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Becoming Succession
September 5, 2025 – April 25, 2026 Keith Hartwig Hannah LeVasseur with contributions by Caroline Hu OPENING RECEPTION Saturday, September 20, 2025 CLOSING RECEPTION Saturday, April 25, 2026 Informal tasting: 3:30pm Curatorial talk: 4:30pm Cask tapping: 5pm or thereabouts RELATED PROGRAMMING Participatory Co-creation Workshops September – Saison Asimina October – Limina November – Levain December – Fera Fortuna January – Nebulae February – Shadows and Unicorns March – Millefleur April - Printemps VISIT (PHILADELPHIA) Succession Fermentory at the historic A Man Full of Trouble Tavern (aMFoT), 127 Spruce St, Philadelphia, PA. Built in 1759, aMFoT is the only pre-revolutionary war tavern remaining in the city of Philadelphia. Closed to the public since 1996, it has now reopened as a 25 seat tasting room and bar where you can enjoy our full range of farmhouse beers and ferments on draft, cask and in bottle, alongside a highly curated selection of Pennsylvania’s wine and spirits. CURATORS Keith Hartwig is an artist whose work envisions vibrant, resilient futures for food systems in a warming world—not through high-tech solutions, but by looking to traditional, sustainable culinary ways that have nourished human communities for thousands of years. His artwork is shaped through a process of public engagement, drawing on the experience and insight of communities and individuals situated in the complex nature-culture assemblages of food systems, and collaboration with domain specialists, including climate scientists, microbiologists, and food producers. Resulting installations, exhibitions, and public performances have appeared in Boston, Cambridge, Philadelphia, NYC, El Alto, Bolivia and Linz, Austria. In 2021, Keith co-founded Succession Fermentory in Cochranville, PA, a farmhouse fermentation business committed to supporting regional, sustainable, and ecologically conscious agricultural practices. Hannah LeVasseur is an educator, artist, and residential member of StellaLou Farm. With a background in art education, she aim to empower community members to produce and share food, experiences, beauty, and more at StellaLou Farm. Hannah's interest in permaculture and herbalism, and her practice of raising two children greatly inform her collaborations on the homestead and with Succession Fermentory on label design. Succession Fermentory was established at StellaLou Farm in 2021, with the vision of growing the diversity of local agricultural practices and products. Through the ritual of fermentation, Succession crafts wild fermented ales, fruit wines, ciders, and meads that celebrate and honor our local terroir and ecology. StellaLou Farm is a homestead that provides physical, mental, and emotional sustenance for a family spanning three generations. With little prior farming experience, we all made our way to this land to invest more in the connection and support of the earth and of family. Our organic perennial and annual food systems, apiary, and poultry provide year-round healthy delicious food for the household and agricultural products to sell to the local community. Our homestead serves as an educational resource and research site for permaculture and regenerative design. Most importantly, we strive to understand how to care for the land and our natural resources so that they will provide abundance for present and future generations. Caroline Hu is an artist and educator with a PhD in biology and a love for visual storytelling. After years of spending her days at the lab bench and nights at the drawing desk, Caroline now joyfully dual wields both art and science as an assistant biology professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Caroline has collaborated with Succession Fermentory on label art and narrative images. -- Image (top): Caroline Hu, 'Phenology'. This panoramic image, illustrated by Caroline Hu, is inspired by Chinese handscroll landscape paintings, taking the viewer on a journey through space and time. The artwork depicts the cyclical patterns of nature from the scale of microbes to landscapes. In the foreground, saccharomyces yeast undergoes various forms of reproduction and transformation, responding to the environment and seasonal shifts depicted in the background. |
Becoming Succession was an exhibit about a farm, a brewery, and a community connected through shared ecological principles and acts of becoming — beginning to be, growing into, and experiencing place based change, together.
It opened with an installation of narrative images, pulled from the label art for Succession Fermentory. These set the backdrop for an eight-month exhibition and series of participatory events where visitors explored nature and human relations through observation, reflection, and making. The installation was co-created with the community during monthly workshops, nature meditations, and discussions focusing on the joyful actions we use to disrupt harmful societal patterns and prepare for succession, the transformation over time in an ecological community, setting the stage for our human and other-than-human successors. As a permaculture homestead and ecologically minded farmhouse brewery, StellaLou Farm and Succession Fermentory, we are seated firmly in our awareness and criticisms of the status quo. On this land in southern Chester County, Pennsylvania, less than 4 miles from Street Road Artists Space, we actively make decisions to disrupt the habitual realities which do us and our environment harm. Specifically, we are contemplating our roles within hierarchy, monoculture, waste, binary thinking, and acceleration in our daily lives and society. In embracing our place in the network of nature, we are becoming the disruptions we need in order to heal. The exhibition
As a backdrop for collaboration with visitors, Becoming Succession opened with an installation and a coming to life of the narrative images created for the brewery’s product labels. Throughout the span of the exhibition the space evolved, becoming succession itself, accumulating objects, reflections, live fermentations, and other contributions, transforming Street Road Artists Space into a community workshop and immersive sensorium.
Visitors experienced intersections and interactions within nature and human relations and how we communicate these observations and reflections through making. This community co-created the installation during monthly events and a Sensory Wall, Co-creation Workshops, and the Spontaneous Pear Cider Room drew visitors into active participation. Sensory WallThe Sensory Wall invited audiences to smell and to engage with ingredients and their relationship to design. Eight locally grown and foraged ingredients used by Succession Fermentory — chamomile, cherry, lemonbalm, lime, mushrooms, spicebush, spruce and wheat — were offered to visitors to smell, in concentrated form. The backdrop for each ingredient bottle was from Succession's label art, connecting visual design with the substances it grew out of. In this immersive sensorium, one experienced the intersections and interactions within nature and human relations and how we communicate these observations and reflections through making.
Spontaneous Pear Cider room
Set against a backdrop of Caroline Hu's four-season drawing for Succession Fermentory, the Street Road Spontaneous pear cider fermented in the gallery for the duration of the show and was enjoyed in celebration of our community at the closing reception.
Co-creation WorkshopsCo-creation Workshops took place throughout the span of the exhibition and participants' contributions led to the opening underlay of label art becoming succession itself, accumulating objects, reflections, live fermentations, and other contributions, transforming Street Road Artists Space into a community workshop.
“If you are reading this and thinking, ‘This is bizarre!’ that’s fine. You are not the first person to think that. I invite you to put your disbelief aside and simply wonder, ‘What if?—what if Plants could communicate with us?’” — Jen Frey
PLANT COMMUNICATION Reflections, observations, and sensorial recordings composed and gathered by community members during September's plant communication guided meditation workshop. Gathered on lawn chairs and blankets on the grass surrounding Street Road Artists’ Space and then again at StellaLou Farm, participants opened their hearts in exploration of experiencing the plants around us as conscious beings. We took on the pace of the plants, slowing down; and individually we received different messages from our photosynthesizing friends, having a unique and personal experience.
Each participant took home their own sourdough starter. For those participating remotely, you will need a one pint mason jar, water, flour, and access to outdoor plants free of pesticides.
“[T]he word culture comes from the Latin cultura, a form of colere, “to cultivate.” Our cultivation of the land and its creatures — plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria — is essential to culture. Reclaiming our food and our participation in cultivation is a means of cultural revival, taking action to break out of the confining and infantilizing dependency of the role of consumer (user), and taking back our dignity and power by becoming producers and creators.” - Sandor Elix Katz, The Art of Fermentation From ancient times people have been practicing the art of fermentation; harnessing microorganisms, by accident or with intent, to transform food into flavorful, nutritious, sometimes intoxicating, and well preserved substances. Until a century ago, all fermentation was practiced outside of the black-and-white scientific and industrial frameworks. Instead it was practiced at home and in community, relying on intuition, knowledge gained through trial and error, and knowledge passed down through generations. It was an act that connected people to time (by preserving seasonal and perishable ingredients), place (by making use of ingredients that are local), and one another (by maintaining tradition and cultural heritage). Observing these non-industrialized forms of fermentation, we see a practice that embraces continuum, with results that aren’t always discrete or predictable. Throughout the process, aroma, flavor, texture, and appearance continue to evolve (sometimes for decades), challenging the binary concepts of beginning and end, right or wrong, good or bad. WILD YEAST: Petri dishes with foraged microorganisms on agar. Community members swabbed samples during the wild yeast collection workshop in the outdoor spaces of Street Road Artists Space, and used it to make sourdough culture. We experience and experiment with the aroma, flavor, texture, and appearance of sourdough cultures. Shaped by the influence of wild microbes, the cultures continue to evolve in our kitchens, challenging the binary concepts of beginning and end, right or wrong, good or bad.
Traditional Kvass is a great example of food recovery, upcycling, and the resourcefulness of folk practices. And like many ferments, it is extremely flexible, allowing you to experiment with process, ingredients, alcohol content, and of course, flavor!
KVASS: Examples of Kvass, a fermented low-alcohol beverage, made in the gallery with the help of friends. During the workshop, participants sampled Kvass and made two recipes: rye bread with dried currants, and sweet potato with raisins. Traditional Kvass is a great example of food recovery, upcycling, and the resourcefulness of folk practices. And like many ferments, it is extremely flexible, allowing us to experiment with process, ingredients, alcohol content, and of course, flavor. Flavor and preservation are not the only benefits of fermentation; the nutrients from the bread or starch are more bioavailable.
With it we explored we can disrupt hierarchy through grassroots and community based acts of collaboration and co-creation.
COMMUNITY COOKBOOK: This cookbook and its artifacts harness knowledge from our community, centering the food, culture, and ecology that we value individually and as a collective. The focus is on preservation — not solely about food, but also about culture, ecology, and the places we call home. With this collection we explore how we can disrupt hierarchy through grassroots and community based acts of co-creation. Photographs submitted by participants are credited in the book. Index cards highlight the similarities and differences in contributions, used by curators of Becoming Succession to determine the flow of the publication. Illustrations of key ingredients for each recipe in pen by Hannah LeVasseur.
KOJI Four samples of Koji, chanterelle miso and chanterelle shoyu are aged samples from Keith Hartwig’s kitchen, and peaso (pea miso) and Mayocoba bean shoyu created with friends of the gallery. Participants learned how the tradition of mold based fermentations can be used to extend the life of leftovers from the cooking process from Rich Shih, co-author of Koji Alchemy and co-founder of Kojicon, and our resident fermentor, Keith Hartwig. Shih inspired the imaginations of visitors through revisioning ancient low energy preservation methods, saving food getting lost every day, to provide nutrition for every single human who needs it.
Rich Shih, co-author of Koji Alchemy and co-founder of Kojicon, is one of the key culinary explorers of mold-based fermentation in the world. He has traveled to Japan and Taiwan to study with multigenerational masters of their craft. As a food preservation consultant, he helps chefs, cooks and artisans build their larders and leverage fermentation to decrease waste. He welcomes makers of all experience levels to learn, share knowledge, and exchange ideas through educational workshops and social media. Rich teaches at all levels from world renowned chefs to students at the highest of institutions to friends at local farms to cooks of all ages. One of his dream goals is revisiting ancient low energy preservation methods to save food getting lost every day to provide nutrition for every single human who needs it. In his spare time, Rich is collaborating with friends to find ways to help people realize their passions and become fulfilled on the journey of life
In the gallery we showcased the label art for the beer Shadows & Unicorns as we explore how to disrupt hierarchy by attending to underrepresented cultures and identities.
The artwork is a visual reference to one of seven 16th century tapestries from the series "The Hunt of the Unicorn" — "Unicorn in Captivity”. The mythology of the unicorn, and how it has evolved over time, is an allegory for humanity's shifting relationship with the natural world. In ancient times, the unicorn symbolized wild and untamed nature, something to be feared and respected. During the medieval period, the unicorn's power was coveted, leading to stories of its capture and utilization. By the modern period, the unicorn has become a symbol of rarity and value, to be extracted, exploited and commercialized, reminding us that while nature possesses all that we need for our survival, exploitation of nature for our own gain will inevitably lead to a diminished quality of life for all beings. To truly benefit from nature's vitality and abundance requires an approach of care and a mindset of mutual flourishing. FERMENTATION + FEMINISM Coasters with audience reflections from Fermentation + Feminism, an off site reading and discussion event at Triple Bottom Brewing in Philadelphia, in collaboration with the Philadelphia chapter of Pink Boots Society. Participants considered selected written pieces from Fermenting Feminism, compiled by Lauren Fournier, which “approach[es] fermentation through intersectional and trans-inclusive feminist frameworks, and…approach[es] feminisms through the metaphor and material practice of fermentation.” The tale of the Unicorn reminds us that while nature possesses all that we need for our survival, exploitation of nature for our own gain will inevitably lead to a diminished quality of life for all beings.
Together we looked at and played with the ways that the characteristics of herbal plants, as well as their habitat and gifts to the human body can teach us about ourselves and the world we inhabit. Participants took home a tea blend of their own creation and a new perspective on a weedy field.
HERBAL TEA BLENDS Samples of herbal tea blends crafted by the hands of community members in the gallery. While sipping tulsi, nettle, lavender, and lemon balm teas, participants looked at and played with the ways that the characteristics of herbal plants, as well as their habitat and gifts to the human body can teach us about ourselves and the world we inhabit. Teas on display were created and named with intentions for tapping into heart spaces, body systems, plant growth patterns, and personal relationship to these species.
SIT SPOT Textual and visual notes recorded by observers of specific chosen spaces in the landscape surrounding Street Road Artists Space and NCCL School during nature meditations. During this final contribution gathering of the exhibition, friends engaged in a sit spot practice; making sensorial observations of a small area in nature over time, gradually becoming increasingly aware of details previously missed and connections that shift perspectives. We come to this space with our own ingrained narrative, and leave with new information to inform the remainder of our day. Or perhaps the week, year, life?
COOKBOOK
This collaborative collection, rooted in December’s focus on Succession’s Fera Fortuna beer and taking its label as a starting point, explores preservation not just as a culinary practice, but as a way of sustaining culture, community, and ecological relationships. Through recipes, stories, and reflections, it highlights how traditions evolve and adapt across generations, geographies, and changing environments. Ultimately, it frames preservation as a shared, living practice rooted in care, connection, and collective memory.
Reading ListBarukh Milstein, Cindy. Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice
Bookchin Murray. The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy Bookchin, Murray. The Philosophy of Social Ecology: Essays on Dialectical Naturalism Josephson, Marika. Keeping the “Farm” in “Farmhouse Beer” Kimmerer, Robin Wall. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World Kropotkin, Peter. Mutual Aid Nurin, Tara. A Woman's Place Is in the Brewhouse: A Forgotten History of Alewives, Brewsters, Witches, and CEOs Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World |
