It is almost spring here and while it's too early to plant, I've been thinking about seeds. When you look at the forms of seeds, particularly magnified, they are astonishing: complex, organic, sculptural shapes. Some artists have taken seeds as inspiration or even a medium. Here are a few and their extraordinary work.
American ceramicist Alice Ballard's work features a lot of seeds, pods and other organic forms. She explores pods as a feminine form, like a womb, detailing textures and colours with wall-mounted pods. She has been exploring these ideas for years and yet still finds endless new variations.
Carved sycamore seeds: 1 x 60 cm x 25 cm x 10 cm 1 x 48 cm x 18 cm x 9 cm by Liz McAuliffe
Seeds and pods appear in New Zealand artist Liz McAuliffe's bigger than life sculptures. By blowing up the minutiae of biological forms, she draws the viewers into to consider nature more carefully.
Abizia Pod, Size (h w d): 80 cm x 15 cm x 5 cm, acrylics on carved wood by Liz McAuliffe
American sculptor Pamela Sunday's work reflects natural forms, many reminiscent of microscopic seed forms. She has moved from the fashion world to build a sculptural practise inspired by science and nature, and exhibiting worldwide.
German artist Christiane Löhr's artworks include a collection made with plants including seeds. Piles and structures of delicate plant material take on organic architectural shapes and patterns.
Kleine Fläche little surface, 2007
airborne seeds, 5 x 20 x 35 cm by Christiane Löhr
Löwenzahnkissen dandelion cushion, 2009
dandelion seeds, 18 x 43 x 37 cm by Christiane Löhr
Kleiner Turm little tower, 1999
ivy seeds, 16 x 13 x 10 cm by Christiane Löhr
Korean artist Heejoo Kim's metalwork jewellery incorporates beautiful natural forms of pods and seeds if you want these beautiful forms to wear.
Necklace, Enameled copper, leather and thread by Heejoo Kim
Right:
Emma Stone (in Louis Vuitton) arrives at the Academy Awards February
24, 2019 (detail of photo by Marl Ralston/AFP/Getty Images) and left: Apriona swainsoni, female by Ben Sale
Sometimes I watch the Oscars, but mainly for the
pretty clothes. I went to bed after Spike Lee won for his screenplay,
probably correct in my suspicion the show had peaked (with a joyous
moment overdue by a few decades). I did enjoy the clothes, and in
particular that several men stepped it up with colour, and capes and one
truly spectacular skirt. Today this is my excuse to contrast the
astonishing biodiversity of beetles with the beautiful textiles and
couture on display. See the previous such posts: I really enjoyed
bringing you the best in nudibranch Oscar fashion and bee biodiversity versus Oscar fashion
before. The variation in bugs and beetles is staggering, and I hope
you'll see they show great beauty, even if you're inclined to think of
them as creepy crawlies.
Left: Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa (detail of photograph: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images) and right: Cerambycidae from Senegal, male and female, shot by Insecte member ocis
Left: Helen Mirren arrives at the Academy Awards February 24, 2019 (Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images) and right: Omophoita via National Geographic
Left: Glenn Close at the 2019 Oscars on February 24, 2019 in Caroline Herrera and right: Golden Tortoise Beetle (via Wikipedia)
Left: Chris Evans, February 24, 2019 at the Academy Awards (Getty Images) and right: the six-spotted tiger beetle (Cicindela sexguttata) (courtesy Matt Bright/flickr CC)
Left:
Michelle Yeoh wearing Ellie Saab at the February 24, 2019 Academy
Awards (By Steve Granitz/WireImage) and left: Corythuca ciliata, the sycamore lace bug (via here)
so let's talk about cakes as science-art and science communication shall we?
ATLAS detector cake (credit: Katharine Leney via Symmetry)
Universe cake (credit: David Morse and Katharine Leney via Symmetry)
Particle physicists Katy Grimm and
Katharine Leney who work on the ATLAS collaboration at CERN, discovered
they also share a mutual love of baking. Symmetry magazine
covers their delightful cakes (and other baked goods) which do
everything from directly illustrating the ATLAS particle detector, to
equations, diagrams and other data visualizations to metaphorically
communicating the structure of protons according to the Standard Model
or communicating through the medium of the cosmos cake, the proportions
of regular matter, dark matter and dark energy. You'll find more via PhysicsCakes on Twitter.
In
the wonderful world of science cakes, Earth and planetary science and
amazingly well represented. Australian zoologist Rhiannon has posted
several wonderful examples, including tutorials for nested spherical cakes on her blog Cakecrumbs.
This
wonder Earth cake shows oceans and continents on the blue icing layer,
orange mantle and yellow inner and outer core layers. (via Cakecrumbs)
The
beautiful Jupiter cake likewise has three concentric layers to
represent rocky and icy core, a middle liquid metal hydrogen layer and
an outer molecular hydrogen layer. She says the famous giant anticyclone
storm, the Great Red Spot was what attracted her. She recreated the
patterns in the atmosphere with "ivory marshmallow fondant, then dry
brushing a combination of ivory, brown and maroon edible ink." (via Cakecrumbs)
You can find space cakes bedecked or embedded with the planets of the solar system! Consider this tutorial for Mirror Glaze Galaxy Cake from the Also the Crumbs Please blog, the Astronomy themed groom's cake or the award-winning portrait of Galileo Galilei!
The
mirror glaze is also just the thing for anyone creating cakes
representing marble, many minerals or geode cakes. Geodes in fact, have
been a real trend in wedding cakes and there is an astonishing array of
geode inspired cakes in every imaginable colours.
Natural history cakes don't stop with
mineral specimens! Flora and fauna are popular too. There's a long
history of using actual edible flowers, or sculpting flowers or leaves,
often cast directly from actual plants - but those that convincingly
recreate lifeforms with cake, icing, chocolate, fondant and other edibles
are my favourites.
Lifelike deer cake by legendary Grand Dame of the cake decorating world, Sylvia Weinstock
This
beauty hits on both natural history and the history of science as it's
inspired by the hyper-realistic botanical still-life paintings of Dutch
artist Rachel Ruysch (1685 to 1750). This cake is deocrated with
custom-made sugar flowers, created by Amy DeGiulio of Sugar Flower Cake Shop in New York City, and placed in a gold urn to complete the look. (via Martha Stewart Weddings)
Jakarta-based pastry chef Iven Kawi who runs the Iven Oven where she makes these wonderful terrarium inspired cakes which hit the succulent trend (via Colossal)
My son requested a dinosaur-shaped cake, capped with a
Cretaceous scene
with volcano and smaller dinosaurs for his 5th birthday, so I assure
you, this is but a tiny peek at what is out there. I haven't even
touched on paleontological cakes, or the gothic world of anatomy cakes.
There's a whole world of yummy cake-based science art/communication out
there for you to explore and, better yet, eat.
(Hat-tip to my friend Faunalia, who has been sharing images of amazing cakes with me for years! You can find some of our favourite images here.).
Lithograph from 1888 showing the Krakatoa eruption, author unknown. (via Public Domain Review)
Natural disasters and phenomena have always inspired art. The connection between volcanism and art has many interwoven strands. Volcanoes, eruptions, and their impacts can be seen throughout the history; in fact, a type of volcanic eruption with continuous gas-driven eruption with large amounts of pumice and volcanic debris launched into the stratosphere, are called Plinian after Pliny the Younger, who wrote about the 79 CE Vesuvius eruption to his uncle Pliny the Elder. Art has been used as a tool to consider and communicate the beauty of volcanoes, the power and devastation of their eruptions, their vivid technicolour effects on our skies, and in turn, art itself has even been used as a proxy for considering the historical effects of particulate matter in our atmosphere due to volcanic eruptions.
The earliest volcanic art is generally religious in nature. Think Roman paintings and sculptures of Vulcan, the blacksmith god of fire, working inside the island Vulcano off the coast of southern Italy or miniature effigies of Popocatépetl, made by the Tetimpa people of Puebla, Mexico, for a volcano active between 50 B.C.E and 100 C.E. Sébastien Nomade and colleagues in fact argue that the earliest depictions of volcanoes are much, much earlier. They indentified 36,000 year old stone engravings of a spray shape from the Chauvet-Pont d’Arc Cave in France as depictions of a volcanic eruption, as there are volcanic rocks in the cave dating from 30,000 to 40,000 years ago. A 9,000 year old Turkish mosaic seems to likewise commemorate a nearby volcanic eruption. Some speculate myths and entire religions were inspired by experiences and observations of volcanoes.
Kircher’s diagram showing the interconnectedness of fire inside the earth, from Mundus Subterraneus.
The infancy of science as we know it is reflected in speculative art of the proto-scientific illustrations of the source of volcanism, in 17th-century polymathAthanasius Kircher’s Mundus Subterraneus, 1665.
The accuracy of English painter Joseph Wright of Derby's 30 odd paintings of
Vesuvius erupting, made between 1774 and 1780, including the famed “Vesuvius from Portici,” are astonishing, considering he never actually saw the volcano erupt. He relied on his sketches of the volcano made while inactive, and his imagination.
“Chichester Canal,” by J.M.W. Turner has vivid skies from the Tambora eruption. CreditTate, London 2015
The massive and deadly 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora, the largest in recorded history, put so much debris into our atmosphere it triggered what has been known as "the year without summer" - the first of three years of cooling - leading to frigid weather, agriculture collapse, pandemics, vivid sunsets and one dark and stormy night which has gone down in the history of Gothic literature, as it saw the birth of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Lord Byron write the outline for “The Vampyre.” Byron wrote “Darkness,” later that year, likewise inspired by the frigid temperature and volcano-darkened skies.
A harbor scene by Caspar David Friedrich, painted after the Tambora eruption, depicts a vivid sky.CreditErich Lessing/Art Resource, N.Y.
Japanese artist Hokusai(1760–1849) made his iconic series of ukiyo-e style woodblock prints "Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji" in the 1830s. These 46 prints are considered masterpieces made at the height of his carreer, highlight many views of the beloved, beautiful volcano from different perspectives and in different weather, including the most well-know The Great Wave off Kanagawa. He himself later returned to this subject again and again, as did other other printmakers like Andō Hiroshige.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1829-1832
View of Mount Fuji from Satta Point in the Suruga Bay, Andō Hiroshige, 1859
One of the sketches carried out by William Ascroft in the winter of 1883/4 - used as the frontispiece of The Eruption of Krakatoa, and Subsequent Phenomena: Report of the Krakatoa committee of the Royal Society (1888), ed. by G.J. Simmons. (via Public Domain Review)
After the spectacular and devastating 1883 eruption of Indonesian volcano Krakatoa, the debris spread around the global stratosphere and caused lurid sunsets even in Britain, where painter William Ascroft struggled to document the effect with evening pastel sketches. He exhibited more than 500 in the galleries of the Science Museum. In Oslo, painter Edvard Munch wrote, “it was as if a flaming sword of blood slashed open the vault of
heaven ... the atmosphere turned to blood – with glaring
tongues of fire – the hills became deep blue – the fjord shaded into
cold blue – among the yellow and red colours – that garish blood-red –
on the road – and the railing – my companions’ faces became yellow-white
– I felt something like a great scream – and truly I heard a great
scream.” (via Public Domain Review) Though debated, some researchers believe these vivid skies later inspired his famous series of works, The Scream (Olson et al., 2004).
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893. Credit: public domain.
The 1880s and 1890s even saw a romantic movement of non-indigenous artists in Hawai'i known as the Volcano School producing paintings of dramatic nocturnal eruptions. These artists did strive for accuracy making grueling multi-day hikes up the slopes of Kilauea.
Chemists have even looked to art history to see if sunsets depicted could be a measure of post-eruption aerosols in the atmosphere. Zerefos and colleagues first thought to see if the red to green ratio in painted sunsets from 1500 and 2000 accurately reflected how much sunsets were enhanced and made redder following 54 major volcanic eruptions (and whether it correlated with aerosol optical depth). They began with images of works from museum websites, but realized that these photos could be biased by differing, subjective, colour correction by photographers. So, they repeated their study with a subset of images from the Tate (mainly by Turner). They found that sunset paintings made the year of a major eruption and the three subsequent years did indeed skew red, accurately correlated with the expected tiny volcanic particles in the atmosphere. This effect persisted despite other influences on sunset colours including pigments available and styles in art.
Volcanoes have continued to inspire even modern artists, though strict realism is no longer the goal in many instances. The movement and power is conveyed while colour has more to do with emotion and aesthetics than aerosol optical depth - for instance in Warhol's Vesuvius. As Vesuvius itself had been a stop on the typical European Grand Tour, Warhol recognized paintings of Vesuvius as a cliche and hence a great topic for him to explore. Though she made representative volcono prints, a more poetic and symbolic representation can be seen in Bertha Lum's woodblock print Spirit of the Volcano.
Danny Osborne, A conquistador’s helmet cast from lava via Atlas Obscura
Osborne and crew use a mold on long pole is inserted into flowing lava Volcano Pacaya, Guatemala. 2010. via Atlas Obscura
Finally today, volcanoes themselves can become the medium as well as message. Contemporary sculptor Danny Osborne prefers to interact more directly with volcanoes and casts sculptures with molds plunged directly into flowing lava!
