Lichen Love

Lichen is a strange and beautiful life form, or rather a mutualistic relationship between algae or Cyanobacteria and fungi to make a composite organism. They have different shapes, sizes, parts, colours and somehow have properties which differ from those of their component parts. Like plants they photosynthesize, but they have no roots. I recall learning as a child how they were the trailblazers, making their home on the rocks of the Canadian Shield, and allowing a succession of other organisms to grow on top, till we have large trees which appear to grow straight out of the rock, but without lichen it could not be there. When lichen grows on trees it is not a parasite, it just uses plants as a surface on which to grow. They grow in a huge range of environments, even tundra, deserts, mountains and rainforests on virtually any convenient surface. Scientists estimate 6 to 8% of the Earth's land surface is covered by lichen, and yet we can walk right by without giving it a second thought.

Some though, have long admired lichen, especially its extraordinary colour palette and variety of textures and forms. This is a selection of the colour charts based on lichen from the Svensk Lafvarnas Farghistoria by Johan Peter Westring. Printed in 1805-09. Via the Biodiversity Heritage Library archive. 

One of my favourite lichen artists is Dr. Immy Smith (website, Etsy, Patreon). They make a wide variety of artwork, much of it about natural history, or drawing on their background in neuroscience, but clearly they love lichen and have observed it very closely.

'Lichen makes the landscape' - Immy Smith with Herbarium RNG curators

They collaborated on the 'Symbiosis' project as part of the part of the Imagining Science Polymathic Art & Science Collaborative, with fellow member Scott Mantooth and other artists, scientists and the University of Reading Herbarium and EM Lab (Centre for Advanced Microscopy). Other drawings illustrate scanning electron microscope images of lichen. You can read more here.

'Reading campus twig' - Immy Smith with Herbarium RNG curators

UK textile artist Amanda Cobett makes papier maché and machine embroidered sculptures, often fungi and extraordinarily life-like lichen.

Amanda : Moss and Lichen TQ 085 439, 2018, Built up layers of free machine embroidery (Photo credit, Fraser James)

Amanda Cobbett: Moss, bark and Lichen detail TQ 085 44, 2018, Built up layers of free machine embroidery, materials used; paper, silk, thread, dye, backing cloth, (Photo credit, Fraser James)

Artist and researcher Sarah Hearn makes artworks inspired by biology. She has made several lichen-inspired series of artworks. 

Sarah Hearn, Artificial Lichen Colony #8

10" x 15" cut photographs and watercolor, 2015

Sarah Hearn, Artificial Lichen Colony Collage #5

42" x 24" cut photographs, watercolor and graphite, 2016 (private commission)

Sarah Hearn, Artificial Lichen Colony #6

15" x 10" cut photographs and watercolor, 2016

There are whole worlds to contemplate in these extraordinary things if only we stop to look.

paper botanicals

Mary Delany, Crinum Zeylanicum: Asphodil Lilly,
a paper collage, 1778 (via The British Museum)

The lovely and precise paper collage, or as she called them 'mosaicks' depicting various botanical illustrations by Mary Delany were recently brought to people's attention by Molly Peacock's book The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work At 72. She wished her work to ressemble dried flowers, and was so successful that some could be mistaken for actual specimen. Peacock describes a woman who in fact invented an entirely new artistic (or scientific illustration) medium, very late in life. Describing her method in a letter to her niece, dated October 4th, 1772, Delany wrote: “I have invented a new way of imitating flowers”.

Mary Delany, Magnolia Grandiflora (Polyandria Polygynia),
the grand Magnolia. 1776

Delany used hand-tinted tissue paper to create 1700 of these paper cuts, working until the age of 88, when her eyesight failed. She worked with plant specimen, and it is believed she dissected them to better observe their detailed anatomy; her works carefully reproduce petals, stamens, calyx, leaves, veins, stalk and other parts of the plant in hundreds of tiny layered pieces of paper, generally against a black background. She lived in a time where there was a revolution in botanical knowledge, a great passion for gardening, and no photography. The intersection of botany and art played an important role in contemporary descriptive science, and Mrs. Delany became a major botanical artist. (via Things that quicken the heart).

Mary Delany, Pancratium Maritinum (Hexandria Monogynia),
Sea Daffodil. 1778

Mary Delany, Vicia Cracca (Diadelphia Decandria),
Tufted vetch

Mary Delany, Iris Susiana, Chalcedonian. 1781

Anandamayi Arnold is a contemporary San Francisco-based artist who makes paper 'surprise balls', a desceptively simple medium: she wraps trinkets and ephemera in layer upon layer of crepe paper, to build up gorgeous, three-dimensional botanical objects. She calls them 'three dimensional trompe l'oeil'. Aya Brackett has photographed Arnold's work in a way which clearly alludes to Mary Delany's work, against a dark background, showing these objects to be more than paper and toys, but a sort of continuation of the paper botanical illustration tradtion, tracing all the way back to the late 18th century and Delany's pioneering work. Further, she's playing with the ideas of the ephemeral and permanance, since these objects are at least nominally built so that someone could unravel them to find the toys inside.

Anandamayi Arnold, Paper Passion Fruit (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, Paper Pomegranate (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, Kumkuat branch, 2012 (photograph by Aya Brackett)

Anandamayi Arnold, paper botanicals photograph by Aya Brackett

Anandamayi Arnold, paper botanicals photograph by Aya Brackett

Whale Fall

Whale Fall (after life of a whale) from Sharon Shattuck on Vimeo.

Directed by Sharon Shattuck and Flora Lichtman for Sweet Fern Productions.

This beautiful short film (paper puppetry, by the way, not stop-motion) details the after-life of a whale. I don't mean it's about the ghost of a whale; I mean it details quite literally the life supported for decades, by the deceased body of a whale. The choices made in terms of medium (paper) and music, help emphasize the wonder of the ecology, the diversity of life supported, and avoids the sort of bias we may have that the subject matter is somehow gruesome, rather than the most natural thing. I love the idea of paper puppets employed in, essentially, a short of science documentary.

Sharon Shattuck describes herself as a "director-animator and botanist", so it makes sense that she would make art about science. (via Bioephemera)

I am familiar with several of these critters from research cruises where we've employed remotely operated submersibles. The rattails are always the most common thing we see on the seafloor.

If you are interested in the ecological afterlife of animals which fall to the seafloor, you can check out, for instance, the VENUS pig experiment, where a dead pig was placed on the seafloor and monitored with a cabled seafloor observatory, offshore Vancouver Island.

Quilling Anatomy

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)

mapping life: intersection of art & science

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.

Back to School Micro-Trend: Lined Paper

What's a micro-trend, you say? It's a bold prediction of a fad based on two observations. If this were science, it would not pass the peer review; however, there are no editors in the blogosphere, so here goes nothing.

Check out these lovely, nostalgic and fun embroideries by Dash of Magic {via I Adore Style}:



Also, these AshiDashi Notebook and Pencil socks {via swissmiss}:



Some further searching found that the Desing Museum Shop carries tea towels designed to look like lined paper:


Also, more handmade goodies:

woven on a tapestry loom by carson elaine

This is an example of lined paper as, um, lined paper by Think Experimental, but I like it:

{via wrong distance}

You can also find lined paper substituted for napkins, toilette paper, place mats and sugar packs in this ad campaign (but they aren't actual products, though maybe they should be).

I could see it used as a theme for rugs, bedding and clothing.... Have you seen it?