Bayou Artist | From The Forest Floor to Fine Art

Article by April C.Doughty
Photographs by Kelly Moore Clark

Amid the woods of north Louisiana, Kim Paxton’s woman’s journey through nature, healing, and fungi sparks a unique fusion of science, storytelling, and jewelry design.

Streams of light filter through the layered canopy of oak, sweetgum, beech, and loblolly pines. They flicker over the forest floor as whispers of breeze rustle the branches above, carrying the sweet, earthy smell so familiar to north Louisiana this time of year. A woman moves slowly through the changing light, her boots crunching with steady rhythm through mixed grasses and leaf litter. She steps over a fallen branch and pauses there, her keen eyes scanning the area for hidden things, for things just beneath the surface and things too tiny for eyes that see only what lies ahead. Kim Paxton looks down and under and inside and through things, always honing her observation skills.

Nearby, in the roots of a towering beech, a small cluster of mushrooms presses up through the soil, their tawny caps barely visible amidst the camouflage of leaves. Kneeling, she delicately clears the crumpled leaves away to reveal gleaming white stalks. She recognizes these mushrooms as beech rooters, named for their especially long tap roots. She carefully unearths the smallest one. Then, not far away, she notices a beech nut half-buried in the humus, its spiny husk cracked open to reveal the smooth brown seed within. 

The forest seems to hum softly around her, alive with its many gifts, including this one, which seems meant just for her. Her imagination sparks at this quiet pairing of fungus and seed, enlivened by this simple illustration of the interwoven cycles of decay and renewal that govern the forest floor. A plan takes shape to preserve this moment in resin, to capture it in a way that simulates nature’s own way of fossilizing tiny creatures in amber. 

Kim Paxton sees magic in the woods, and she aims to capture this magic for others in her jewelry, which juxtaposes the tiniest parts of nature in montages that tell stories of how these parts are connected. The first pendant Kim created included a chanterelle mushroom and a small flower from an elderberry bush. “They were growing at the same time. They were alive at the same time,” she said, “and to me, that’s kinda neat. That’s my favorite part—to say these things were growing concurrently together.”

Kim grew up in West Monroe, Louisiana, graduating from West Monroe High School where she completed four years of art classes. She then joined the U.S. Air Force at age 19. During her time in the Air Force, Kim was primarily a maintenance scheduler for C-130 aircraft, but she found time to fall in love with Charles Paxton, her husband of nearly 24 years. When she returned home to West Monroe at age 35, she did so with many adventures under her belt, including time spent as a budding forager, exploring the landscapes of Cumbria, England, with Charles. Kim described Cumbria as old, cold, sparsely populated, and filled with mushrooms, particularly Boletus edulis, commonly known as porcini or king bolete. 

Porcini are considered prime edibles, prized for their earthy, meaty flavor and their wide range of culinary applications. Kim said that her interest in mushrooms was purely culinary at first. She and Charles started out foraging specifically for edible mushrooms. Then, after moving back to West Monroe, Kim paused her interest in mushrooms to care for her ailing grandparents, an experience she described simply as “intense.” 

When her work as a caretaker came to an end, Kim found herself turning to nature for healing. She needed activities to keep her busy and quell the symptoms of anxiety and depression that have tended to wax and wane most of her life. “I’m desperate to mention anxiety and depression because it is so prominent, and it was a real struggle for me,” she said. To cope, Kim broadened her interest in both nature and mushrooms. She and Charles became involved in the northeast chapter of Louisiana Master Naturalists and Friends of Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge, and they busied themselves exploring natural areas throughout northeast Louisiana.

They are now both certified Louisiana Master Naturalists, they remain supporters of Black Bayou, and they’re active members of the Gulf South Mycological Society. Kim has also held various officer roles in these organizations. In keeping with their advocacy efforts, the Paxtons make conservation of natural areas and citizen science a priority.

For her Master Naturalist certification project, Kim created a brochure about the healing power of nature. The project was inspired partly by her personal experience of finding healing in nature, but it was created with research to let others know that hers is not a unique experience. Science supports nature’s ability to improve immune function, lower blood pressure, boost energy, speed healing, as well as improve mood, sleep quality, attention, and stress responses. In particular, walking among trees exposes people to phytoncides, which are antimicrobial compounds released by trees that enhance immune function in humans with effects that can last up to a week. Kim’s findings also support the Japanese practice of forest bathing, which is a simple practice of mindfully immersing oneself in forests to support overall health and wellbeing.

Another project Kim undertook as part of her healing journey was an online course in mycology, the study of fungi, which includes mushrooms and yeasts. The course was taught through Mycologos Academy of Applied Mycology and was only supposed to take six weeks to complete, but Kim started during the COVID pandemic, and north Louisiana also experienced a drought while she was working on it. These circumstances caused some delays, but Kim still followed the course through to completion. Although the course deepened her knowledge of fungi, it also showed her how much remains to be learned, even for those considered experts in the field. Mycologists have much left to explore when it comes to fungi, including the sheer number of undiscovered species and the complex nature of their ecological roles.

Still, completing the course gave Kim the confidence she needed to begin sharing her knowledge with others. Many educational mushroom walks later, she said people sometimes approach her as “the mushroom lady,” which, from her perspective, is a delightful way to be known and remembered. Along her path to becoming the mushroom lady, Kim and Charles entertained their English nephew on an adventure in nature that inspired Kim’s jewelry idea. They took their nephew to look for mushrooms and study nature, and before he returned to England, he suggested that Kim look into making jewelry from her tiny treasures. 

This comment sparked a creative journey filled with research, failure, problem solving, and perseverance. The process, which started in 2023, was far from perfect. “It was messy,” Kim said, “It was messy with sticky resin and emotions.” More than half of Kim’s early efforts failed. “I have a whole box full of junk that didn’t work, but eventually, over time, I just learned the technique to make them look pretty,” she said.

Despite the setbacks, Kim kept going until the pendants she created began to capture the essence she wanted to share. “Nature and the woods are magical,” she said. “They feel like home to me, and that feeling kept me going back out there. I wanted to be able to show people these treasures that we see and that they’re maybe too afraid to go see because of the fear of things that might bite them.”

About a year into her jewelry-making journey, Kim said someone from Friends of Black Bayou approached her about buying some jewelry to sell in their Nature Store, which is located in the Visitor Center of Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge. Because of this transaction, Mushroom Lamb was officially born. Kim said the name for her jewelry business came from her stepdad, who thought of it on the spot by combining the central theme of the pieces with Charles’s nickname for Kim, which is Lamb. 

Since starting the business, Kim has created a Facebook page and an Etsy store, although she prefers locals to buy locally through Black Bayou Nature Store or directly from her when possible. She can be reached at lamborham@yahoo.com. 

Since she was young, Kim has enjoyed expressing herself creatively, and she’s always sketched. At the same time, she said, “It’s very seasonal. It comes and goes, and it’s the same with jewelry making. You have to have enough energy, mentally and emotionally, to do it. I mean you have to go out and find the fungi that you’re looking for, and then you have to come back and prepare them and make them beautiful, so it’s a lot of energy, but the woods give incredible energy.” In a way, nature is supporting Kim in the creative process.

After a mere two days away from the woods, Kim said she begins to feel a longing to be there again. “And everything else seems difficult and annoying in comparison,” she said. Another thing that helps Kim find motivation is knowing where to find the mushrooms. “Knowing what fungi grow where is very important,” Kim said. For example, Kim loves to preserve red chanterelles because when they’re dried, the reds become richer and darker and more beautiful. Fortunately, Kim understands their growing conditions, including the optimal time of year, the type of soil they like, and other things in nature they tend to grow near.

Even armed with this kind of knowledge, finding what she’s looking for can still be challenging at times. Kim said her vision is not what it used to be, and sometimes she has to get down on their level. “Some mushrooms are camouflaged, like the black trumpets,” she said. “I was literally on the ground. My face was about a foot away from the ground, and it was only then that I saw them.” When the conditions are right and her awareness is on point, Kim can find lots of tiny mushrooms amongst leaf litter.

Although finding mushrooms is always exciting, regardless of the location, Kim reminds us that there are often rules and ordinances that govern whether foraging is permissible and under what conditions. Knowing the rules that govern the land you’re exploring is important. Even if foraging is allowed, Kim cautions that foragers should do so responsibly and respectfully, maintaining a sustainable relationship with the environment. Kim further explained that for a lot of mushrooms “what we’re actually seeing is the fruiting body. It’s like the apple in the tree,” she said, “but the tree is fine. We’re not damaging the tree in any way. It’s still able to produce new fruit, so it’s sustainable.”

Even so, Kim said, “When I do harvest anything, I don’t take more than 20 percent of the population, so even if it’s a fantastic, huge mass, I don’t take but a little bit.” This limit is a widely known, unofficial one of ethical foragers and allows for regrowth and wildlife consumption, but it doesn’t trump regulations that govern specific lands or species-specific protections. Thorough research and proper identification skills are also critical for any forager to ensure a safe and ethical practice whether foraging for artistic, culinary, medicinal, or scientific endeavors.

For Kim, science is a big part of the work she does in nature. Kim has over 5,000 observations on iNaturalist, which, according to the website, is “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature. It’s also a crowdsourced species identification system and an organism occurrence recording tool.” The network is one of the most well-known platforms for citizen science. Given her extensive use of the platform, Kim has multiple stories associated with her iNaturalist observations, but one in particular stands out. Kim said it illustrates “a whole other level of this art and science thing.”

On a cold and boring winter day, Kim noticed a little white tuft on a burnt stump that looked fungal, so she posted it to iNat, along with an observation of some other nearby white fungal-looking things growing on woody matter. Then a few months later, in the same spot, Charles uncovered some “weird orange things.” It turned out that they had discovered something that scientists had been searching for over 150 years. “It was the proximity,” Kim said, “that led mycologist Danny Newman to investigate whether these things might actually be the same thing in different phases of their development.” The Paxtons sent specimens to Newman who then sent them off to various locations around the world and ultimately determined they were the same species. As a result of simply being observant and sharing their observations with others, the Paxtons earned themselves a place as co-authors of an academic publication on this species, which is pretty exciting. 

As a result of the mycology course she took and her jewelry-making endeavors, Kim now has a fungarium, which is a collection of dried fungal specimens. She and Charles have over 200 dried specimens in their lab, and have sent several, over 100, for DNA sequencing, which has resulted in 17 provisionally named fungi, which means the DNA samples didn’t match any already catalogued. “So it’s not just about making pretty jewelry,” Kim said. “It’s about learning about what’s in our environment, so we can protect it.”

For Kim, the right and left brain are often working at the same time. She may be organizing and analyzing while also imagining and designing, and she often uses her creativity to document and communicate. In addition to using iNat, she keeps a field journal of her observations in nature that includes sketches and musings. And, for the organizations she’s involved in, she’s designed logos, banners, brochures, and educational games for kids. “That’s pretty much how I express myself,” Kim said. “I’m not a very verbose person. Charles takes care of the talking, but I’ve made a lot of different things, and it’s how I talk. It’s making art for people.” Whether for an organization, the general public, or those just interested in wearing a tiny, magical piece of north Louisiana forest, Kim finds joy in creating things for others or as she calls it, “arting at people.” 

Of course, the purpose of Kim’s “arting” runs deeper than creating something fun or aesthetically pleasing. “I want to say how important it is that we understand what’s in our environment,” she said, “because if we don’t fully understand what’s there, how can we know to protect it? That’s crucial, and by making something from these cute, little things that people don’t normally pay any mind to in nature, this might be a way of getting them to realize there’s a lot of cool stuff out there.” To the curious eye, nature can be truly awe-inspiring.

“You can’t out art God,” Kim said. “Nature is the greatest artist, and I can’t possibly imitate what it provides us. If I did this, maybe, many, many more years, I might be able to try and capture that, but I’ve seen some scenes that make me think, ‘Oh my gosh, look at how gorgeous that is,’ and then you get home, and it’s all mixed up. It looks like a big pile of sticks.” Kim admits that capturing nature’s magic is challenging. “I’m out of my depth trying to recreate what’s out there,” she said. But where Kim does succeed is in her ability to curate—her ability to find, select, organize, and preserve—the tiny evidence of God’s handiwork in unique ways, capturing a glimpse of what magic existed on the day that evidence was gathered.