Mud, a medium often considered lowly and undesirable, is the subject of our experiment/talk/workshop. In this session artists and participants will collectively create a series of sculptures inspired by Winogradsky columns and discuss how the columns work, what they reveal, and their relationship to the microbial sublime. The Winogradsky column is a simple experiment used to cultivate and study a large diversity of microorganisms. We will sculpturally appropriate this scientific experiment in order to render the nearly imperceptible presence of microbial life more tangible through art and its making. The sculptures will be composed of 12" x 3" acrylic tubes in which we will mix pond mud (harvested from a pond on the University of Toronto Mississauga campus) with carbon (newspaper), calcium carbonate (egg shells), and sulfur (egg yolk). Over time and through exposure to sunlight, the sculptures will reveal the microbial life that is an integral part of our ecosystem.