Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Naturalia & Mirabilia

French textile artist Lyndie Dourthe creates what she calls 'Naturalia & Mirabilia' - both marvels and natural history in her miniature cabinet of curiosity. She describes how in her secret laboratory she creates jewelry, soft sculpture and installations with a hint of botany, voodoo, anatomy, and superstition. Like any naturalist, she sorts, labels and boxes her specimens and treasures. Her jewelry also serve as childlike talismans.

Lyndie Dourthe - Source: lyndiedourthe.monsite-orange.fr




Lyndie Dourthe - Source: lyndiedourthe.monsite-orange.fr via minouette




Lyndie Dourthe - Source: lyndiedourthe.monsite-orange.fr via minouette




Lyndie Dourthe - Source: lyndiedourthe.monsite-orange.fr via minouette




Lyndie Dourthe -Source: lyndiedourthe.monsite-orange.fr via minouette




Lyndie Dourthe -Source: lyndiedourthe.monsite-orange.fr via minouette





I've long admired her work and can't imagine why I haven't written about her before! Check out her portfolio, blog, and shop.

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Illustrating Explorers

I'm enjoying the illustrations of Bristol-based illustrator Joe Todd Staunton. This cross-section of the oceanic water column with all its flora and fauna (and fishers) and their measurements and appropriate depths, first captured my attention:








via his blog where he wrote that he was considering adding sea birds above! It reminds me of working at sea with ROVs and watching the video feed as they descend or ascend from the depths.

Several other illustrations touch on scientists, academics and explorers, or draw on scientific illustration with their diagrammatic qualities, which is right up my alley.





for an editorial "Cambridge professors to set tough new maths A-levels".






"Newest image from a project that is looking at explorers who died on there journeys. This one is about the astronaut Vladimir Komarov who died coming back to earth due to parachute failure."












for an editorial "Why bright lads are being picked on".

Check out his portfolio and blog for more!

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Exploring Alternate Evolutionary Paths in Clay









This isn't the first time I've written about ceramic artists playing with variations on flora and fauna as we know it; it is something which definitely appeals to me, and fits squarely in that wondrous creative region where art and science intersect. Chicago-based artist Chris Garofalo took inspiration from her garden when she began to make hybrid creatures or plants in clay. I particularly like how her site describes this as imagining a different evolutionary path for life:

By blurring the distinction between lang, sea and air, the plant and animal kingdoms- by examing the state between the waving arms of a sea anemome and unfurling tendril of a fern- a kind of hybridization or exogamy of all biological lifeforms takes place. The results are an exploration into what might have occurred with slight changes in early evolutionary events.






The 'Basidiomycete Florid Hoveren' above alludes to the Basidiomycota a phylum which contains 37% of the true fungi, including mushrooms and yeasts. "Florid", of course, means flowery, and "Hoveren" is apparently Old English (frequentative of hoven) from which we get words like hover. So perahps it describes itself as a flowery, hovering, mushroom. the 'Siphonophore Royale' below is more transparent; a siphonophore is any of various transparent marine hydrozoans, of the order Siphonophora, that float or swim as colonies of polyps, the sort of colony of creatures we sloppily think of as 'jellyfish'. The 'Corallia Bractea' below literally can mean a 'gold leaf' coral, but it is also reminescent of the bracteate flower, where a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches (or bracts). The sculpture below, 'Blastomycetes' actually refers to a real organism; Any of various yeastlike, budding fungi of the genus Blastomyces that cause diseases in humans and animals. 'Redocumaize Porifera' is a bit mysterious. We know that porifera are the sponges, and maize the corn family. We can see how she is imagining alternate pathways for polyps, mushrooms, corals, flowers, grasses and sponges, or growing a garden of ceramic evolutionary might-have-beens.







 




Be sure to peruse the rest of her portfolio!

Friday, January 4, 2013

Transparent Animals








(Photo by Heidi and Hans-Jurgen Koch) Source: oddee.com via minouette on Pinterest



A few years ago, I made a post about a couple of transparent sea creatures: an octopus and one deep sea fish. Transparency, or translucency is something we might expect in say, jellyfish, or insect wings, or in microbiology but I've stumbled upon a whole collection of different animals who are more or less see-through.





The aptly named Glass frogs (frogs of the amphibian family Centrolenidae) of South and Central America may be mostly lime green, many have translucent abdominal skin through which internal viscera, including the heart, liver, and gastrointestinal tract are visible.










This translucent shrimp is sometimes called a "ghost shrimp".



(Photo by David Shale) Source: oddee.com via minouette on Pinterest



This North Atlantic animal called Phronima, uses transparency as a survival strategy and a means to be invisible.


Photo by Peter Batson) Source: oddee.com via minouette on Pinterest

The southern oceans' Glass Squid (Teuthowenia pellucida) "has light organs on its eyes and possesses the ability to roll into a ball, like an aquatic hedgehog."


Flatfish can be transparent in their early planktonic stage.

(Photo by Uwe Kils) Source: oddee.com via minouette on Pinterest


Even the blood of the crocodile icefish (Channichthyidae) is transparent, lacking hemoglobin and/or only defunct erythrocytes. Because they live in the very cold southern oceans, around Antarctica, which contain more oxygen it's believed they can absorb sufficient oxygen directly through their skin.





This is a transparent pelagic octopus.






We're familiar with translucent wings on flies and bees, but the lovely Glasswinged butterfly (Greta Oto) also has translucent wings.



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