magpie & whiskeyjack

Happy Groundhog Day!

2012-02-02T11:34:00.002-05:00

Well, it's that time of year again, midway between Solstice and Equinox, when we turn to the weather prognosticating rodents to assess of chances of better weather. Since this part of Ontario has been spared much winter at all, it may not surprise you to learn that Wiarton Willie (technically, Wee Willie, as the original, or at least, most recent albino Wiaton Willie is desceased) and his Nova Scotia cohort Shubenacadie Sam both did not see their shadows this morning. If you believe the (wildly inaccurate*) weather prognostication of rodents, readers south of the border may be dismayed that Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil disagrees, having observed his own shadow. However, this year, thanks to the positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation much of North America has had low snow cover and warmer-than-average temperatures. So, for once, I think that there has not been much winter to speak of, and the Canadian groundhogs may actually be right.

The photo, of course, is of two copies of my a groundhog and his thermochromic shadow linocut - on Japanese kozo paper 11" by 12.5" (28 cm by 31.8 cm). The shadow on the left has been heated, and thus it disappeared. So the print itself serves as a prognosticating groundhog for Groundhog Day! If the shadow is heated above 30°C (86 F) then it turns colourless. And let's face it; if it's February 2, and your artwork is > 30°C (86 F) you either a) live in the tropics north of the equator b) live in the Southern Hemisphere or c) need to turn the thermostat down ASAP. So, there's a pretty good chance that this print can accurately predict that there will not be 6 more weeks of winter (to a degree of accuracy at least comparable to any celebrity rodent).

*Estimated at 37% accuracy
(x-posted to the on-going saga of minouette blog)

Quilling Anatomy

2012-02-01T11:32:00.005-05:00

Head and Torso
2010
mulberry paper
9 x 13 x 1 inches

Artist Lisa Nilsson combines the Mideval art of paper quilling and modern antomical science in her incredibly detailed (and accurate) assemblages. Using long strips of Japanese kozo, or mulberry paper, and strips of gilded book pages, she uses a variety of tools to curl pages into the right shapes to represent all the tissues in our bodies. I know that kozo is wonderfully strong, but it also comes in a large variety of colours, which makes it a versitile medium. She says she was inspired to start using quilling as a technique after finding a reliquary; the earliest quiller were nuns who started using the gilded edges of bibles as a creative medium.

Female Torso
2010
paper
9 x 10 x 3/4 inches

Thorax
2011
paper
21 1/2 x 12 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches

Abdomen
2011
paper
15 x 12 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches

The detailed photos give you a sense of the meticulous work involved.

Profile (detail)
2011
paper
A detail of "Profile" showing the sinuses, front teeth and tongue.

Head II (detail)
2011
A detail of "Head II" showing a cross section of the brain.

She explains that she uses gilded paper to tie her work to religious reliquaries and a little less to scientific specimen, but I cannot help but see this work also as beautiful and creative medical illustration.

Be sure to check out her other work in her portfolio.

Also, for another take on quilling human anatomy, check out the work of Sarah Yakawonis.

(via Craft, all things paper and artsake)

Transparent Wunderkammer

2012-01-29T13:36:00.005-05:00

Iori Tomaki's “New World Transparent Specimens” began with established scientific tools for studying the skeletal systems of zoological specimens (using enzymes to turn the proteins transparent, dyeing the bones magenta and dyeing the cartilages blue), refined the colouration to make whole wunderkammers of fascinating "specimen" in glycerin for, as he explains, everything from academic purposes, to objects for artistic or philosophic contemplation. I love that he's taken his experience in fisheries and employed it to make art at the interface of art and science.

See more specimens here.
(via form is void)

Happy Chinese New Year!

2012-01-23T16:26:00.003-05:00

Flying Dragonm 32" x 32" with 67 cm x 67cm with silk brocade mat
By Artist Chan Da Bei

Today is Ne Year, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. This is the year of the water dragon. The Year of the Dragon is considered the luckiest in the Chinese Zodiac. I hope it treats you well.

Mathemagical Solar System Song

2012-01-19T11:08:00.006-05:00

Daniel Starr-Tambor’s Mandala (above) is a musical palindrome of 62 vigintillion (10⁶³) notes, which represents musically all the rotational frequencies of the planets (and Pluto) in our solar system! (via Brain Pickings) I've always been a fan of the palindrome (which is something which remains the same if write forward or backward) since my name (Ele) is one of the shortest palindromes. Mandala boasts that it is the longest palindrome ever written, and I do not doubt it.

It's perhaps surprising how lovely the music is to hear, for such a mathematical approach to music composition - though the two languages, math and music, are quite naturally intimately entwined. He's not the first to think of the planetary motions in terms of music. He alludes to Bach (and Bach’s The Art of the Fugue) explicitly, with its contrapunctal mathematical and arguably Pythagorean structure.* The concept of the Music of the Spheres was quite a common way for scholars to think about the motions of heavenly bodies, up to the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution. It can be traced back to the ancient Greek mathematical-mystic Pythagoras, who first linked musical pitch to the length of a vibrating string which produced it. Further harmonious sounds were produced by strings with simple (rational) length ratios. This fit well with his adoration of rational numbers.** Pythagoras, in his theory of the Harmony of the Spheres, proposed that celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, and the known planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) each emitted a hum based on their period of revolution. Recall, that it was assumed that the Sun, moon and planets orbited around the Earth. Further, that the ratios were harmonious, like those produced by strings of simple length ratios. Thus, for Pythagoras, music and astronomy were two sides of a single mathematical coin. Ptolemy's model of the geocentric solar system, wherein each of Sun, Moon, known planets, and stars (quintessence) were more-or-less pinned to a series of transparent, nested, rotating spheres encapsulating the Earth, dominated the Western world view for 1500 years. Thus "Music of the Spheres" referred to the 'harmonies' of the motions of these imaginary spheres.

The first real shift in thinking is of course attributed to Copernicus, who proposed a heliocentric model, where the Earth, like the planets, circled the Sun, and the Moon circled the Earth. This model was famously improved by Kepler, who, thanks to Tycho Brahe's immaculately recorded data, was able to show that planetary orbits are in fact elliptical (slightly more oval than a perfect circle), with the Sun at one of the two foci of the ellipse. He further showed that a line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time. And, that the square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit. These three facts are known as Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion. You'll see that they refer to geometry and ratios, just like Pythagoras did before him. In fact, while we tend to honour Kepler as some sort of harbinger of modern science, his worldview was in many ways still Medieval. He did not think in terms of the simple, beautiful, elliptical solar system (as we still know it today). He was obsessed with proportions and attempted to explain astronomical (and worse, to the modern mind) astrological ratios in terms of music, in his own favorite publication Harmonices Mundi. His very first attempt to articulate his discoveries, now known as his three laws, was written in terms of musical notation (above). He wrote, "the movements of the heavens are nothing except a certain everlasting polyphony." (He ended up embroiled in a priority dispute with Robert Fludd, whose own harmonic theory is illustrated as the "THE MUNDANE MONOCHORD WITH ITS PROPORTIONS AND INTERVALS", the stringed instrument with planetary orbits, From Fludd's De Musica Mundana above). He also conceived of it in terms of polyhedra; he imagined the five Platonic solids (octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, cube) circumscribed by spheres, nested one within the other. This, he claimed, could explain the ratio of orbits of the six known planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). Kepler's insights, along with the concept of centrifugal force from Huygens, allowed Newton, Edmund Halley, and possibly Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke to deduce that gravitational attraction between the Sun and its planets decreased with the square of the distance between them. This in turn lead to Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation. So, we owe this groundbreaking idea as much to musical theory, and imaginary geometrical patterns, as rational, mathematically-based reasoning.

*For how Bach encoded his name into The Art of the Fugue, see one of my favorite books, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.

**We all recall Pythagoras for Pythagoras' theorem (the square of the hypotenus is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides for right angle triangles). Imagine his, and his cult's horror when they realized that for one of the simplest triangles, where "the other two sides" each have length of 1 unit, the hypotenus must have an irrational √2 length! The irrationality of √2 did not fit into the tidy rational, mathematical world of the Pythagoreans. It was perhaps the first of a long series of instances where the beauty of mathematics was mistaken for something tidy and controllable.

Diagramatic Self- Portrait

2012-01-12T12:21:00.008-05:00

비몽사몽도(非夢似夢圖)_Detail plan of somnolence(2008)

I've seen the staggering art of Korean artist Minjeong An on a few sites now (50 Watts, colossal...) but I need to share this with you. She uses the complexity of scientific visualizations as an artistic method to great affect. You must imagine the effect of this level of anatomical and science-inspired complexity on a larger-than-our-bodies scale. She is clearly inspired by scientific ideas, as can be seen in "The Power of a Kiss" which explicitly quotes Newton's Second Law of motion or F = ma (force is equal to mass times acceleration), amusingly for her mother's spit when kissing. She writes about how her mother's kiss was able to inspire her to walk to elementary school, but when she was old enough to go on her own, a kiss no longer inspired, but nor did she receive any.

The theme of family also recures in "Detail plan of six membered family:...". The mother's warmth is shown through her "aura" (shown as golden yellow rays), sharing aloe, and also from a more scientific standpoint in the formula for what An calls the "maternal hormone" oxytocin. (Please visit her site to view these images at larger scales).

The 'house plants' light panel explores photosynthesis and the role of human emotion (or so I am able to glean, with some uncertainty and aid from google translate).

The view of her self-portrait in progress makes me imagine she inhabits a fascinating word of complex sensority inputs, as if she's trying to get all of reality (from the nanoscale to human-scale) onto the page.

Riding Ostriches

2012-01-09T13:32:00.011-05:00

Occasionally, I see something illustrated which seems wonderfully absurd. Like this staging of a mannequin wearing Iris Apfel's apparel (and signature glasses) riding an ostrich from the Rare Bird of Fashion: The Irreverent Iris Apfel of the Peabody Essex Museum. Then, somehow, I am reminded of this by, say, an illustration,

Yiiha! by Sabine Gebhardt

which in turn brings to mind, a prize-winning screenprint by local Toronto printmaker (and teacher at Open Studio) Daryl Vocat:

Daryl Vocat, Practicing Strategic Invisibility is an
Excellent Way to Mislead Enemies, screenprint

which I mistakenly remembered as someone riding an ostrich, but which is nothing of the sort (but too delightfully absurd to omit). This sort of thing prompts me to search whether this is a more common idea than I would have thought (having the strong impression that ostriches are not kindly animals, and would be ill-inclined to accepting a rider).

Detective Comics #67, Cover: Original Art by Jerry Robinson(DC, 1942)

According to io9, not only did the first Batman comic book appearance (1942, in Detective Comics #67) of the villain Penguin involve a cover illustration of the crook riding an ostrich, but when it came up for auction last November, bids exceeded $200,000!

I knew nothing of old school video game Joust, where "the player controls a yellow knight riding a flying ostrich from a third-person perspective" but I admire this propaganda style poster by illustrator Steve Thomas:

Much to my surprise, even the most cursory enquiry reveals that not only riding, but racing ostriches is a reasonably common occurrence, and something people have been doing for some time.

“They’re Off!” - Thrills of the Turf in Ostrich Racing (Modern Mechanics, September, 1929)

I should really know better than to be surprised, being familiar, for instance with Rule 34 of the Internet. Ergo, there should also be some corollary: if some artist illustrates a whimsical and ill-advised behaviour, some person has tried it (and posted it to the Internet).

Satirical Diagrams

2012-01-03T14:35:00.004-05:00

I just read that British artist and cartoonist Ronald Searle died, on December 30, 2011, at age 91. He produced an amazing body of work, in a distinctive (much-emulated) style. He could be very funny, but also made darkly satirical work on the human condition - this was attributed to his time in a brutal Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma, during the second world war, which he managed to document in a clutch of 300 surviving drawings. Today, I thought I'd share something satirical and witty (rather than silly, or devastating): a series of diagrams, for the layperson of various professions. I can't resist the sort of taxonomic diagram.

You can find a huge collection of his work in the tribute blog Perpetua. Have a look.

Lunar Calendars

2011-12-30T11:27:00.006-05:00

Every year I think I should make a calendar, but I never do... though I do tend to gather a bunch of proofs of my prints to make a calendar just for our home. This year I went so far as to work on a design of a lunar calendar. I think that there is too much information to easily capture in a relief print (unless made on an impractical scale) and that this is something better suited to screenprinting or digital prints. Further, the more I worked on it, the more convinced I became that this was something I should be programming, rather than making by hand.

Here are a few of the lovely 2012 lunar calendars I was able to find.

Lunar Calendar 2012 Poster
Silkscreen over Black paper 240 g/m² 48x66cm
Made with programming using Nodebox
Lunar Calendar, Moon Calendar, Calendário Lunar
by Brazilian designer Dimitre Lima, available here

Lunar Calendar 2012
This is a visualization of the lunar calendar for 2012.
columns = months, rows = days.
© Copyright 2011 Michael Paukner.
This doesn't appear to be in his shop right now, but you should check it out (and his photostream) anyway, for lovely design and sciencey goodness!

This calendar on www.ghin.co.uk tries to do it all:

Calendar 2012 is a Gregorian calendar with, moon phases and the Chinese Lunar-solar Calendar integrated, layed out as a circular color wheel. The new additional Chinese calendar is in simplified Chinese.

This years edition of the color wheel calendar marks the End of the Mayan long count. The Maya Long count is the most sophisticated calendar created so far. It consists of different length cycles that makes up the long count which is 5126 years. This long count ends on the winter solstice 21st of December 2012.

Calendar 2012 includes:

- Hebrew, Chinese, Hindu, Buddhist, Gregorian and Islamic year count.
- Fully integrated lunar phase cycle for each day.
- Simplified Chinese Calendar

This calendar is actually from 2011, but you can get the letterpress 2012 version here from lizardpress on Etsy

Happy Holidays

2011-12-24T16:15:00.004-05:00

Whichever of the many December holidays, when days in the Northern Hemisphere grow short and nights are long, which you may celebrate, I hope it's a good one.

These are Mummers in St Johns, Newfoundland and Labrador:

Mummering is a Christmastime tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador, which settlers brought from England at some point. I involves, in various proportions, costumed house visits (sometimes in drag), singing, performance, recitation, challenging hosts to guess identities, and of course, last but not least, drinking.

Maps and UnNatural History

2011-12-20T12:17:00.007-05:00

The work of Vancouver-based Paul Morstad involves some of my favorite things, and I don't just mean the magpies (as in Magpie Bacchanal, above). His series of multimedia paintings on nautical charts and maps have a sort of chaotic and romantic welter of natural history (flora, fauna, gems and geology) and subtle, imaginative, visual puns.

Consider the ruby-throated hummingbird raising a ruby in her nest.

Humbolt's Acordion seems to allude to one of my favorite, heroic nineteenth century naturalist-explorers, the biologist-meterologist-earth scientist-freedom fighter Alexander von Humboldt, who, amongst many adventures, famously learned 40 words of the dead language of the lost Atures tribe of South America, from a parrot, the last surviving speaker. Though, it isn't impossible it may have just been inspired by accordion players in Humboldt, Saskatchewan (or any number of other places of the same name). It makes me imagine tucans passing on the lost accordion music of some imaginary people. I love how the natural lines of inlets and rivers become trees and branches. I wouldn't have thought forks in rivers were isomorphic to branching in trees, (and I happen to be the sort of person who has spent hours looking at the Canadian Hydrographic Service chart for Jervis Inlet) but the organic lines work so well.

There is something magical and menacing about the regal prairie chicken, over the sedimentary section with cut gem stones, grasshoppers and smoking black-eyed susans in Prospector.

I too am charmed by weather prognosticating rodents.

Paul writes that he is deeply influenced by the "landscapes, people, flora and fauna" of the Western provinces (Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia) where he was raised. Do yourself a favour and check out the rest of his portfolio. I stumbled upon it while looking at some of the animations of his immensely talented sister Julie Morstad; they created the animations together.

Tuba

2011-12-14T12:11:00.003-05:00

(image: Puffin on a Tuba, by Oliver Lake, available at society6)

This is a strange sort of post. Sometimes I like to gather little themes. This is really just two unusual tuba-related observations this week. Firstly, French cows clearly enjoy some jazz on brass and this tuba and trumpet duo. Made me smile:

(via swissmiss)

Meanwhile, in LA, there have been a rash of tuba thefts, leaving Southlands high schools bereft. Compared to some crime stories in Los Angelos, the idea of banda-crazed theives stealing from high school bands and a tuba-blackmarket seems humourous, but it's actually sad. High schools haven't the budget to replace these instruments. Though, at least these thefts will result in music, not mayheim.

Stick Charts and Woven Branch Maps

2011-12-08T11:24:00.002-05:00

Via I'M REVOLTING come these woven branch maps, described as a collaboration between architect Tim Koelle and an unnamed local Mexican craftsperson (available at mc&co). They (mc&co) explain, "The branches are woven together when freshly cut & flexible. The designs are based on local topographical regions, serving as 'maps'."

I think the branch maps are lovely (if pricey!), but I do think it a bit odd that they do not mention the Polynesian tradition of making maps of branches. To navigate and explore a world of Pacific ocean, sparsely dotted with thousands of small islands, Polynesians created maps with knots, shells and bamboo or coconut fronds to identify routes to islands. They used the sun and stars to identify cardinal directions, and cues such as wave swells, winds, flights of birds, tides, reefs, cloud formation and flotsam to allow them to travel thousands of kilometers in canoes, long before Captain Cooke and other European explorers were able to explore the Pacific. They marked these cues on their maps called Rebbelibs, Medos and Mattangs, or Stick Charts. (You can find more on the history of navigation at sea, including Polynesian and Micronesian methods and maps curtesy of NOAA, the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration or about stick charts here and here).

I suppose it's possible they are less interested in maps, charts, navigation and the history of science and exploration than I (frankly, it's a bit of an obsession) and they may have actually produced their topographic branch maps in ignorance of Polynesian stick charts through a sort of convergent evolution of design (an idea which in itself interests me). Though, the lovely "Decorative Wall Hangings" might not be a case of cultural appropriation at all, I would far rather have a useful piece of naviation history if I had the choice.

Doily Science

2011-11-24T15:19:00.009-05:00

Sometimes I neglect to mention artists who strike me as well-known, or blogosphere favorites. But, I would be remiss to neglect Lisa Solomon's 'doily drawings' which are at the cross-section of art, science and needlework, as they are both beautiful and very much in keeping with magpie&whiskeyjack's favorites things.

doily brain: 2006, coloured pencil and embroidery on duralar, 12 x 9 inches

doily lungs: 2006, coloured pencil and embroidery on duralar, 12 x 9 inches

Solomon writes, "when I started drawing doilies I realized that en masse they reminded me of internal organs.... these doily body drawings represent the 4 things I think you need to make art: your lungs, heart, brain, and guts." She's also used doilies and colour pencils to show beautiful versions of the chemical structure of toxins and the geometry of viruses. More recently she's moved on to even more sculpture representations of molecules by combining the crochet with glass balls.

carbon tetrachloride, 2007
colored pencil, acrylic, graphite, watercolor and embroidery on duralar
10" x 10"

chloro benzine, 2007
colored pencil, acrylic, graphite, watercolor and embroidery on duralar
16 3/4" x 20 1/2"

Chloroform
2011
crochet doilies on glass
3.5 x 8.5 x 8.75 inches
8.9 x 21.6 x 22.2 cm

As well as anatomy, chemistry, toxicology, and microbiology, she's also tackled deforestation, tanks and rifles (which would fit in with the craftivism post) and a variety of domestic themes. Her work includes the aim of fusing and 'mending' masculine icons with traditionally feminine crafts. You should check out her extensive portfolio.

Sephaniusness

2011-11-16T17:34:00.012-05:00

I wrote previously about my favorite book which I've never seen in person (or, should I say, in analogue form), the Codex Seraphanius, by written and illustrated by Italian architect Luigi Serafini from 1976 to 1978. It's a visual encyclopedia, of a foreign, paradoxical yet familiar, world, complete with its own language and obscure meanings. Today, I bring you more art which reminds me of this particular brand of marvelousness; personal wonderland wunderkammer.

English artist and illustrator Ellis Nadler describes his "pictures as key frames or storyboards for some sort of bizarre movie. Or perhaps as stage sets for an opera I shall write some day." The "Scenes from the Speonk Archipelago" (one of which appears above) and gloriously mysterious and surreal Tarot-like 'Cards of Wu' in particular, make me think of Serafini. Do yourself a favour and peruse his portfolio!

from "Scenes from the Speonk Archipelago"

from "The Cards of Wu"

from "War"

Finland-based Vladimir Stankovic also creates bizzare, otherwordly wunderkammer (see in particular his Biophilia set), strange yet somehow familiar characters and a sort of personal mythology.

Beautiful feeling

The Mushroom Princess

Underneath the Reflection - Her Majesty

The Cursed Forest

Local Toronto favorite, illustrator Nicholas Di Genova (currently being exhibited at Galerie Dukan Hourdequin, Paris, but often found here in Toronto at Magic Pony or Narwhal) has invented this incredible, detailed, pseudo-scientific diagram style of illustration, complete with his own imaginary wunderkammer of composite creatures and seemingly obessive compulsive sets of flora and fauna - which has to be seen to be understood. He's quite prolific, so you should expect to spend some time at his site. Consider 'Angler Tortoise', 'Chluthu Toad' and '211 Herbivores' below, but do visit his site for a better look!

Euphoria

2011-11-09T09:56:00.007-05:00

I found this inspiring. I am a fan of murals and graffiti. Who doesn't love variations on the theme of the matryoshka, or Russian nesting doll? Or braids and rainbows? Mostly, the film makes this collaboration between Supakitch and Koralie, working on their installation Euphorie for the Metroplastique boutique exhibit in Paris, seems natural, organic and spontaneous. (via HonestlyWTF and fubiz)

SUPAKITCH & KORALIE "Euphorie" Paris from Raphaël Hache on Vimeo.

Or, for that matter, I do love calligraphy, Japanese art, anthropomorphic animals and paper boats too (from CULTURE MUSEUM // GÖTEGORG+).

Olympic Art

2011-11-07T14:45:00.005-05:00

The BBC News website has a article on and collection of photos of the 12 posters commissioned for the 2012 London Olympics and Paralympics. I could not help but share one by Bridget Riley, because it reminded me of the magpie&whiskeyjack banner I created (in 2009), though horizontal, different aspect ratio, more muted and uniform in colour selection. Still, though I'm new to her art, there's a certain coincidental something akin.

"Bridget Riley is celebrated for her optically vibrant paintings. The horizontal lines in Rose Rose (pictured) indicate the direction of the Olympic swimming lanes or athletic tracks. Riley, who began her career using only black and white patterns, started to experiment with colour in 1967, the same year she began painting stripes"

See the rest of the posters here.

Destino: Dalí meets Disney

2011-11-05T15:27:00.003-04:00

Beginning in 1945 Salvador Dalí spent eight months, with Disney story board artist John Hench making storyboards for a short film called Destino but the project was abandoned. Rediscovered in 1999 by Roy E. Disney (nephew to Walt), the film project was completed by director Dominique Monfréy at Disney Studios France, 58 years after it began, by 2003. They were able to encorporate 17 seconds of completed film, and seek advice from Hench and Dalí's widow Gala.

I found the baseball player the most unexpected thing in this intriguing surrealist animated short.

Happy Day of the Dead

2011-11-01T18:39:00.003-04:00

Mound by Allison Schulnik from garaco taco on Vimeo.

This lovely short film by Allison Schulnik, stop-motion, claymation even, is so beautiful and ephemeral, with its dancing skeletons and trembling ghosts. Plus, it feature Scott Walker's 'It's Raining Today' which really sets the tone. The motion of the clay is beautifully choreographed to the music (though she identifies Walker by his birth name, Noel Scott Engel). (via TeenAngster)

Art on Science

2011-10-19T14:13:00.004-04:00

I like to blog about the intersection and cross-breeding of art and science. Today I bring you some beautiful objects which are really more just art on top of scientific ephemera - but they are lovely.

Philadelphia- based multi-media artist Matthew Cox embroiders x-ray photographs. He writes about the contrast between the labour-intensive needle work and the rapid technological image making, the decorative and artisanal versus the x-ray images "devoid of aesthetic intention", the stereotypically feminine art of embroidery versus the stereotypically male technological output.

Laughing Skeleton

Waterproof Watches

Feet

Wading Knees
(via Honestly WTF)

You know I love a wunderkammer and adore scientific collections re-imagined. CoriKindred, one of my Etsy favorites, has done something of such beautiful simplity. She's created rock collections of beautiful minerals, and labelled them whimsically, with unexpected, conceptual names. It's easier to look at than to describe, but it's like she's managed to illustrate things as ephemeral or intangible as anticipation incarnate as a rock, simply by adding typewritten labels.

Legend Rock Collection

Bohemian Rock Collection

Dress-up Rock Collection

Literature as Fashion

2011-10-07T14:23:00.006-04:00

Yes. I would like to dress as a library... or the content of the books.

IQ DRESS by zero + maria cornejo (via The Doree Chronicles)

Brontë Dress by La Casita de Wendy

Heathcliff Coat by La Casita de Wendy (via Bloessem)

MÖBIUS - Federation Square

2011-10-06T15:50:00.004-04:00

Since we're talking about Möbius strips, and specifically adding the time dimension to the concept of a looped strip with a single side, a 2D object embedded in a 3D space (with, of course the 4th dimension of time) I would be loathe to neglect the MÖBIUS - Federation Square project by ENESS which used sculpture and stop-motion animation to extend the concept to 4D.

MÖBIUS from ENESS on Vimeo.

ENESS describes the project thus;

Twenty-one large triangles animated by Melbourne, throughout Federation Square. MÖBIUS is a sculpture that can be configured into many cyclical patterns and behave as though it is eating itself, whilst sinking into the ground. The result is an optical illusion and a time-lapse of people interacting with the sculpture and moving through Melbourne's landmark location throughout the day.

MÖBIUS was animated over two weeks Friday, Saturday & Sunday between the 6th - 20th of May 2011.

The 'making of' video is also inspiring. I love the public participation in art, design and whimsy.

Making of MÖBIUS from ENESS on Vimeo.

infinity elephants

2011-09-28T13:56:00.005-04:00

Something a little different today. Vi Hart has a whole series of videos called 'Doodling in Math Class' which are awesome (which you can find on YouTube). While she disavows having a love for numbers, seeming to favour geometry over algebra, these are wonderfully talky videos with a real love of the beauty of mathematics (over the unloveable way it is too often taught) and drawing.

I confess, I think in a very similar way sometimes. I'm flumoxed by the question, "What are you thinking?", because I'm unconvinced anyone wants to hear this sort of monologue, though I'm charmed hearing hers.

I also love the Möbius Strip Musical Box.

Find more on her website.

headgear in the wild

2011-09-15T12:26:00.004-04:00

Speaking of interesting things on heads, I love the series of illustrations of animals in hats by Lisa Hanawalt featured on the hair pin in honour of New York Fashion Week. Be sure to check out the rest. (via Etsy Tumblr)

The colour blocking morbidity bonnet is the best thing ever. I think she's satirizing fashion with love.

Collectors

2011-09-14T10:37:00.005-04:00

Tiny Showcase brought illustrator Lauren Nassef to my attention this morning. I've been perusing her portforlio (and you should to - you won't be disappointed). The thing which seemed the most magpie-like to share was her collector series. After all, we've had animals, tea sets, and wunderkammers on heads before. This series of illustrations though, is for the specialist collectors:

Duchess, shell collector

Edward Palmer, plant collector

Imelda Marcos, shoe collector

Mr. A.C.D. Pain, mineral and gemstone collector

John Kirk Townsend, bird collector

Andrey Avinoff, butterfly collector

Do look at her site. There is much, much more to see.

Automata

2011-09-12T14:44:00.008-04:00

This tiny automaton, presented by German watchmaker, Peter Kintzing to Marie Antoinette in 1784, is central to the Châteu de Verseille's current exhibit of science and curiosities at the Court of Verseille. Hidden beneath her dress is the complex mechanism which allows for her naturalistic movements and musical playing of the dulcimer. The queen immediately presented her delightful toy to the Académie des Sciences, because she recognized this engineering triumph, a marriage of art and science of course, as something which should be commemorated.
(via TeenAngster)

It reminded me of the karakuri ningyo, the 200 year old Japanese mechanical dolls, which I saw at the Canadian Museum of Civilization's "Japan: Tradition. Innovation." exhibit. The exhibit traced contemporary Japanese robots and society's fascination with robots back to the tradition of building these automata. The images show a plan from 'Karakuri Zuii' ('Karakuri - An Illustrated Anthology') published in 1796 and Chahakobi Ningyo (Tea Serving Doll) by SHOBEI Tamaya IX (via karakuri.info).

Also, having recently read Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon I can't help but be reminded of Vaucason's mechanical (and digesting) duck. Given a choice I would rather an automaton which did something pleasant, like play music, or useful, like bring me tea, rather than eat and poop, but it is quite amazing to consider the range of movements and achievements of these proto-robots, more than two centuries ago. So much so, that in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) was able to hoodwink even educated court audiences with the Mechanical Turk, a chess-playing automaton hoax. (To build a chess-playing machine (which not only could move pieces appropriately, but beat highly-skilled human opponents) did take a couple more centuries, because playing chess involves much more than movements, it requires some artificial intelligence.) Vaucanson's more obviously useful output includes the first automated loom - employing punch-cards, foreshadowing 20^th century methods for inputting data to computers.

There are also tales of ancient and medieval automata. The Book of Ingenious Devices published in 850 by the three Persian brothers known as the Banu Musa (Ahmad, Muhammad and Hasan bin Musa ibn Shakir) working at the House of Wisdom (Bayt al-Hikma) in Baghdad, Iraq, under the Abbasid Caliphate, includes many machines and automata, including a mechanical flute player described as the first programmable device.

Hair

2011-08-26T09:39:00.006-04:00

Illustrations of hair seem to be everywhere lately (actually, for a couple of years now). Perhaps it's another Victorian allusion, what with their hair ornaments, jewellery and other (possibly morbid) memorials?

Ghost of a Tether, Gala Bent, 2010

The Transmogrification Stunt, Gala Bent, 2009

Unicorn, Gala Bent, 2009

Star Wars, a hair portrait by Mr Bingo

Guns n Roses Hair Portrait by Mr Bingo

The Mighty Boosh Hair Portrait by Mr Bingo

Entire inside, Title of the project: Everything is connected, pencil drawing, size A1 (840mm*600mm) by Eika Dopludo

Into the nature, Title of the project:
Everything is connected, pencil drawing, size A1 (840mm*600mm) by Eika Dopludo

hair meditation © Eika. pencil drawing, size: 200см*150см

Presendential hair portraits by Christina Christoforou (who published a whole book called 'Whose Hair?')

Sister by Langdon Graves

Side by Langdon Graves

Heir by Langdon Graves

Bear Arms (2011) pencil crayon on paper
14 x 11 in. by Winnie Truong

Glamour and Abscess (2010)pencil crayon on paper 36″ x 48″ by Winnie Truong

Hard To Win Over (2011)pencil crayon on paper 48″ x 72″ by Winnie Truong

Jeweller Melanie Bilenkar ups the ante by actually using hair as a medium for illustration in her work. (I could do a whole other post on sculpture employing hair as well). She writes, “The Victorians kept lockets of hair and miniature portraits painted with ground hair and pigment to secure the memory of a lost love. In much the same way, I secure my memories through photographic images rendered in lines of my own hair, the physical remnants.”

Solitaire, Brooch (2009)
3 1/4”" x 2" x 1/2"
8 x 5.1 x 1.2 cm
Materials: Gold, ebony, resin, pigment, hair
by Melanie Bilenker

all by Melanie Bilenkar (via The Jealous Curator)

Wonderwebs

2011-08-15T18:21:00.005-04:00

Shane Waltener, who lives and works in London, has an extensive portfolio here. I think cross-breeding lace doilies with cobwebs is more than granny-chic meets natural history; it is genius. He cites both cobwebs and dreamcatchers when describing some of these needlework and crochet fantasies.

Auntie Peggy Has Departed 2003, mercerised cotton, audio equipment, 2 part looped soundtrack. Aldwych Tube Station, the Strand, London.

Showroom Doily 2004, knicker elastic, 350 x 350 x 300cm. Disused shoe factory, King's Cross, London.

A World Wide Web 2007 - shirring elastic, 25 sq. meters. Museum of Arts and Design, New York.

The 26,000 2003, nylon thread, 300 x 300cm. St Mary’s Churchyard, Museum of Garden History, London.

Chihuly Doily 1&2 2004, knicker elastic, each 270 x 350cm. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

I love that something so beautiful (though perhaps ephemeral) can be created in the medium of "knicker elastic".

(via The Jealous Curator)

The human-working-in-the-spiderweb-medium reminded me of the 'uninvited collaborations' mended spiderwebs of California and Finland based artist Nina Katchadourian. She searched for broken spider webs and repaired the damage as much as posible with (starched or glued) red thread. Day and day, the spiders rejected her repairs, leaving piles of red thread under their own re-repaired webs. She displayed her photographs of the webs with her repairs alongside the later rejected patches.

Mended Spiderweb #14 (Spoon Patch)
Cibachrome, 20 x 30 inches, 1998

Mended Spiderweb #8 (Fish Patch)
Cibachrome, 20 x 20 inches, 1998

Marketing Tips for Spiders
Cibachrome, 30 x 20 inches, 1998

See also suspended spiderwebs and feathers, Working with insects (& other animals) and collecting wunderkammer.

Cartographic Music

2011-08-10T21:14:00.005-04:00

A three-dimensional city plan as rotating cylindrical pianola drum in Akko Goldenbeld's 'Stadsmuziek' turns map into music. Building height maps unto note intensity with this scale model of Eindhoven, Netherlands, where model buildings strike hammers which hit piano keys. You can 'hear' the urban plan, the density, distribution and size of buildings make unmelodic, but fascinating music.

(via le territoire des sens)

Historia Naturae

2011-08-07T17:37:00.004-04:00

Speaking of musical, natural history-themed multimedia, I have to share the somewhat crazed, sliced and diced, musical wunderkammer of the 1967 short film Historia Naturae by Czech animator Jan Švankmajer (via form is void).

Biophilia

2011-08-04T11:14:00.004-04:00

Well, this is garunteed to me my thing: science, technology, nature, art, music, multimedia and Björk. I am, in fact, amazed I did not know sooner, but blame that on actually being offshore when Björk's new Biophilia app was released (thanks to bioephemera for the link). This is an innovative way of releasing music, taking avantage of tablet (iPhone, iPad) technology and the opportunities for interactive audiovisual apps. Though I've been a fan of Björk since her Debut album, and confess both her music and her subject matter are likely to hook me, and further, that I have the sneaking suspicion that Sir David Attenborough could read the phone book in a voice which would still be mesmorizing, full of awe and wonder, but I think she deserves kudos for this project, and for cultural innovation.

Thus far the Cosmogony and Crystalline apps are available. Cosmogony contains an interactive stylized galaxy, like the animation in the video above, which the user can navigate to each of the other songs/apps and can use to play with (almost remix) samples of Björk's music by moving fingers on the touch-screen. The intro above, the song animated as a stylized geometrical score, the actual score and the lyrics are included. The song itself is structured to mimic astronomical cycles and the lyrics allude to origine myths and modern cosmology.

The video (directed by Michael Gondry) above gives you a hint of Crystalline. The app allows users to create their own 'crystals' and associated music. This hits on the crystals in comtemporary art and illustration trend, as well as the harkening back to the Victorian wunkerammer though the "nature, music, technology" formulation feels very modern. Describing humans as the link between the microscopic and the universal, she ties all her science-inspired songs/apps together (ranging from microscopic scales of the virus, through the planetary with moon, mutual core and solstice, and the galactic dark matter to universal cosmogony). Unlike the Victorian approach to natural history, and obsessive collecting of wunderkammer, which was fueled by nostalgia and a morbid fear of death, this project is permeated with wonder and optimism about the future, and the opportunities for technological advancement to lead to a more harmonious relationship with nature. The earth scientist in me can't wait to see what she comes up with for mutual core, which alludes to the structure of the Earth and plate tectonics. The artistic and musical interpretations of the subject matter are (thus far) more metaphorical than literal, but what I've seen is both engaging (mesmerizing, even) and surprisingly educational. I love the way the user is invited to participate, manipulating and creating more music. This is a very refreshing way of viewing fans as participants at minimum and possibly even collaborators rather than mere consumers. I love also the understanding that scientific explanations of the beauty we see around us makes these things more wonderful, not less.

mapping emotions

2011-07-31T17:49:00.004-04:00

Graphic designer Orlagh O'Brien surveyed 250 men and women (strangers, with varying mastery of English, from 35 countries, from age 6 to 75) to map how and where emotions are felt in a variety of ways, and produced a series of composite images. The images above were gathered by asking, "Q2: How do you feel these emotions in your body? Draw anything you wish."

These answers were solicited with the question, "Q3: Where do you feel these emotions in your body? Draw one spot only". She also breaks down results by emotion. This is joy, as mapped by colour ("Q4: What colours do you associate with these emotions? Refer to numbered colour chart,") and direction ("Q5: Do your emotions have direction? If yes, draw arrows,").

.

O'Brien writes, "Over time, this method may be developed into a therapeutic tool, and/or a means of visually representing feeling in an interactive, participatory manner."

More at Emotionally vague via curiosity counts.

Collecting Wunderkammer

2011-07-25T21:13:00.007-04:00

As someone who collects information, images and ideas about cabinets of curiosity, I had seen Boston artist Rosamond Purcell's marvellous recreation, with some artistic licence of 17th centuary Danish physian Olaus Wormius (or Ole Worm)'s wunderkammer, as depicted in text and engravings in the catalog of his Museum Wormianum.

Via Thombeau's new form is void blog, I found this great photo essay from Slate about Purcell's work. Many of her other projects have shared the wunderkammer's purpose of archiving the ephemeral, while straddling the art-science interface. She's documented specimens from natural history museums, collections of naturalists, but likewise human-made decaying artifacts and collections of all sorts.

Rosamond Purcell, The Uncurated Jar. From Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors, 1992. Courtesy Rosamond Purcell.

Rosamond Purcell, Teeth Pulled by Peter the Great. From Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors, 1992.

Apparently, Peter the Great was not only an avid keeper of his own wunderkammer, but a "self-proclaimed dentist".

Rosamond Purcell, Cleared and Stained Bat in Glycerine. From Illuminations: A Bestiary, with Stephen Jay Gould, 1986.

She's also created artifacts of her own. Like artists previously profiled, who collaborate with insects (including Hubert Duprat's work with caddis fly larvae, Hilary Berseth's work with bees and Aganetha Dyck's work with bees), she used termites (maintained by a biologist collaborator) to eat the pages of anatomical and architectural texts which then formed the basis of collage pieces.

Rosamond Purcell, With the Modern. From Bookworm, 2006.

These investigations of the worlds of the collectors, the collections, their idiosyncracies, the lost and forgotten, the decaying, and of course, of books and book arts, appeal to me on many levels. I must find more.

more like our fathers

2011-06-30T12:20:00.005-04:00

In time for Canada Day, tomorrow, I bring you cross-stitched hockey heros by Canadian artist Mike Macri, (via The Jealous Curator).

Bernie Parent

Gump Worsley

Jacques Plante

Tony Esposito

When I was small I thought it was Tony and Phil S. Posito, but that really doesn't make much sense does it? Did I think their parents were dedicated to naming sons with middle names which begin with S?

Exploring the Void

2011-05-30T12:57:00.004-04:00

Local Toronto-based, Japanese-born illustrator Yuta Onoda, has some beautiful illustrations in his portfolio. He plays with proportion, animals as symbols and has a sense of space, or emptiness in his work, which I find appealing. His colour palette is restrained and lovely.

The Mask She Wears. Mixed media and digital.

Hope Leaves. Mixed media and digital.

Exploring the Void. Mixed media and digital.

Shadowed by Coyotes. Mixed media and digital.

The Tiger Mom. Mixed media and digital.

Check out his portfolio here and blog here.

Haeckelesque & Codex

2011-05-19T16:07:00.001-04:00

Several people (i.e. this is a what) have recently posted the wonderous illustrations of Katie Scott, but how could I resist? They remind me of course of botonical and zoological illustrations of Ernst Haeckel, with a modern, magical twist.

Ernst Haekel(February 16, 1834 – August 9, 1919), the famed German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist, whose book "Art Forms in Nature" filled with lovely 19th century scientific illustrations of biology has inspired many of my prints. I've had Haeckel on the brain even more than usual, having completed his portrait this week. So here we have the man himself, surrounded by several of the creatures he depicted. Clockwise from the top we have: rugosa, a foraminifer (or foram), a tubularid hydroid, homo sapiens (Ernst Haeckel), a dinoflagellate, and a sea slug or nudibranch.

Katie Scott's familiar, yet imaginary creatures, also remind me of my favorite book which I've never seen in person*: the Codex Seraphanius, by written and illustrated by Italian architect Luigi Serafini from 1976 to 1978. It's a visual encyclopedia, of a foreign, paradoxical yet familiar, world, complete with its own language and obscure meanings.

There's much more to this publication than I've shown, so do yourself a favour and check out this list where it has been digitized in its surreal entirety! It has been compared to the Voynich Manuscript, a medieval manuscript in an undeciphered script (looks like a combination of roman characters and numbers) with illustrations of a seemingly scientific nature (botanical, astronomical or astrological, pharmaceutical) which has confused cryptologists and medievalists for decades.

*Hint to friends and loved ones: I need this book. Any edition is fine by me!

Sculpting Data and Painting Time Series

2011-05-11T14:26:00.000-04:00

Nathalie Miebach employs real data - astronomical, ecological and meteorological - which she 'translates' into woven sculpture. She uses basket weaving to provide a grid for plotting data! She writes, "By staying true to the numbers, these woven pieces tread an uneasy divide between functioning both as sculptures in space as well as instruments that could be used in the actual environment from which the data originates." She's fascinated by scientific informatics and the role of aesthetics as well as the respective domains of art and science. She's also translated data into musical scores and collaborated with musicians. Some of her work involves her own data gathering.

Consider the following. (All text in italics is by Miebach).

Changing Water - Gulf of Maine
mixed media, data
(proto-type for a 20 foot long wall installation), 20’x10’ x 1’, 2011

This semi-kinetic piece looks at the interaction between meteorological conditions and marine environments in the Gulf of Maine.

Hurricane Noel
Ink, data
11”x17”, 2010

Using meteorological information from two weather stations (Hyannis, MA and Natashquan, Quebec) and one off shore buoy (George’s Bank), this score translates barometric, wind and temperature readings to try to discern the path Hurricane Noel took as it entered the Gulf of Maine during Nov 3-5, 2007. So far this score has been interpreted by “Butter”, a musical band from Provincetown, MA, and the Axis Ensemble, a new music group formed by composition graduate student from Tufts University.

“Changing Waters” looks at the meteorological and oceanic interactions within the Gulf of Maine. Using data from NOAA and GOMOSS buoys within the Gulf of Maine, as well as weather stations along the coast, I am translating data that explores the seasonal variations of marine life by looking at the interactions of atmospheric and marine data. Elements of the rich New England fishing history are also included. This large-scale installation consists of a large wall installation (33 feet wide) that plots information through the geographic anchors of a map of the Gulf of Maine, as well as a series of large, hanging structures (10 feet high) that look at more specific biological, chemical or geophysical relationships between marine ecosystems and weather patterns.

On display at the Fuller Craft Museum, Jan 15 – Sept 25, 2011. (www.fullercraft.org)

Antarctic Tidal Rhythms
Reed, wood, styrofoam, data, 8’ x 6’ x 3’, 2006

Using a base of 24 hours, this piece converts various layers of data (Jan-Dec 2005) related to the gravitational influence of both Sun and Moon on the Antarctic environment. The inner structure converts sunrise/set and moonrise/set data into the woven structure, with every weave representing one hour. Additional data translated include tide readings moon phases, solar noon readings and the molecular structure of ice.

Warm Winter
Reed, wood, data, 6’x 5’x6’, 2007

Using a base of 24 hours, this piece converts locally collected data (at Herring Cove) , with data from regional buoys (source: Gulf of Maine Observation System) and historical data (source: www.wunderground.com, NOAA and U.S. Naval Observatory). Data converted includes temperature (air, water, soil), wind speed and direction, tides and moon phases. The time frame translated is Dec 2006 – January 2007.

I've seen other artists who employ scientific data as a starting point for their art. But we can contrast what Miebach does with say, the paintings of Jonathan Zawada (below) in that she preserves the spatiotemporal relations of - and hence, if you know the mapping, the information encoded in - the data by literally 'plotting' in her basketwoven grid on on a musical score, rather than merely employing it as an aesthetic inspiration. (Toril Johannessen on the other hand, simply - and beautifully - plots data, just as any scientist would, but perhaps with a more panache, and allows the carefully selected time series speak for themselves). Further Miebach, by gathering her own data, combining it with public data sources and observing how for instance temperatures are affecting local flora and fauna, she is much more intimately tied the science, and her work is more informed by observation. I am tickled by the times series selected by Zawada and find his paintings pleasing, but I am awed by what Miebach does. I've quoted her directly so as to appear reasonable and avoid writing something uncouth like, "OMG this is the most amazing thing evar!"

Jonathan Zawada modelled 2D time series (somewhat regretably referred to "graph data" but that's really unlikely to annoy anyone unless, like me, they spend a lot of time doing time series analysis, so all non-scientists should simply ignore this digression) into 3D landscapes which he then painted in oil on canvas. Each canvas was presented behind a plinth with a mirror on which the original time series is printed.

Earth Movers, Oil on linen 39.37 x 75.59 inches 100 x 192 cm

photo showing Populations, Oil on linen 37.01 x 78.74 inches 94 x 200 cm

Flight 77, Oil on linen 59.06 x 46.06 inches149.9 x 117 cm (altitude versus time data)

nature and its elements to depict the reality of dreams

2011-04-26T14:22:00.003-04:00

magpie & whiskeyjack have previously featured the art of wearing an animal on one's head and the art of wearing a full wunderkammer on one's head, but via but it does float we find that Albín Brunovský (1935-1997) made full microcosms, forests, seas and legends worn on the head which pre-date and perhaps outdo all of the above.

lbín Brunovský / Albin Brunovsky
Lady Godiva - Dáma v klobouku VI. / Lady in the Hat VI.
lept, suchá jehla, mezzotinta
etching, dry-point, mezzotint
1981, 11.5 x 16 cm,
opus 490

You must agree, that's some hat.

Albín Brunovský was a Slovak painter, printmaker, graphic artist, illustrator and professor. He designed banknotes for Czechoslovakia and is considered one of the greatest Slovak painters of the 20th century. You can find more of his art here or in the Journey Around My Skull archives.

Machine Music

2011-04-14T10:13:00.005-04:00

Mix your analogue with your digital. See what can be done with vintage (low) technology and a microcontroller:

Sewing Machine Orchestra from Martin Messier on Vimeo.

Montreal-based composer, performer and video artist Martin Messier makes music with 8 (amplified) sewing machines. Samuel St-Aubin has interfaced them to the microcontroller so that the machines themselves control sound parameters like volume through the wheels. The machines can be remotely controlled through the computer interface too. Messier cites the evocative power of employing the vintage sewing machines. I think the silhouettes of the machines themselves add to the performance. (via Etsys Deutscher Blog)

Messier also milks bits of clocks for all their musical worth:

L'HORLOGER from Martin Messier on Vimeo.

And, inspired by the early twentieth century Italian futurist idea that "noise" be part of a musical composition, he made variations on Luigi Russolo's mysterious box the 'intonarumori'. His mechanisms are open and visible, rather than hidden. Both the 'intonarumori' and clocks are played in this performance:

LA CHAMBRE DES MACHINES from Martin Messier on Vimeo.

Juxtaposition & Craftivism

2011-04-11T19:35:00.010-04:00

german panther, 2007, Luftballon/Luft/Kleber (balloon/air/glou), 960 x370 x 300cm

A balloon tank by German-based Dutch artist Hans Hemmert (via Adapt)

Pink M.24 Chaffee
A tank wrapped in pink

Danish artist Marianne Jorgensen stitched together a pink cozy, knit and crocheted in a collection of three thousand 15 cm x 15 cm squares for a WWII tank as a protest against the involvement of Denmark (UK and US) in the war in Iraq, by volunteers in Europe and the US in 2006.

Barb Hunt
antipersonnel, 1998 and ongoing
approximately 50 knitted sculptures
Collection of the artist
©2001 Barb Hunt

Canadian artist Barb Hunt knit replicas of antipersonnel land mines in various shades of pink wool, inspired by protests againts land mines. While Marianne Jorgensen cites how knitting and pinkness allude to coziness and home, the antipathy of war, Barb Hunt relates knitting to caring for the body, bandages and hand-knit socks for soldiers abroad and thus to caring, recooperating and protection.

Barb Hunt
antipersonnel - detail landscape

I find Hunt's collection very moving; to ponder the sheer inventiveness of human evil in creating such an array of civilian-killing devices along with the irony of justaposition with the cuddly medium and feminine* pink colour.

The wikipedia entry for Craftivism includes instructions for knitting your own "purse grenade" from Political protest turns to the radical art of knitting by Charlotte Higgins published by The Guardian, Monday 31 January 2005.

*At least according to current colour-biases.

The Oddballs, the Endangered, the Invasive & the Poodles

2011-04-05T16:53:00.005-04:00

Jenny Pope's website J Pop Studios is a full zoo of exotic (and not so exotic) animal specimens in (colour reduction) woodblock print form. She tackles several topics in contemporary science, from flukes of evolotionary biology, to climate change, ocean acidification, pollution, extinction of the megafauna of Australia, invasive species as well as kitties & poodles.

She has a series investigating the effect of islands on evolution: 'Isolation Produces Oddballs' including the wonderously named, If Pygmy Elephants Climbed Trees (image size 13” x 17”)

which answers the question how did the 200 pound monitor lizard, the Komodo Dragon get so large? Apparently they were discovered on Flores, along with pygmy elephant bones - and sadly for them, the pachyderms are not known for tree climbing ability. She tackles 'Global Warming Band-aids' in her print 'Ocean Sequestration' (image size 19” x 23.75”) about the perils of simply trying to sequester CO₂ in the deep ocean, and the consequent ocean acidification.

Colleagues of mine are working on the more sophisticated (but as of yet unproven on a large scale) possibility of sequestering CO₂ in icelike 'clathrate' cage of hydrogen-bonded water molecules, known as CO₂ hydrate - below the seafloor, rather than in the deep sea. So, this print reasonates with me as both a marine scientist and a printmaker.

Her South of North---The Lapping Territories of Bears (image size 32” x 24”) is about the strange fate of bears in far north, where the changing climate has lead to the discovery of the hybrid 'pizzly' (polar bear/grizzly cross).

Plane and a crane (image size 15” x 11.5”) in her 'Endangered Animals' series not only highlights the whooping crane, but also "Operation Migration," which uses ultralight planes to teach and re-introduce the migration which was lost when a certain population was destroyed, by having the birds imprint on the plane.

The invasive starlings are a problem where I live, as in many places in North America. They were introduced by Eugene Schieffelin who wanted to release all of the birds mentioned in William Shakespere’s plays. Sometimes romantic ideas and biodiversity are a bad mix. A Starling Guide to Night (image size 19” x 23.75”) is part of her 'Invasive Species' series.

Do yourself a favour and check out her large portfolio. I love the dynamic style and colour pallette of her prints, which combine the whimsy of children's illustration with serious, well-articulated subject matter. Her fascination with ecology, biology and obvious enthusiasm for science in general is infectious. I do love the medium of woodblock prints, and prints created at the art-science interface are likely to delight me, but I'm also very impressed with the background and information she provides with each print. You could learn a lot simply by reading about her subject matter. Despite her dismay at the way we treat our environment, she has a sense of the ridiculous - highlighting the absurdity of using of rubber ducks, turtles, frogs and beavers spilled from a container ship in 1992 to trace currents - or their imagined interaction with real marine animals, or some of our misconceptions about birds, from recent history. This makes her portfolio wonderful to explore, though the topics remain may be dire.

You should also check out her blog and her jpopstudios etsy shop - which also includes etchings.

Cat in a Box

2011-03-19T19:06:00.010-04:00

Surprise Content (1909)
Sal Meijer

'Just Fit' by Natsuo Ikegmai

"White Cat" (1919) by M.C. Escher

Allison Cole (via we say meow)

'Cat in a Box' by Carol Justin

'Sharing a bos' by Nicole Wong

Visualizing Hairballs & Beauty in Excess

2011-03-13T18:37:00.005-04:00

I'm sorry to have neglected this blog of late. I've been busy with a number of things, so I thought I'd bring you a metaphorical miscellany of things which have been occupying my mind. One of the things that has been taking my time has been working on visualization of scientific data. The intersection of art and scienc being close to my heart, I attended a workshop with scientists, graphic designers, journalists and other communicators, and as such have been thinking about new ways of visualizing both for understanding and for explaing results. Complex networks of data are known as 'hairballs' (for, I think, obvious reasons). There are a number of oper-source packages for dealing with plotting and representing such monsters. Many of these programs are Python-based. As a result, I've been trying to teach myself some Python. I found this data visualization of the history of the code I'm trying to learn so I can make more exciting and effective visualizations an ironic thing to stumble upon. It's also quite pretty with all the overlapping, translucent layers:

code_swarm - Python from Michael Ogawa on Vimeo.

(via bioephemera)

Check out similar visualizations at code swarm "an experiment in organic software visualization."

Speaking of layers of overlapping, translucent layers, I found this "Photo Opportunities" project by Swiss artist Corinne Vionnet quite beautiful. She found and combined hundreds of perhaps cliché tourist photos of famous locations and layered them to create something impressionistic and beautiful:

Swiss-based architect and programmer Michael Hansmey employs algrithms as design tools. In 'Subdivision: Ornamented Columns' he used iterative subdivision as a means of creating elaborately ornamented columns with millions of facets, beginning with an ideal Doric column. The layers are laser-cut from 1mm sheet to create these 2.7 m glorious columns. Read about his process here. I just imagine what Gaudí would do with such technology at his disposal.

(I saw this in a couple of places - most recently via Thersic.)

Background as Foreground

2011-02-09T13:49:00.008-05:00

Here are a couple of artists who have taken recognizable, historic textiles (or whole textile forms), reinterpreted them, while playing with what is the background and what is the message.

Coral Silverman produced a whole series based on the well-known medieval Unicorn Tapestries - her 'Unicorn Travesties' to look at our disreguard for nature, comsumption, litering and disposable culture. To the left is her The Unicorn in Captivity,
gouache on paper (14" x 20") 2007 which you can compare with The Unicorn in Captivity, ca. 1495–1505, South Netherlandish, wool warp, wool, silk, silver, and gilt wefts; 12 ft. 1 in. x 8 ft. 3 in. (368 x 252 cm), property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1937 (37.80.5).

"In my Unicorn Travesties series I seek to explore the disregard we currently hold for the environment in the context of historical European iconography. Taking the medieval Unicorn Tapestries as my source, I have re-imagined their scenes as set within the modern world. Visually, I am very interested in the flat floral patterning that makes up the backgrounds of some of the tapestries. In many of my pieces I extract floral elements from their “mille fleur” backgrounds, subtly inserting within the works various pieces of urban refuse, such as cigarette butts, soda cans, smashed televisions, etc. I am using it as an ironic metaphor for the American way of life— a comment on our consumption, our disposable way of living, and ultimately our implication in the destruction of the environment."

American Spirit Blue
gouache on paper (9" x 9"), 2008

Flora Pink I
gouache on paper (14" x 20") 2007

Flora Black I
gouache on paper (14" x 20") 2007

The Met site includes other tapestries in the series, a discussion of the symbolism in the flora (the medieval viewer would be able to read these signs as easily as we can see that carving on a tree, a chain link fence, litter and the cultural appropriation inherent in American Spirit are all critiques of our culture), and the making of the tapestries. Both it, and Coral Silverman's site are worth a visit.

{via Cabinet of Curiosities, including the Silverman quotation}

Beth Katleman has taken that ubiquitous, 18th century, monochromatic French textile, Toile de Jouy, both fabric and wallpaper, and reimagined it in full, three-dimensional, kitchy yet creepy present day ceramics.

Folly, (detail), 2010
Porcelain, wire, steel rods and heat-shrink tubing
69 x 96 x 11 inches

"Three-dimensional porcelain 'wallpaper' hovers just off the turquoise wall, as part of a site specific installation at the Jane Hartsook Gallery. The overall installation is 192 x 108 x 11 inches."

Folly, (detail, elf, snail, Sacre Couer), 2010
Porcelain, wire, heat-shrink tubing
15 x 10 x 9 inches

Folly, (detail, flower girl on rock), 2010
Porcelain, wire, heat-shrink tubing
17 x 11 x 7 inches

"Babies scale a rocky precipice with varying degrees of success. A flower girl communes with a nimble lamb."

Folly, (detail, lost duck), 2010
Porcelain, wire, heat-shrink tubing
16 x 16 x 11 inches

"A toothless boy struggles to keep his pants up, a bridesmaid enjoys the view of the Arc de Triomphe from a bridge, reindeer graze and a hapless duckling tumbles off a waterfall."

While you visit Katleman's site, be sure to look at her other work, called "doll-sized rococo theaters of murder and domestic mayhem," by the New York Times. I mean, who could resist?

{via Apartment Therapy}

Animated Science of the Deep

2011-01-27T13:45:00.004-05:00

Earlier this week was the 50th anniversary of the first manned dive to the deepest point on Earth: the Marianas Trench, south of Japan, near Guam, along the edge of the Philipine Basin. Wired magazine posted this wonderful, animated documentary. They credit the interview to Victor Ozols, and video to Roman Wolter. Featuring the audio recording of an interview with Jacques Piccard, who made the dive, the stylish animation never sacrifices science substance for aesthetics. Information is clearly and elegantly portrayed in illustrations, sufficiently schematic to be easily absorbed, yet really lovely and engaging. If all science museum exhibits were this good, I'd never escape the museum.

Also, I am reminded once again how much I want to go to the seafloor. I was once on a research cruise aboard the R/V Atlantis and got to see ALVIN, but sadly, no dives were included during that trip.

(cross-posted to my other blog)

straight lines

2011-01-21T15:57:00.006-05:00

I recently returned from Vancouver Island, where I previously lived for three years. January was the toughest month for me, when I lived there. Not only was it possible to get rain for 40 days straight, the frequent, thick fog made me claustrophobic. In fact, I often feared I would get lost, walking home in the dark and the fog, for about 500 m along a road. Once I did 'get lost'. I mean, I knew I had left work walking in a straight line, and I knew I was not yet home, but I had no clue where I was. I knew sooner or later I would fall in the ditch.

This delightful animation recounts how my fears were justified. We people have no clue how to go in a straight line in the absence of reference points!

A Mystery: Why Can't We Walk Straight? from NPR on Vimeo.

(via swissmiss)

The rest of the year was generally extraordinarily lovely, with perfect weather from February, when the crocuses bloomed, through September, when the rain started.

less terrifying than Krampus

2010-12-24T13:11:00.001-05:00

A hilarious tale of Christmas horror by Ryan Iverson, inspired by Warner Herzog. {via bioephemera, via iO9}.

The Snow Queen

2010-12-23T16:54:00.010-05:00

illustration by Miss Clara for La Reine des glaces Hans Christian Andersen, ed. Gautier-Languereau

Andersen, Hans Christian. Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales. Milo Winter, illustrator. Valdemar Paulsen, translator. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company, [c1916].

The Snow Queen by Debra McFarlane
The Pink Fairy Book
etching with aquatint
190mmx140mm

Art direction by Marcel Wanders and photography by Nicole Marnati. (via)

Illustration by Edmund Dulac for The Snow Queen By Hans Christian Andersen

You can read an annotated version of the Snow Queen Fairytale on Sur La Lune Fairytales. I watched Black Swan recently, which made me wonder about why the Snow Queen is depicted with geese (not swans?). Perhaps it was the deceptive mirrors which reminded me of the Snow Queen. I was thinking about her connection to the White Queen in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The White Queen, who has a wintry realm (as the Snow Queen), also drives a sleigh and kidnaps a boy. In the Narnia books, she is later revealed as a descendant of Adam's first wife Lilith, made from earth like him, rather than a rib. Lilith claimed to be his equal and refused to submit to him. She appears in Jewish mythology. Her history is messy (from ancient Sumeria, through the Pre-Rafealites, wiccans, to modern feminist theory), debated and beyond my ken. Some claim her to be a daimon, succubus, a night spirit, screech owl or a conversely subverted mother goddess. C.S. Lewis' Lilith is half-djinn half-giantess. Like Lilith, the White Queen is the first to rebel, which makes for a particularly interesting, if loaded villain.

A young girl must travel to Svalbard (like The Snow Queen's Spitsbergen) to rescue a kidnapped boy, as in The Snow Queen, in The Golden Compass (or Northern Lights) by Philip Pullman. Incidentally, Pullman was no fan of the Narnia books. He lambastes him for sexism, racism, manipulative use of Christian imagery and rejection of sexuality (particularly in women like Susan, the adolescent who wants to grow up, but this ties clearly to Lilith as well). I read the entire Chronicles of Narnia seven times before the age of 12, and while I did think Lewis a good story teller - in fact, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was what first inspired me to read in English - as I grew older I did think that some of Lewis' ideas and theology insidiously seeped into my subconscious while I was unaware. The idea of not allowing a young woman to mature, or to embrace her sexuality, brings us full circle back to Black Swan. I wonder if I would have been a different sort of young person had I read His Dark Materials, rather than The Chronicles of Narnia.

One of the things that does attract me to The Snow Queen, is that for once, a little girl rescues a little boy.

Girl with Owl

2010-12-10T14:44:00.004-05:00

Michael Shapcott
The Girl and the Owl
24” x 30”
Graphite / Acrylic / Oil on Canvas

Lauren Carney
Entangled
Artliner Pen and Watercolour on 300gsm Watercolour Card

Audrey Kawasaki
Owakare
Oil on canvas 30x22
'Ephemera' @ Nucleus Gallery
2007
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Dilka Bear
New Moon

Dilka Bear
Emily and the Owl

Glass Wunderkammer

2010-12-09T18:31:00.004-05:00

Danish artist Steffen Dam works wonders in glass to create masterful, luminuous art, like glass wunderkammer (or cabinets of curiousity). His subject matter are precisely what every wunderkammer collector would want: botanicals, bottled marine creatures including jellyfish, fossils, egg specimens, though these specimens have been gathered from within his own mind, inspired but not dictated by natural history. This creative area where art meets science is where I want to live. They make me wish I knew how to work in glass.

Biological Panel, blue. 2009.

The secret life of plants. 2006.

SMALL BOX 2. 2010.
glass/wood/lighting fixture
12 X 12 X 9 in. (30.48 X 30.48 X 22.86 cm)

12 JARS. 2009.
glass/wood
14 3/4 X 41 X 9 3/4 inches

Marine Group. Commision for The Museum of Art and Design. New York, NY, USA.

FOSSIL PANEL. 2009.
glass/metal
19 X 35 X 8 in. (48.26 X 88.9 X 20.32 cm)

EGG BLOCK. 2010.
glass
8 1/2 X 14 X 1 1/2 in. (21.59 X 35.56 X 3.81 cm)

Find more wonderous things at his site or at theHeller Gallery {via Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosities}

the book problem

2010-11-25T14:36:00.002-05:00

This one is just true.

Comic by Grant Snider via drawn.

Wanderlust & Colour Shards

2010-11-16T17:25:00.000-05:00

Yes, the crystalline shapes in bold colours are still definitely in. Can't go wrong with forest creatures, like foxes and owls, or fungi. Little houses go over well. We've seen these elements before, but there's something magic in LA artist Linda Kim's work. Check it out.

Wanderlust, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16"

The Fountain, acrylic on canvas, 8 x 8"

Sleepy Town, gouache on rives bfk, 22 x 16.5"

In search of, drawing

November 11

2010-11-11T10:05:00.002-05:00

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies grow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-John McCrae, 1919

Masquerade

2010-10-29T13:16:00.005-04:00

Albany-based photographer and professor Phyllis Galembo is fascinated with masks and costumes. She has spent twenty years documenting rituals and religious in Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti as well as Hallowe'en costumes at home. Thinking about Hallowe'en today, I'll share some of her photos of other sorts of 'ritual adornment'. Why is it that almost all people, have masks and costumes, and that these have ritual and meaning? Are we scared of things which go bump in the night, or do we want a turn playing their role, assuming their power?

Phyllis Galembo, OtogheToghe, Aromgba Village, Nigeria, 2005, Ilfochrome, 50 x 50 inches

Phyllis Galembo, Ekpodo masquerade dance, Christmas dance, Alok Village, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004

Phyllis Galembo, Baby Dance of Etikpe, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004

Phyllis Galembo, Zambia, 2007

Phyllis Galembo, Zambia, 2007

Phyllis Galembo, Zambia, 2007

Phyllis Galembo, Zambia, 2007

Phyllis Galembo, Akata Dance Masqueraders, Ogoja, Nigeria, 2004, Ilfochrome, 30 x 30 inches

Phyllis Galembo, Gelede Masquerade, Agonli-Houegbo Village, Benin, 2006, Ilfochrome, 30 x 30 inches

Phyllis Galembo, Masquerade from Gossina Village, Burkina Faso, 2006, Ilfochrome, 30 x 30 inches

Her portfolios are extensive. Do yourself a favour and go peruse them (via Le Divan Fumoir Bohémien).

German photographer Thorsten Brinkmann sort of does the converse. Rather than travelling the world, documenting the ritual adornment of its multifarious cultures, he takes photos of himself, adorned ritually in everyday objects - to much the same effect.

Thorsten Brinkmann, „Reginald von Eckhelm“, 2010 © Thorsten Brinkmann,

Thorsten Brinkmann: "Venus del Whitespitz", 2008. C-Print, Edition 5 + 2 AP, 125 x 170 cm

Thorsten Brinkmann: "Inuk N unavut", 2006. C-Print, Edition 3 + 2 A, 115 x 154 cm

Thorsten Brinkmann: "Conde du Mütz", 2008. C-Print, Edition 5 + 2 AP 83 x 62 cm

Thorsten Brinkmann: "Karl Schrank von Gaul", 2008. C-Print, Edition 5 + 2 AP, 170 x 120 cm

(via TeenAngster)

My own interest in masks is celebrated today, in the spirit of Hallowe'en, by the latest in the rikrak studio's The Collectors series

Heads or Tails?

2010-10-28T18:10:00.005-04:00

In time for Hallowe'en, I thought I'd bring you some illustrated mask-wearing personages, and dismembered body parts. Vancouver-based artist and illustrator Andrew Pommier draws and paints men who are ready for the worst. The may be wearing masks, or animal heads, dealing with ferocious pandas, or turning into trees, or be slouching through life carrying skulls.

"Hanging with the Gang" oil on wood 20" x 14" 2008

"Ready for the Worst" acrylic and graphite on wood 24" x 36" 2007

"Coming Upon a Scene of Carnage" acrylic and graphite on wood 20" x 24" 2008

"Fan Boy" oil on wood 20" x 24" December 2008

"Souvenirs from the Voyage" acrylic and graphite on wood 20" x 24" 2008

"Dinosaur Head" watercolour, ink, and graphite on paper 8.5" x 11" 2007

"Rabbit Head" watercolour, ink, and graphite on paper 8.5" x 11" 2006

Riding the Dodo and the Folk-Singing Wolf

2010-10-25T17:30:00.006-04:00

Check out the illustrations of Melburn Australia's Genna Campton. She plays with scale, includes animals, fashion illustration, a hint of surreality and references Bob Dylan - what's not to love?

dodo races (2009)

chincilla (2009)

rooster greenstripes (2009)

peacock (2009)

wolf dylan (2009)

Find her site, blog and etsy shop at these links.

(via frankie magazine)

Astronomical Fashion

2010-10-12T19:40:00.012-04:00

If you can't get your astronomy fix from the NASA image archives, wear it on your sleeve, or corps, or legs... Is it just me, or has fashion gone cosmic?

Consider moon-prints at Risto:

2011 Spring New York Fashion Week: Risto (via fashionologie via I'M REVOLTING)

A simple Baggu Constellation bag (more my budget):

(via Creature Comforts)

A giant dwarf Starlet Crown:

via whorange

Nebulae and stars on Christopher Kane resort ware:

(via Tavi at Style Rookie, who also has a whole post about nebula Risto shorts)

heads in trees

2010-09-30T17:29:00.005-04:00

Check out the painting, illustration, screenprinting, graffiti, sculpture and street art of Polish artist Wojciech Kołacz, also known as Otecki. I love the sense I get that he has his own personal, elaborate folklore.

Tea Party Run Amok

2010-09-27T11:34:00.005-04:00

Justin Richel
Fountain
2009
Gouache on paper
17 in. x 19.5 in.

Julie Morstad
Gluttony

Justin Richel's illustration of a pile of chairs, with tea pouring reminded me of Julie Morstad, who also has done illustrations of piles of household items and tea paraphenalia. It seems to me that both are trends in contemporary illustration. For more images which make me think of a tea party run amok (and a treat), check out Richel's Whirling Dervish installation.

minouette
T is for turtle in a teatree
Artist Trading Card, 2 ½ X 3 ½ inches (63 mm X 89 mm), acryllic ink on water colour paper

Plotting Stories

2010-08-12T16:31:00.003-04:00

I feel these whimsical yet truthful plots by Kurt Vonnegut speak for themselves, but you should go read the article too. {via swissmiss}

Fonts in the Wild

2010-08-06T11:42:00.002-04:00

Old Tom Foolery Typestasche poster via whorange.

Periods in different fonts by Fiona Banner at The Multiple Store via I'M REVOLTING.

imaging food

2010-07-20T12:45:00.005-04:00

Check out Inside insides and the awe-inspiring gallery of magnetic resonance imaging of food!

The geometry alone is amazing. Look at the bisected equilateral triangle at the heart of the cucumber:

Or the spirals in a watermelon, beyond the neatly trisected centre:

Or the fractal structure of the broccoli:

Death Star Fashion

2010-07-09T17:23:00.006-04:00

Illustrator John Woo (not that John Woo, the other one) has Star Wars villains as fashion plates. Amazingly, the despised Jar-Jar* has some style. He's made the prints available through wooszoo, his etsy shop

*He took a franchise for which I had nothing but joyous nostalgia and made me cringe. Defintely a villain.

{Surprisingly, this is via The Globe And Mail}

Happy Canada Day! Hinterland Who's Who Edition

2010-07-01T18:13:00.017-04:00

From me, and a few of my favorite Canadian creators, with some of my favorite Canadian creatures:

inkyspider

besideherself

Rudolf Kurz

WhiteRavenArts

Evelyne Bouchard

ploverwing (Amie Roman)

LynnM

Geneviève Jodouin

minouette

Stats, Lines and Stars

2010-06-28T16:35:00.006-04:00

I came across Norwegian artist Toril Johannessen via I'M REVOLTING. She's made some interesting pieces in Words and Years by simply making elegant plots (even Tufte would approve) of the yearly occurances of certain words in certain journals, such as 'Crisis' in nature and Science:

or as 'Miracles' in nature and Science:

which we can contrast with 'Logic" and 'Love" in Art

or 'Hope" and 'Reality' in Politcal Science

I love the simplicity of these pieces. These are real data and really say something, but, like in science (and other scholarship) itself, the interpretation of the data is left to the viewer. There is both insight and humour in the data she chooses to present.

She's previously tackled science and that inspiring place where art and science intersect. In Transcendental Physics she imagined the intersection of German astrophysicist Johann Zöllner (1834-1882), who studied optical illusions, and the Canadian/US visual artist Agnes Martin (1912-2004), an abstract expressionist who employed lines and grids. Zöllner discovered that parallel lines appear like they will intersect if cross-hatched with shorter lines at an angle - this is known as Zöllner's illusion as shown to the left. She drew her imagined Agnes Martin interpretation of this effect:

Zöllner's illusion and Agnes Martin's lines
Color pencil drawing (diptych). 46 x 101 cm.
Detail.

The Scale of The Universe The Past 100 Years.
Drawing. Pencil on paper. 29,7 x 42 cm.

In 2009, she tackled a topic I've also depicted, in Variable Stars. She points out that at the beginning of the 20th century our estimated scale for the Universe increased radically, and she describes how the project of mapping and photographing the entire sky at the Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, MA, employed cheap yet conveniently accurate female labour, with all the work done by 'The Havard Computers'. These women were literally treated as automatons and had no status as scientific staff. Nonetheless, as several 'Computers' were outstanding astronomers, they also developped theories about the immense dataset they painstakingly gathered. Henrietta Swan Levitt (shown in my lino block print portrait at left) made a discovery which forever changed our understanding of the scale of the Universe, allowed Hubble's later insight about the age and expansion of the universe and gave us 'Standard Candles' as a metre-stick for the Universe at large. She found a correlation between brightness and period of a particular type of variable stars, the Cepheid Variable stars. I tackled this subject by printing a portrait of Swan Leavitt with how luminosity varies with time and the constellations around and including Cepheus, where she made her discovery. Johannessen travelled to the Harvard College Observatory and dug through the archives, selecting plates showing any stars which would be visible from her location in Norway. She made copies of the photographs, she cut out the cepheid or RR Lyrae star (those used as 'Standard Candles') and them as seeds for growing crystals of alum, a substance that is used as a component in photographic paper. Her installation also included the plot above, photographs and the telescopes below.

Variable Stars
Installation view. Photographs, crystals on table, drawings, telescopes. Oslo Kunstforening, January 2009.

Her work also alludes to geology, orienteering, engineering and technology. It's fascinating. Go check out her portfolio! I really enjoy the artwork and her sophisticated understanding of science, the propagation and dissemination of scientific ideas, and the interplay between science and society.

promise & uncertainty of science

2010-06-16T13:19:00.006-04:00

A Pictorial Guide to the correlation between emotions and cloud formations

Shannon May is an illustrator living in Baltimore, MD. She writes that she is "fascinated by the promise and aesthetics of science and loves exploring, being uncomfortable, books, clouds, and geometry." Her intersection of art and science is up my alley. In fact, her portrait of Heisenberg reminds me of my own approach to portraits of scientists: combining their face with their work. At first I thought this was not that literal, that the dots were merely molecules. But, if you look closely, you can see that she is specifically trying to illustrate the nature of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (no mean feet). One formulation,

Δx Δp ≥ ħ/2

appears at the bottom. This inequality means that the product of the uncertainty in the position of ANYTHING and the uncertainty in its momentum is greater or equal to a half h-bar (Planck's constant divided by 2π, or ħ=h/2π). This means we can never know the position and momentum (mass times velocity, or basically, the motion) of ANYTHING with absolute precision. It turns out that Planck's constant is very small, so this limit on the knowability of both location and motion is largely irrelevant to everyday life of things we can see (people, trees, planets, cars, mice, or even bacteria). But, in the quantum world of the very small, this limit has profound implications. The only way we can 'see' the very small, for instance, an electron (we'll call him Bob), involves hitting Bob with at least a single quantum of light (a photon). But if you hit Bob with a photon he'll go off running in all directions, since the photon will transfer some momentum to Bob - so, we might know exactly where Bob was, when he was hit with the photon, but we don't know his momentum at all. Conversely, we could measure Bob's collision with another particle or photon and know his momentum but we could no longer know where he was. Also we can know both position and momentum, but only with a certain fuzziness or lack of precision (dictated precisely by the inequality above). Thus, we can precisely describe behaviours of groups of small things in a statistical way, but it is inherently impossible to precisely predict the behaviour of individual quanta like Bob.

I think in this illusration, Shannon May is trying to show this with her filled and hollow circles, to denote positions (filled) and posible positions (hollow) of particles and their interactions shown by little red arrows.

Other illustrations like A Pictorial Guide to the correlation between emotions and cloud formations seem both humourous metaphor, with a wink and a tip of the hat to the science of cloud physics. Some are straightforward wonder at astronomy.

illustration for Italo Calvino's 'Cosmicomics'

Lunar Park, personal work

Illustration for article Contrarian Investor Sees Economic Crash in China

Music for Airports, illustration for article about the history of rock music

I love how that last one combines the sound waveform and airplane steam trail.

You can find her site, her blog and an etsy shop for craftier endeavours and check out the rest of her work.

{via both design sponge and the shallow end}

Kind of Blue Boards

2010-06-14T15:19:00.002-04:00

To comemorate one of the great albums of the 20th century, Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary, Western Edition issued the Miles '59 Quintet series of skateboards:

(Yoshiaki Toeda, Paul Chambers, 7.5" x 31.23", Nikhil Thayer, Bill Evans, 7.63" x 31.5", John Igei, Miles Davis, 7.63" x 31.5", Jovontae Turner, John Coltrane, 7.75" x 31.5", Brad Johnson Jimmy Cobb, 8" x 32")

By the way, if you don't own Kind of Blue, go get it.

{via altruism in the morning.}

Wind, Tea and Faraway Places

2010-06-08T13:17:00.003-04:00

Anna Emilia Laitinen is an illustrator from in Leppävirta, a small town in Finland. Her work is full of nature, movement, contemplation and magic. You should check out her portfolio. I appreciate how she comments on each of her pieces.

Parlor, 2009, 22 x 20 cm.
"A tiger with two different eye colors reads in his parlor. An album illustration for Lars Ludvig Löfgren."

Brewing Tea, 2009, 36 x 34 cm.
"Making tea is a delicate process. It needs warmth, fresh water and the right timing. Today it is jasmine tea."

Spring Is Coming, 2009, 25 x 18 cm.
Ink on paper. "Spring comes always like it was first hiding somewhere."

Wolves Carry A Village, 2008, 27 x 58 cm.
"The landscape is changing at every wolve´s [sic] step. A poster illustration for Holmes."

There are some themes I've remarked upon in other contemporary illustration; nature, nostalgia, quilts, birch trees, wolves, tigers, villages and magic. She reminds me of Julie Morstad, but has her own unique style. I am particularly taken with the empty spaces, which seem to allow the view an entry to place the scenes in their own imagination.

{via creature comforts}

Girls in Gas Masks

2010-06-07T18:30:00.004-04:00

Synchronicity? I'm not sure... but I couldn't help noticing that today I saw this photograph recently posted by Marieaunet:

and this 4" x 6" hand-pulled hand-colored linocut print by Mark Hill (markhillblockprints on etsy, and paperravenart on flickr) recently posted on the Printsy blog:

Both of them remind me of a painting I bought, Flora, from Just Mad Book Shop on etsy:

Just Mad Book Shop has a lot of girls in gas masks, in fact.

(If you are looking for ceramic men and bunnies wearing gas masks recall this recent magpie & whiskeyjack past).

Laser Kitty

2010-06-06T16:03:00.003-04:00

This is a photo of my one and only cat Minouette doing her best laser-kitty cat stare. Behind her right shoulder you can see a cat-shaped lamp my friend, The Properous Fox made for me. Clearly artist Steve Bishop had similar ideas in mind when he created the awesome Staring Cats light. (via Thersic)

Mischievious Critters

2010-05-03T17:01:00.006-04:00

Check out the illustrations of South African-born, Berlin-based illustrator, the Mischief Champion Katrin Hagen.

Illustration by Mischief Champion

Interesiting artist portfolio tidbit: she includes "embed code" for her illustrations (which I've used). It's one way to try to make sure that your art spreads yet remains labelled with your name. I think it's clever.

Follow any of the links to her portfolio: lots of inter-special love affairs, ironic animals and strange advice. {via I'M REVOLTING}

The Anachronism

2010-04-23T18:19:00.005-04:00

The Anachronism (Full Film) from Anachronism Pictures on Vimeo.

The entire, award-winning, steampunk short film The Anachronism by Matthew Gordon Long has been released on vimeo. It has intrepid Victorian, amateur-biologist children, printmaking specimens and discovering a ship-wrecked robotic squid submarine, which are pretty much a list of my favorite things, in a setting I recognized instantly as Canada's west coast, my former home. What little I caught of the Japanese was disconcerting. The story telling is perfect, right down to the things left untold.

From the film's website

On a sun dappled summer day a science expedition propels two children toward an enigmatic encounter at the edge of their known world. Arriving on an isolated beach, they stumble upon the shipwreck of a robotic squid submarine. The secret it holds within changes their lives forever.

The Anachronism is a Steampunk science-fiction short set in the late nineteenth century. Unfolding with the simplicity of a children's storybook, this lush journey through the landscapes of Canada's West Coast draws inspiration from a whimsical juxtaposition of Pacific Rim cultural references to elaborate an elegant meditation on the courage of curiosity and the haunting effect of childhood trauma. In 2009 the film won six Leo Awards including Best Short Drama.

(via bioephemera)

Nature & Un-nature

2010-04-14T11:50:00.003-04:00

Photographer Jason DeMarte has combined natural history museum dioramas with polkadots and pills, unapetizing food with objects and animals, fabric patterns with nature. Sometimes the elements are combined in one image or in forms common in art history: diptych and triptychs. The contrasts hint at commentary about commodities and nature and how we take nature and make the unnatural. Follow the link to peruse his large portfolio. {via The Jealous Curator}

Sheepish Intimation
2007, 60 x 23

Suspended Splendor
2008, 34x23

Fresh Frozen
2009, 23 x 34

Glazed
2008, 50 x 23

Beauty and Mathematics

2010-04-05T16:10:00.007-04:00

Mathematician and photographer Nikki Gaziano is a sort of natural historian or archivist of mathematical functions found in the wild. Check out her Found Functions. Mathematicians know that any shape can be expressed as the sum of sinusoids, accourding to Fourier analysis but some functions are just below the surface, requiring no more than the eye to see them. Such simplicity and beauty!

Ah! It's our old friend, the Gaussian distribution in the sky. This function is in a family with the Normal distribution (commonly known as the bell curve) and useful for thinking about standard deviation.

Now, this, to a physicist accustomed to time series analysis is a Bartlett window. See, if you need to break something into a summed series of sinusoids, it is important to break it into equal bits (windows of data) and taper the ends. So, you multiply the bits by something which is low at either end and high in the middle. This is one of those tools in my signal processing toolbox.

This is a hyperbolic paraboloid, or a saddle surface, something like z=x²−y². It has negative Gaussian curvature, which is a fancy way of saying that if you draw a triangle on a saddle the sum of the angles will be less than 180^o (the sum of the angles if the triangle is drawn on a flat sheet of paper). Physicists know that gravitation is geometry and have to think about this sort of mathematical creature when considering general relativity because mass deforms the curvature of spacetime itself.

This function isn't in my mathematical zoo. I don't know its purpose, though I can see how it works. Pretty, isn't it? The fact that I think of functions in terms of "purpose" as opposed to "beauty" distinguishes me as a physicist, rather than a mathematician. But, I really appreciate seeing these Found Functions.

{via today and tomorrow}

Robot Animals

2010-03-30T17:43:00.007-04:00

Andrew Chase, Cheetah, (electrical conduit, auto transmission parts, 20-gauge steel and random parts found in an industrial salvage yard, weighs 50 lbs. The cheetah measures 24" high (61cm) and 50" nose to tail (127cm))

I am tempted to make no comment, and leave the robot cheetah running - it is a statement in and of itself. I don't believe the cheetah sculpture really runs, but it is fully articulated and this is a clever use of stop-motion. It is made by Andrew Chase, a "self-employed commercial photographer, furniture maker, welder as well as a highly talented assemblage artist" who likes to make robot animals with bits of cars and plumbing. I think this quixotic activity is genius.

The elephant weighs about 110 lb and took about 100 hours to build. It is made out of auto transmission parts, electrical conduit, plumbing pipe and 20 gauge cold rolled steel. All the joints move and lock in place. Turning a gear on the elephant's side winds a cable around a shaft which raises and lowers the fully articulated trunk. The ears also move back and forth and and fan out.

Giraffe (transmission parts, electrical conduit, plumbing pipe, and sheet steel. A removable crank raises and lowers its neck. 6 ft high)

Apparently, these will be part of a book called the Trionic Morphatractable Engineer.

{via bioephemera and io9}

Two Great Things...

2010-03-22T15:16:00.003-04:00

which go great together.

I'm loving Kate McCagg's The Shallow End dress & a gig poster series! Dresses and printmaking - yes. {via PRINTERESTING}

dress & gig poster

dress & gig poster

dress & gig poster

dress & gig poster

dress & gig poster

There's more where these came from.

Meanwhile, Apartment Therapy has paired Lady Gaga outfits with interior design of rooms and Oh Joy! has an entire series called 'this & that', often pairing fashion with decor or other covetable items.

Ceramic Stream-of-Conciousness

2010-03-16T19:33:00.007-04:00

This post is about contemporary ceramic art. We have flowered heads, experimental, rococo and occasionally lit anatomy, and gas masks as recurring themes. Honestly.

Peruvian-born sculptor Emil Alzamora works in NY state. On his site you'll find sculptures in other media as well. I love the play between the traditional motifs or methods and the contemporary subjects. Embonpoint in particular reminds me of Julie Moon (who we'll get to). See more in his portfolio.

Mother & Child 5 ceramic 18" x 20" x 12", 2009

Embonpoint ceramic 9" x 7.5" x 7.5" 2007

Toxiconomist ceramic 11"x8"x5", 2008

The gas-mask leads us to American artist Kate MacDowell, whose rococo sculptures with elements from anatomy and natural (or unnatural?) history, combined in unexpected and surreal ways, like this mama bunny in a gas mask:

First and Last Breadth

Solastalgia

According to wikipedia, Solastalgia is a neologism coined by the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003 with the first article published on this concept in 2005. It describes a form of psychic or existential distress caused by environmental change, such as mining or climate change.

Venus

I also enjoy the multi-media, light coming from the (ceramic) heart (with exra venus flytraps) in Venus. Follow the link to her portfolio.

Local Toronto artist Julie Moon (now also re-located to NY) is one of my favorites. I have not one, but two brooches she created and met her once at one of the MADE shows at the Gladstone. One of the brooches is an antomically correct white ceramic heart with a floral pattern, like the one illustrated; I love the contrast of the internal organ with the feminine flowers, like those you might expect on fine china. A colleague once said he thought it was pretty but actually it's gross. I think he's wrong, and it's beautiful, but that tension between dainty and blattant is part of the appeal.

She also has the mixed-media, including ceramics with lights, the surreal anatomy and flowered heads like those we see above. Check out her extensive portfolio.

wunderkammer hat

2010-03-05T17:09:00.004-05:00

Over a year ago magpie & whiskeyjack commented on the animal-as-headgear trend. Where do you go from there? What's next after wearing animals as hats? Well, you need contemporary-psychedelic fungi-jellyfish-sea anemone ladybugs-cabinets of curiousity on your head. I'm telling you, expect it on the catwalks next.

Check out the portfolio of Chinese artists Zhou Fan.

{via but it does float}

Black & White & Colour All Over

2010-03-02T12:26:00.005-05:00

Today, I'm seeing mixed media art combining (mostly) black and white photography (or printmaking) with the ubiquitous bright splashes of multicoloured geometrics. As the Prosperous Fox might say, "Hey, check it check it."

Sofie Kern is a British illustrator and designer. Her blog is here. {via Cabinet of Curiosities}

Jesse Draxler is an artist / illustrator working out of the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

"But Besides Barely Breathing Beneath" // 16" x 22.5"

"LTTL_SPCH" // For ELLE Korea's Special Edition Cover Series // 11.25" x 16"

11.25" x 15.25"

Hollie Chastain is a Chattanooga based artist. She has an etsy shop called Dr Kennedy Jones.

Adalyn's Party Trick 4

Her work encorporates a lot of woodland creatures, ephemera and has a real magical feel.
{both via The Jealous Curator}

Beasts

2010-02-18T17:11:00.009-05:00

I recently read Lisa Jardine's Ingenious Pursuits, which details, amongst other things, the 17th century so-called scientific revolution, the gathering of many a collection (botanical, zoological, veritable cabinets of curiosity), and the early traveller-adventurer-biologist/artist. There was a time when this sort of science looked like art and art looked like science. To properly do descriptive science one really needed to be an artist.

Not only was Robert Hooke a brilliant engineer/experimentalist in physics, astronomy, chemistry and microscopy, he had training in draughtmanship. This helped him communicate his science and explains the impact of Micrograpia. While he travelled the world only in his imagination, many of his contemporaries of a more zoological bent, travelled the world quite literally. Some gathered all and sundry indiscriminately. Others produced invaluable scientific data, in the form of their illustrated bestiaries. These document ecology, zoology and anatomy, and provide a fascinating glimpse at the early dissemination of scientific information. The European colonists continued to sail the world in search of commercial gain, and with them went many an artist who saw that illustrating exotica was a means of making a living. Collecting prints was cheaper and more practical than gathering cabinets of curiosity, but both practices thrived well into the Victorian age. In The Artificial Kingdom: A Treasury Of The Kitsch Experience, Celeste Olalquiaga traces this tendancy to gather beastiaries and wunderkammer to a morbid fear of death.

So contemporary artist Walton Ford's images which employ the media of the 17th and 18th century naturalists, in which to make some more provocative statements, with violence, subjugation, suicide and other nasty human habits, ever-so-slightly below the surface, might be heightening tensions already implicit in his sources of visual inspiration. The societal critiques implicit in this art, seem to me to be true of the society which created the original natural histories, as it is of contemporary society.

To modern eyes, calling a chimp a "Monster" and chaining him by the neck is barbaric. But we know all to well, this is something we have a history of doing to our fellow humans.

The dying words of the Parakeet might evoke The Death of General Wolfe (at least, for Canadians), and yet instead of making me see the humanity in the parakeet, it makes me see the absurdity and the animal in us.

I found Ford's work via News From the Craft + Style Blogosphere {via Trends In Detail} today. I also noticed you can purchase his book, Pancha Tantra via Antropologie.

style, calligraphy and humour

2010-02-17T14:16:00.003-05:00

Check out the cheeky portfolio of calligrapher Alison Carmichael {via Oh Joy!}.

adieu, magpie

2010-02-11T17:56:00.003-05:00

R.I.P. Alexander McQueen, previously featured here.
Magpie&Whiskeyjack is saddened to read of the loss of this orignal, a creative genius.

starlight

2010-02-08T17:11:00.004-05:00

sonic youth - 4 color screen print - 25"x13" - july 2009

Check out the portfolio of Massachusetts printmaker Dan McCarthy!

guiding light - 4 color screen print - 24"x16" - january 2010

helms/dino in the woods - 2 color screen print 26x10

{via Printeresting}

Contemporary Victoriana

2010-01-24T20:36:00.008-05:00

Raquel Aparicio, personal work

I notice the Victorian era seems to be a common inspiration in illustration of late. High collars and Daguerreotypes abound. You see in with the bright colours and ubiquitous, geometric, crystalline shapes or anthropomorphism or other trope which gives a new, contemporary and perhaps surreal spin.

Shary Boyle
2005. Porcelain, china paint. 20cm tall. Collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

Check out the portofolio of French illustrator Nancy Peña:

Nancy Peña Deux illustrations à l'encre de chine (two illustrations in china ink)

Nancy Peña 'Le Sofa' illustration à l'encre de chine

Nancy Peña 'Le motif dans le tapis' Illustration autour de l'album Tea party, à partir d'un motif de Verneuil

Historic figures are ubiquitous, and often blue-faced in the work of self-trained California artist Mike Maxwell.

Mike Maxwell Ellis Island Blues, 2007

Mike Maxwell Pressures of a Nation, 2008

Mike Maxwell Oh, These Chance Encounters, 2009

Blogosphere favorite Lisa Congdon is another self-trained California artist. You should check out the other sections of her portfolio too. It's filled with wildlife, text and multimedia.

Lisa Congdon Rose

Lisa Congdon Randolph

Lisa Congdon Levi

Interesting figures appear in the illustration work of the previously featured German artist Olaf Hajek.

Olaf Hajek Folklore Old Flowers

Olaf Hajek Editorial for Osterraets

Olaf Hajek Chopin

My motivation for depicting Victorians is the history of science, and the golden age of exploration.

minouette, Louis Pasteur, lino block print on kozo, 2008

minouette, Ada, Contess Lovelace, lino block print on kozo paper, 2009

minouette, Darwin on Galapagos, lino block print on gampi paper, 2009

Hooves

2010-01-14T17:39:00.003-05:00

Check our German artist/designer Iris Schieferstein's portfolio. The hoof shoes and Gun Hoofs are only the beginning. {via design-milk.}

suspended spiderwebs and feathers

2010-01-13T13:13:00.007-05:00

Compare and contrast:

Dream Catch Me
acrylic, gouache and vinyl on canvas
198 x 198 cm

Dream Catch Me 2
acrylic and pen on canvas
170 x 150 cm

By Kirra Jamison. Check out her owls, foxes, and other good things. {She's been bouncing around the web recently - no pun intended - but I think I first saw her in the Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosities}

Meanwhile, Victoria over at sfgirlbybay had a guest post by Kelly of Halcyon Days (and y. a. studios) which features the above lamp (and its vintage showgirl inspiration). If we follow the link to Halcyon Days, we find some more webs-with-feather light fixtures, by Dutch artist Jennifer Tee {via all the mountains}:

Falling Feathers
Complex Interiors, Trance-lucent Concrete

She's also got suspended crystals and birds in South of the Border (an allusion to Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun.

Of these, only Kirra Jamison explicitly cites the Ojibwe dreamcatcher, but that is what these say to me. Interestingly, that leads back to the God's Eye. These things seem to be wandering the collective unconscious.

These illustrations:

are by Yasmine Surovec of a print a day.

There are even dreamcatcher dresses in Ann-Sophie Back's autumn-winter '09 collection, 'Ann-Sofie Back burns in hell' (inspired by American stereotypes and horror flicks).

mapping life: intersection of art & science

2010-01-03T18:08:00.009-05:00

Simon Evans paints and weaves and creates maps, whether that be of a scientific illustration of human anatomy, a town wherein all is whited out, a subway map with names replaced with bizzare connotations, the entirety of his possessions, or an imaginary version of the world. This reminds me of the delightful (illustrated and annotated) novel The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet by Reif Larson (which you should go read immediately, if not sooner). T.S. (Tecumseh Sparrow) is 12, and lives in Divide, MT, and maps everything in his life experience (from the distribution of trash in Chicago, to means of not appearing lonely, to the frequency of arm movements during his father's drinking a glass of whiskey, to the mating dance of beetles). Simon Evans does the same, with artistic license, rather than strict empiricism of the modern-day Humboltian cartography protegy Spivet.

Symptoms of Loneliness, 2009
Pen, paper, scotch tape, correction fluid
28 1/2 X 39 3/8 inches

Home Country, 2008-9
Paper weaving
58 5/8 X 42 1/8 inches

Lemuel Gulliver, 2004-5
Mixed media on paper
30.25 x 44 inches

Different Drugs, 2004
Mixed media on paper
19.75 x 26 inches

The World, 2003
Mixed media on paper
60 x 84 inches

Evans' work, though less abstract, reminds me of natural phenomena paintings of Paterson Ewen. (I came across Evans via but does it float). I wrote more about The Collected Works of T.S. Spivet here. Even the website somehow managed to move me. The novel is a thing of beauty not to be missed!

Carly Waito (one half of Coe and Waito, previously featured in magpie & whiskeyjack's post roccocco jellyfish) has been painting minerals. (I found this out both via dear ada and via sara titanic whose blog includes photos of Carly's process and who has written an article about her studio visit for Now magazine). I've been thinking about depicting minerals for a long time (you know, I am an earth scientist after all, and it is mystifying, though self-evident that crystals and gems are present in the zeitgeist, and they are perfect for the conceptual wunderkammer I am secretly gathering)... but while they make an unwiedly subject for a relief print Waito's delicate, precise, luminous portraits with their perfect imperfections are exactly what is called for. Enjoy!

bornite ~ oil on masonite ~ 7" x 6.5" The common name of this mineral (for obvious reasons) is peacock ore.

Hessonite, Asbestos ~ oil on masonite ~ 6" x 6"

Amethyst 2 ~ oil on masonite ~ 5.5" x 7".

If you are in Toronto, you can see these paintings for yourself at the group show Little Crowns, at Narwhal. (If you aren't, note the dimensions - unlike Evans' maps, these portraits are small).

Scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger is a real-life artist-researcher whose artwork is science in and of itself. Her sensitive, beautiful watercolours of morphologically disturbed insects, including, for instance, those she has gathered in the fallout region surrounding Chernobyl both are portraits in the artistic sense and scientific evidence. She has also gathered and illustrated insects from other regions which may have radioactive contamination. There is something delightfully 19th century about gathering and illustrating specimens of insects, but as we persist in changing our environment, the insects themselves will change in turn, and require such careful descriptive art and science.

Drosophila melanogaster, head and abdomen
Head and abdomen are disturbed.
Watercolor, Zürich 1987 (specimen from Chernobyl)

37 different Ladybird Beetles from Switzerland
Watercolor, 1976 - 1981

Ambush bug near Three Mile Island, USA
Ventral: the left side front foot is damaged; the right side one has a dark spot, as well as Watercolor, New Cumberland / Zürich 1991

Where fields intersect ideas clash, but the clash itself can be fruitful; never discount what fresh eyes can see.

Fox headdress & God's Eye

2009-12-22T18:35:00.007-05:00

Today, I want to talk about two very different artists. They come from Atlantic and Pacific Coasts of the US (Providence and Oakland). They work in different media. Their art has a very different feel. But, they have some subject matter in common, so I thought I play this game of placing them together, as it were.

Providence artist and illustrator, Jen Corace creates works which involve girls, flora and fauna. There is a certain cuteness, and sometimes a certain surreality. Like the magpie above.

Monica Canilao is an Oakland-based artist who works in many media. Her site includes painting, wood burning, mixed media, installations, fibre, books and prints. The mixed media is particularly amazing. This is her take on a song bird, or a fox headdress.

guts, portrait of a gentleman & sewn songbird

Fox-face headpiece coral

This is Corace using quilts and Victoria textiles:

This is Canilao doing the same:

Distance Don't Matter @ Space, Portland, Maine. With Swoon, Conrad Carlson, Ben Wolf, Ryan Doyle, & Greg Henderson

Here is a window installation by Jen Corace, incorporating the ubiquitous childhood craft, the God's Eye:

The same craft appears in this woodburn by Monica Canilao:

burning, burning, buildings

The both make work about the woodlands:

and the threat might be lurking beneath the surface:

I've just scratched the surface with these artists in this peculiar little comparison. Do yourself a favour, and check out their portfolios! Canilao's work in particular benefits from an extreme aspect ratio she can use on her own site.

creativity through complexity

2009-11-30T12:38:00.004-05:00

Lee Jang Sub is a Korean artist who has discovered, "that complexity is not uneasiness and disorder but rich aesthetic possibility and creative energy." In ComplexCity Seoul above, he is comparing the organic, apparently disordered structure of the discernible map of Seoul with the likewise, chaotic, yet harmonious structure of a tree, exposing a hidden order. This seems to me like chaos theory, wherein the complex are often shown to have in fact a surprising amount of order.

This piece from 'ComplexCity Lighting' shows a map of Rome, back-lit through traditional Korean rice paper, called Hanji.

Other projects involve an investigation of colour and pattern. The structure 'Space Titled Love' which he built with his brother Lee Hyo Sub, is intended for children, who are to experience the emotion of love and interact with the sculpture. It involves 10,000 of inter-locking paper dolls. Children were allowed to add and decorate their own any way they wanted to complete the work.

Space Titled Love
- 2007.07.28 ~ 2007.09.09
- 'I-design' for Kids / Kumho Gallery, Seoul, Korea / Invitation
- Paper doll, installation /
- Collaborative work with his brother Lee Hyo Sub

3, three
Personal work
- Poster design (840mm x 1188mm)

I like also like The pattern from daily life which includes:

cabbage mandala
- Personal work
- 2005.9
- Pattern design

His videos of moving colour or kaleidoscopic films of poinsettias are mesmerizing. You can view these on his site. Here is a hint from some stills;

Laneige Colortherapy Project
- 2006.10~2006.11
- client : Laneige
- Collaborative work with Lee Hyo Sub

I'll be home for Christmas
- 2006.12
- 'Red Cube'/ Hangaram design museum, Seoul, Korea / Invitation
- Moving Image, Installation

Leafy Pareidolia

2009-11-23T17:30:00.007-05:00

Since we were just talking about pareidolia, you should check out the delightful wunderkammer of leaves and other tree parts, by children's illustrator Christopher Niemann from the NYT Abstract City Blog. We've got 'seeing things in clouds' and 'seeing the Hawaiian Island chain in other things' - it's a whole theme going.

Balloon Twins

2009-11-19T15:27:00.005-05:00

Not just art and science, let's add some balloons today!
Like superheroes whose power is to create immense, inflated, jellyfish creatures, today I bring you not one, but two sculptors-of-unexpected-media: the balloon.

Jason Hackenwerth lives and works in NYC, creating ephemeral inflated sculptures evocative of botany or biology, or just plain sexuality, their eventual deflation mirroring life's transience too. The wiggling, jiggling, wearable sculptures are pretty hilarious.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, artist Willy Chyr ties his balloon sculptures a little more literally to anatomy, perhaps because he is a physicist by training (or more specifically physicist-economist-circus worker-sculptor). He writes that he is inspired by nature, rather than mimicking it - everything from bioluminescence to consciousness. Consider the comb jelly, installed in the Biological Sciences Learning Center, Chicago, IL, April-May 2009:

His website states:

It was inspired by the ctenophore, or comb jelly - a small marine animal characterized by having eight rows of cilia along its body, which scatter light to create a moving rainbow pattern.

The Comb Jelly consists of over 500 balloons, 81 LEDs, and took over 30 hours to build.

You might recall, magpie & whiskeyjack featured some footage of the bioluminescent comb jelly back in February. Follow the link if you would like to see the natural inspiration for this sculpture.

Or the Hydroida, another jelly:

Neuroplastic Dreams is a bit more poetic, evoking the "neuron forest".

Balluminescence - Lights, Balloons, Jellyfish! engaged the audience in making balloon jellyfish at Science Chicago's Labfest. I love the idea of marrying art and science, balloons and LEDs and involving the public! Now that's amazing job he's invented for himself.

Pareidolia Tamed

2009-11-12T16:44:00.007-05:00

I strive to be a Renaissance woman, to straddle the art:science divide. I have some success in this. For instance, people actually pay me to work as a scientist, and other people pay me to make art. I also, make 'art about science' sometimes. In observing myself, I find that I come to art about science as a scientist - I might employ whimsy, but I respect accuracy. This tendency doesn't stop me from making art about myth. But the way my brain is wired, I don't have any tendency to use science decoratively, or twist it for humour. If there is humour, it is inherent (like the irony in scientists having imaginary friends such as Maxwell's Demon). This is not a judgment, merely an observation. I enjoy art which combines levity with science.

As a scientist, I am trained to be wary of 'apophenia' or the propensity to see patterns where there are none, and specifically 'pareidolia' or seeing images in random stimuli, like seeing a dragon in the clouds. Pareidolia can be very useful as a visual artist. To the scientist it is a hazard, unless it recognized and happens to inspire ideas (as it often does to the artist). I think this training is why, I recognize in Kevin Van Aelst an artist with similar interests to me, but a mind which works quite differently than my own. His photographs show things masquerading as other things, often with a scientific or mathematical bent. (His C.V. says his background is psychology- perhaps this explains the lens through which he views his subjects.)

Consider what appears at first glance to be a pile of laundry, but on closer examination reveals a lesson in anatomy, complete with colours to indicate the nature of the blood (blue, deoxygenated vs. oxygenated red) in cardiovascular circulation:

The Heart, 2009, digital c-print, 40 x 30"

Or the fractal egg (with yolks illustrating the Cantor set), as if he sensed that a yolk was simply the first in a set to be subdivided. A pattern, which is not really there...

Or the more straightforward, map of Hawaii.

Hawaii, 2007, digital C-print, 12 x 18

But to me, this seemingly simple case of pareidolia, seeing a map in a spilled drink, hides a deeper insight. As a geophysicist, I know that the man in the painting behind my shoulder, J. Tuzo Wilson explained that the Hawaiian islands were formed by upwelling molten rock at a fixed hotspot, as the Pacific tectonic plate moved northwest leaving a trail of volcanoes in its wake. Physics tells you inertial frames of reference are equivalent; we could sit on the hotspot for hundreds of million of years (ouch!) and watch the Pacific plate go by, or affix ourselves to the Pacific and watch the volcanoes appear in a line in the opposite direction. Suddenly, the spilled pop seems like a nice metaphor for island chain formation.

Some of his portfolio is just that: metaphors in unexpected media. Like cellular mitosis in doughnuts, complete with sprinkle chromosomes:

Cellular Mitosis (krispy kreme), 2005, series of 6 c-prints, each 16 x 20

Or clouds nomenclature in a coffee cup:

Common Clouds, 2007, Series of 9 digital C-prints and labels, each print: 16 x 20

But metaphor is also both a hazard (because it can lead to inaccuracy) and an invaluable tool (because it can lead to insight) to the scientist. Ultimately, the scientist and the artist share communication as a paramount goal. As such the place where they intersect is an area rife with possibility and creativity - and often humour.