was defensive,” Seifert said, of other artists joining in. “And then I realized that if it’s a help for me, then maybe it’s a help for everybody.”
So, he invited some other artists to participate, and, with the help of social media, the project began to grow some serious legs. “People started asking me if they could hide the mushrooms on one particular day,” Seifert said. “As if I could stop them.”
Soon enough, an annual event was born. Participating artists add their locations to a shroom map online so that hunters can find creators in their area to follow. This year, The Game of Shrooms took place in more than 30 countries, from Brazil to Finland and Istanbul to Osaka. While its epicenters are the East Bay and Portland, communities in Germany and the Philippines are giving the West Coast a run for its money.
For lack of a better word, the network of people participating has mushroomed. At the time of publication, the hashtag #gameofshrooms has more than 30,000 posts on Instagram and @gameofshroomsofficial has more than 50,000 followers. According to the artist map, 52 artists participated in the East Bay this year.
Seifert believes that the element of play is what resonates so much with people. “It’s fun, it doesn’t cost anything, you can do as much or as little as you want, it’s mischievous, and it brings out the odd people,” he said.
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“I realized that if it’s a help for me, then maybe it’s a help for everybody.”
— Daniel “Attaboy” Seifert, on realizing that his mushroom art hunt was catching on
For Oakland artist CJ Martinez, it’s all about spreading joy. “There’s something special about being able to do this for people randomly,” she said. “I love hearing the squeals and the joy of people finding them. Hearing people get so excited and racing around… It’s spreading joy.”
The Game of Shrooms really took off during COVID, a time when people were grasping for any sense of connection or control. For artists, hiding pieces of themselves in public places felt empowering. They didn’t need to ask permission.
“It was something to make people happy during the pandemic in the beginning,” Martinez said. “Now, more than ever, people need to find joy. It gets people being creative.”
The Game of Shrooms has grown from one man’s experiment in Richmond to a global ritual spanning every continent besides Antarctica. The mushroom seems fitting as a metaphor for this global community, as it is an organism with interconnected underground networks that can stretch for miles. Seifert swears this parallel was unintentional.
“A lot of it is hindsight,” he said. “I’m not the mushroom guy.”
The mushroom theme came from his grandmother, a ceramicist whose home was filled with mushroom paraphernalia. “We used to paint mushrooms together,” he said. “You can’t really go wrong painting or drawing a mushroom. You can kind of get away with a lot.”
This simplicity and versatility made them the perfect inspiration for even amateur creators.
Webster Colcord is an artist from Alameda who makes mushroom figurines and animates them. This year, his ominous mushroom mini sculptures smashed police cars over a burning cityscape like Godzilla.
Steve Campos of Martinez created packages of mushroom-themed knick-knacks and hid them in toy stores throughout Oakland and Berkeley. In Richmond, El Cerrito artist Sean Maher hid bike spoke decals in Park Plaza park. Within an hour, bicyclists had claimed their prizes.
“It was my first time doing it,” Maher said. “I don’t think I had even heard of it until sometime last week when it popped up on my Instagram. But I’ll definitely do it again, it was a lot of fun.”
The mushrooms are not meant to be difficult to find. In fact, they are often discovered by people who aren’t even looking.
“[Real mushrooms] can pop up anywhere,” Seifert said. “They can grow on anything, on the worst things. On fecal matter. They just pop up and then they’re gone. You can look down and kind of find a surprise and that’s cool to me.”
Use the map controls (bottom left) to explore Game of Shrooms locations
In the days and weeks leading up to the June 13 hunt, artists took to Instagram to post updates. Geluz, who was planting her creations around the Marina Bay Harbor early Saturday morning, had been preparing for months.
“I try to keep all of my mushroom art for this event,” she said. “In April or May, I say to myself, OK, I have to start thinking about this . . . I just have fun with it.”
It was Geluz’s third year participating. She works as an administration technician for the city of Richmond and makes drawings, paintings, and jewelry. She discovered the Game of Shrooms on Instagram after posting a picture of a mushroom painting she did. “It popped up, and I was like, ‘Oh, this looks fun,’ ” Geluz said.
This year, she made stickers and enclosed them in little tins decorated with more mushrooms. “It’s just fun to see people enjoy art,” she said. “It’s a great way to connect to the art community.”
The guiding principles behind the Game of Shrooms, which include decommodification, leave no trace and radical inclusion, are reminiscent of Burning Man. This is no coincidence. Seifert is inspired by the San Francisco-born movement subverting mass-consumerism and instigating playful chaos.
“I really appreciate those kinds of things, those kinds of events that remind you that you’re alive,” he said. “Things where rules can be tested … You don’t have to be destructive to be subversive.”
Although the Game of Shrooms is not about promotion, the nature of the event gives smaller artists a platform they otherwise may not have had. According to Geluz, it helped people discover her other artwork. Seifert has met countless artists through the Games and been inspired by too many pieces to count.
“A lot of it is out of my hands,” Seifert says. “It’s taken on many lives of its own.” And, perhaps most fundamental: “It’s just damn fun.”
So glad I could be part of Game of Shrooms this year with my bike decorations! 🍄🍄🍄 It was a fun way to connect with neighbors and share some art!