Art + Science Series: Prints of Ruthie Powers

Mail Stops
16×20
Painted Intaglio
©Ruthie Powers

I am pleased to welcome printmaker Ruthie Powers to the biocreativity blog as a continuation of the Art + Science Series. Ruthie will be joining Annell Livingston, Landry McMeans and Laura Moriarty in our GEO_____ show! Ruthie’s current work takes its cues from maps and geography.

[biocreativity] Ruthie, tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

[RP] I am a printmaker who also creates complex surface design with dye on textiles. My art education has been pieced together over time beginning with photography and graphic design classes in the university and community college setting. I also have taken many workshops: art quilting, textile dyeing and surface design. Workshops in the last several years include a week-long Painted Intaglio workshop at Making Art Safely with Lennox Dunbar, four days with Debbie Little Wilson at Hill Country Arts Foundation and many one- and two-day printmaking workshops through Women Printmakers of Austin (Texas). Very recently, I took a 2-day workshop at Southwest School of Art in San Antonio with visiting artist Aimee Lee about hanji, the Korean paper.

[biocreativity] Here on biocreativity, we’re always curious to know, what is it about nature that inspires or excites you?

I love being an artist and am interested in science through nature. I am constantly amazed with ways nature presents beautiful designs and compositions. I enjoy learning and naturally ask “I wonder why…”. So when I am in nature I am constantly observing plants, animals, and the environment around me.

My science and nature learning usually comes when I see something that interests me that I cannot explain or do not understand. Once I planted passion vine, thinking it was so beautiful. Then I noticed the leaves were being destroyed. I was upset until I saw that a butterfly was coming often to the plant. I learned it was the gulf fritillary. More observation let me see the chrysalis, a strangely-beautiful shape hanging from the vine. With more patience, I was able to watch the female gulf fritillary place her honey-colored eggs on the passion vine plant. That was the full cycle, learned over several weeks of observation. Right now (early April in Austin, Texas) I am watching my rue plant which is larval food for the giant swallowtail butterfly or one of it’s close cousins. The caterpillars are all over the rue plant in various stages of growth.

Contour
16×20
Painted Intaglio
©Ruthie Powers

[biocreativity] It’s great to see the ways science and art can lead to questions and then maybe provide some answers, how do you view the interaction of arts and sciences?

 [RP] Both involve creativity, exploration, and observation. It is not unusual to find an artist who is interested in the sciences such as the watercolorist who paints plant life.

[biocreativity] This series seems to be inspired by more than just the outdoors, there are a lot of linear and geographical elements. What inspired you to do this series?

[RP] My current printmaking series, GeoTopo, is inspired by maps and geography both real and imagined. Living in central Texas, I have any opportunities to observe the land—the Texas Hill Country with all it’s shapes—hills, valleys, waterways, and dry creeks.

As a child, I was the navigator on family road trips so I became very familiar with map reading and symbols. I have travelled a lot and enjoy having a map to guide me as I go. I bring the maps back home to add to my collection. I also have enjoyed reading about travel and looking at landscape photos throughout my life.

One serendipitous day about a year ago, I found an Encyclopedia Britannica World Atlas from 1960 that was being thrown into a trash bin. I grabbed it and took it home. I tried doing various art projects with this oversized volume, but nothing seemed to catch my interest until I decided to create GeoTopo, a series of prints based on Map, one of my prints. The atlas then became a great visual resource. I studied it, browsing forward and back, and realized that I could use specific maps as visual models for prints. For example, the Kansas state map shows the even spacing of towns between mail stops from the days when postal service was by stagecoach. This visually translated into the Mail Stops print. I also found maps of airline flights in the atlas. This reminded me of times looking over the maps in the back of airlines magazines. So, the print Flight Paths became part of the GeoTopo series.

Flight Paths
16×20
Painted Intaglio
©Ruthie Powers

[biocreativity] What is the most important thing that you want others to know about your art?

[RP] Printmaking itself is a very tactile and kinesthetic experience. My whole body is involved in the process, from touching the paper, to inking the plate. All my muscles and joints are involved.

I really enjoy the process–the plate making, the adjustments to the plate while proofing, and the printing itself. I enjoy playing with the different colors of ink to see how they combine on the print to make new colors. This is a continuation of the color mixing I learned while dyeing fabric, which I have brought to printmaking on paper.

Flight Paths
16×20
Painted Intaglio
©Ruthie Powers

[biocreativity] Before you go, one last question. What is your advice to young artists and scientists who might be thinking about getting into art-science projects?

[RP] Take a process you enjoy and do it over and over and over. You will get unexpected results. You will find your style.

[biocreativity]Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us! Where can we hope to see you go next?

[RP] I currently have five prints in the BioTopo series. I have at least three more in process, so I will continue with them. I am printing editions of 12 prints for each plate, so that is a lot of intense studio time.

I always have many more ideas for projects than I am able to do. Perhaps I will work with designs inspired by historical insect prints. Maybe I will work with a process I learned in a workshop that I have yet to explore. I am just not sure!

Map
16×20
Painted Intaglio
©Ruthie Powers

 Find Ruthie elsewhere on the internet!

 www.ruthiepowersstudio.com

www.facebook.com/ruthie.powers

www.womenprintmakers.com

 

Art + Science Series: Paintings of Annell Livingston

Fragments #166
30×30″
Gouache on w/c paper
©Annell Livingston

I am pleased to welcome artist Annell Livingston to the biocreativity blog as a continuation of the Art + Science Series. Annell’s work takes its cues from her current home in Taos, New Mexico. Her paintings feature geometric patterns inspired by the tension between urban landscapes and natural environments.

[biocreativity] Welcome to the biocreativity blog Annell! Tell us a little about the kind of art you create.

[AL] I am a painter and have painted in most every medium. Now, I choose gouache, for it’s inherent qualities of saturated pigment and flatness. I love to paint. It is what I do, and have been doing for the last 50 years. Unless I have other responsibilities, I am in the studio.

[biocreativity] What is your educational background?

[AL] In the early 1960’s, I began studying art at the Lowell Collins School of Art, in Houston, Texas, with an emphasis on painting and drawing. Then I studied at the University of Houston, where the late David Hickman was my experimental teacher. And I studied at the Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Art in Houston. I think the way of the artist is a lifetime of study. The artist is always reaching for something, just out of reach, always challenging herself.

Fragments #164
30×30″
Gouache on w/c paper
©Annell Livingston

[biocreativity] As an artist, I agree that it’s a lifetime of study, always learning something new. I find that science can teach us a lot how to explore our world and challenge us. How is your work inspired by science?

[AL] Science can be thought of as knowledge attained through study or practice. And the way of the artist is the same. My work is based on geometry and the observation of the material world, especially light, and color.

In the 1980’s I asked myself the question, “What do I know, and how do I know it?” I lived in the city, I drove to work at the studio each day on the freeway. My studio was downtown in a warehouse, and the sounds that came into the studio were from the cars and trucks on the freeway. All day I stood on concrete. The answer to my question was, “My experience was the city, building with exposed skeletons. If you looked down on the city, you would see it is based on the grid. And we are informed by the light, which is often reflected on manmade materials.” I began observing the light, and keeping notes about it. I allowed the square to be a metaphor for the urban experience.

It was not long, before I moved to Taos, New Mexico. My work did not reflect the rural experience that was Taos. This little Northern New Mexico town was not urban. How do I talk about this experience? The square seemed too much ‘man over nature.’ At last I randomly added the diagonal line, this broke up the grid to allow shapes that allowed me to think of the irregularity of the landscape; rivers, mountains, and canyons. This diagonal line seemed to be the perfect answer, and can been seen in the weavings of the Navajo people. I choose the color from nature, which required careful observation of the world around me. I was speaking in a contemporary voice, but reflecting what I saw in nature.

The artist, Annell Livingston, and her work

[biocreativity] How has this experience lead to your current work?

[AL] My current work, “Fragments, Geometry and Change”, continues the ideas I have been investigating in past work. I break the picture plane into small pieces, metaphors for my experience of life, memory and thought. It seems to me, it is never experienced as a whole, but in bits and pieces. My compositions are based on geometry, which I draw with a ruler. I began with one color randomly selected, then each color selected after is based on simultaneous contrast, which is the use of two colors, painted side by side, that interact with one another and change the visual perception accordingly. This affects the viewer’s sense of the color. Though the shapes are not altered, patterns appear, disappear and change in their appearance.

This is based on the observable phenomenon in nature of changing light and color. An example might be the way the color of the leaves seem to change as the winds moves through the trees.

Fragments #168
30×30″
Gouache on w/c paper
©Annell Livingston

 

[biocreativity] Thanks so much Annell for the interview! If you loved Annell’s work, she will be featured along with three other artists in our latest exhibit, Geo_____! The show will run from April 12 – May 18th, 2014. Opening reception will be held April 12th 7-11PM. 

Art + Science Series: Paintings + Sculpture of Katey Berry Furgason

Three Diatoms, plaster paint + gold leaf © Katey Berry Furgason

I’m pleased to feature the artwork of Katey Berry Furgason on the first of the new Art + Science Series here on the biocreativity blog. I first met Katey when she submitted three paintings from her Portraits of the Microscopic series to Art.Science.Gallery.’s EVOLVE exhibition last spring. Last summer, I had the immense good fortune to visit the studio she in Santa Fe she shares with husband Scot, to learn more about her inspirations and process. To The Heart, a solo exhibition of Katey’s paintings and sculpture, runs February 14 – March 23 at Art.Science.Gallery. in Austin, TX.

[biocreativity] Welcome to the biocreativity blog, Katey! What type of work do you do? 

 [KBF] I believe all life is a series of collaborations.  We are the results; past, present and future, of collaborations in which we find meaning and purpose. This belief structures how I live and how I work. When I am working I am engaged in collaboration with my subject. My subject presents its physical facts to me and I respond. I search for its essence, its core, its heart and its possible transformations.  My role is to discover what my subject was, is and can be.

Inside The Eye, plaster painting + gold leaf © Katey Berry Furgason

[biocreativity] Where do you see yourself on the biocreativity spectrum? 

[KBF] From 16-18 years of age I studied human anatomy, drawing and sculpture at the Art Student’s League in NYC to get some classical training before entering into the BFA program at Hunter College in NYC, which was known to lean heavily towards the conceptual.

At Hunter I studied studio art and philosophy.  Although my schooling was focused in the Arts, being raised by a father who was a chemical engineer, inventor, entreprenuer and lover of experiments (especially on the kitchen table, when he wanted to show me, say, what distillation was) filled me with the wonders of life and beauty of discovery.  My father’s approach to life filled and nourished my childhood, it was founded in his love of what science showed us, in the beauty of all that was known and the wonder of all that was yet to be discovered. Although my formal academic training did not include scientific study, the entirety of my childhood was bathed in it. 

[biocreativity] That sounds like an amazing experience, and I can certainly see how it has inflenced your work. How do you currently view the interaction of arts and sciences? How do you think one informs the other?

[KBF] The idea of Infinite Divisibility, which is the belief that there are infinite parts to every whole is widely held by scientists, philosophers, economists….and by most of us who give it some thought. This idea applied to the notion of Truth gives us this: The Whole of Truth, the entirety of All existent Truth is infinitely divisible = there are infinite parts/pieces/bits/aspects which make up the Whole Truth.

Scientists, artists, philosophers, teachers, parents, etc. (all of us), to some extent, seek to understand some part(s) of Truth in order to make our lives and existence more meaningful. Artists and Scientists make it their life goal to seek part(s) of our Whole Truth with the clear purpose of sharing their discoveries and observations – these bits of Truth – with others, to build upon human understanding and depth of experience.

The artist and the scientist set out on paths of discovery, often not knowing (even if they think they do!) where the path will lead and what will be uncovered. In methodology they may differ (artists do not have to adhere to the scientific method) but in purpose they do not. In purpose they share a goal, an outlook on life, a belief in, love, and importance, of; discovery, wonder, questions, observations and seeking. Seeking bits of Truth that fascinate us, that inform us, that make our lives richer.

In other words, very simply, both Artist and Scientist say to all who will hear them “Hey! I discovered something! I want you to know about it!”.

Insect collaboration sculptures by Katey Berry Furgason.

[biocreativity] I think about that process of discovery a lot, and being both an artist and scientist myself, I definitely see the parallels in purpose you describe. I was so fascinated to learn about your process when I visited your studio last summer. Please describe your current art projects for the biocreativity readers. 

[KBF] In my paintings of the microscopic I spend endless hours looking at and reading about my subject.  I read, I take notes, I study what they do and what they look like.  For days, weeks, I look at hundreds of images, take notes on what they are, how they function, I sketch them, over and over and over, until I feel I have ‘gotten’ them. Then, all notes and sketches are put aside and I begin to sketch from memory. I compose the painting from memory with pencil and paper first. I make my own clay plaster paint and apply layers, with a small trowel, onto masonite. I then apply metal leaf to areas where my subject matter will be and then I etch into the leaf with a small, dental like tool. The details of my subjects are etched out of the leaf.  The image there is from memory, it is not meant to give us a realist depiction but rather a human interpretation, through memory, of its most important aspects; its essence interpreted.

Bone. Plaster paint + gold leaf © Katey Berry Furgason

My work with found wood brings to me a different process and outcome because it presents its reality to me in a much different way than a microscopic subject does. My wood pieces are found on my daily walks in New Mexico. I walk the rivers, arroyos, deserts and mountains of Santa Fe.  I pick up decaying pieces of wood that visually jump out at me.  I am struck by how they have been dramatically re-shaped by insects, time and weather. Their bodies reveal their history.  I am aware that at that moment of picking them up and taking them to my studio I interrupt their cycle in nature.

A collaboration begins when I thoroughly gut each piece of its soft rot and reveal the hard form; its core. This is a process of discovery because I cannot predict what will be uncovered; what will be left remaining. 
I then scrape and sand each piece and surround them in earth based mediums: clay, wax, metal. The process feels deeply ceremonial and ritualistic: 
from the selecting… to the ‘gutting’…to the re-working of the surface… to the ‘re-dressing’….to the mounting on the wall : subject and I go through a transformation.

Katey Berry Furgason at work in her studio in Santa Fe, NM.

[biocreativity] Katey, tell us more about the inspirations and motivations behind your work and practice. 

[KBF]

I am interested in art imitating the way in which we live; collaboratively.

I am drawn to collaborations with nature.

I want nature to guide my work, give me my set of criteria and physical facts.

I am drawn to the process of discovery and not being in full control of the outcome.

I need to be engaged with my environment.

I believe life is fascinating and that beauty is everywhere and that it often goes unseen.

I am filled with the desire to show people some of that beauty that often goes unseen.

8 Heart Strings, plaster painting + gold leaf © Katey Berry Furgason

[biocreativity] What is the most important thing that you want others to know about your work?

[KBF] The most important thing about my work would be this: once I am done with it, it is Yours. It is yours to interpret freely and personally, to attach whatever kind of meaning to it you wish, it has no ‘right’ interpretation.  Once I am finished making it, it is itself fully offered to you.

Insect collaboration sculpture by Katey Berry Furgason

[biocreativity] I think that is a really important and generous point to make. Since part of our mission at Art.Science.Gallery. is to engage people in the science through the arts, I think about this a lot. We try to do this in a non-intimidating way, but I some people feel intimidated in an art gallery setting, so then our mission also becomes about helping break down “crutches” people have built up about not considering themselves to be very “sciency” or very “artistic”. Your statement above is something that I hope would feel very inviting to viewers of your work. Katey what’s next for you in art + science? Where do you see your current projects going, or what would you like to do next?

[KBF] I will continue to explore the objects in the natural world around me.  I am planning on doing several room installations – in which the walls will be covered with tree roots, mounted flush against it – bringing the outside in and directing our gaze and thoughts to what often goes unnoticed.

I am still fascinated with how time, weather and insects act upon decaying pieces of wood, with how and where natural objects are in the ecological cycle. I never really know what the next work will be – one thing leads to the other – one discovery to the other.

Pine, plaster painting + gold leaf © Katey Berry Furgason

[biocreativity] Where can biocreativity readers find you on the web?

[KBF] My facebook page is found at: https://www.facebook.com/KateyBerryPaintings 

[biocreativity] What is your advice to young artists and scientists who might be thinking about getting into art-science projects?

 [KBF] Focus on the process, always maintain integrity (make things well), and let the outcome be born out of it (allow the outcome, don’t force it).

With Blue, wood, clay, wax © Katey Berry Furgason

[biocreativity] Anything else you’d like to mention?

[KBF] Art is life, it is engagement, it is collaboration, it is a process of discovery – you are a necessary part of that. It is your eyes, your heart, and your mind that bring it to life and sustain its meaning(s).

[biocreativity] Katey, thanks so much for this interview! Readers, mark your calendars to see Katey’s solo exhibition, To The Heart, opening on Valentine’s Day 6-9pm at Art.Science.Gallery. at 916 Springdale Road, Building 2, #102, Austin, TX 78702. The exhibition runs through March 23, 2014.  

Heart Beats, plaster painting + gold leaf © Katey Berry Furgason

Introducing the NEW Art + Science Series!

Greetings biocreativity readers! As many of you know, the biocreativity blog started as a way for me to explore the interrelationship between the arts and biology. I heard from so many artists looking for a place to exhibit their biology-inspired artwork, that the blog eventually inspired me to found a brick-and-mortar art gallery to exhibit science-inspired art. Well, Art.Science.Gallery. has started the new year in a new gallery space at Canopy in east Austin, and I couldn’t be more excited about our exhibitions for 2014! I invite you to come and visit whenever you’re in Austin: 916 Springdale Rd, Building 2, #102, Austin, TX 78702. You can also follow the gallery on Facebook and Twitter (@artscigallery). I’m so happy to report that Art.Science.Gallery. exhibited the work of nearly 200 science-inspired artists in 2013 (check out our past exhibitions here), and we’ve got an exciting schedule of nine science-inspired exhibitions lined up for 2014 (including two open call exhibitions)!

So what has become of the biocreativity blog? Since I’m a biologist by training, the biocreativity blog has thus far featured biology-inspired art. Now that Art.Science.Gallery. is up and running, I’ll be featuring art inspired by all of the natural sciences. I’m happy to announce that the ECO Art + Science Series is being reborn to be more inclusive of other scientific disciplines, as the Art + Science Series. I’ll be featuring interviews with artists that we’re exhibiting at Art.Science.Gallery.! And, as always, I enjoy learning of new artists who are merging art and the natural sciences, so keep me informed in the comments and stay tuned for our first Art + Science Series feature on Katey Berry Furgason’s Portraits of the Microscopic paintings and Collaborations with Insects, Weather, Time, Wood + Root sculptures coming up very soon!

Guest Blog: Use Art (yes, art!) to Enhance Your Science

Hi there biocreativity readers! I’ve been hard at work putting together our new brick-and-mortar gallery space at Art.Science.Gallery. (we’re plannign to open with an awesome entomology show in November!) and I thought you might like this guest post I did for the Broaden Your Impact blog. How have you used art to enhance your science!?

Broaden Your Impact

In great anticipation of the Broaden Your Impact symposium, I wanted to share some of my experiences and thoughts for sharing your science from what many of you might consider the dominion of “that other half of my brain”. I use art to communicate science, because art can be a very compelling and often tangible way to communicate science to a broad audience. The visual nature of most art forms can help to engage people with science in new, exciting and perhaps even (gasp!) non-quantitative ways. In many instances, artwork can help to visualize abstract concepts in science. In others, art can be a vehicle for cultivating science appreciation and the beauty of the natural world. Science art can also tackle questions of scientific ethics, environmental justice, the ideas of “progress” and “innovation” and the role and perception of science in popular culture. Combining art with science can help to…

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