Upcoming Events - Summer to Fall 2014

It's been a little quiet lately, but I'm gearing up for the next round of shows. Come say hello!

July 18-20:  Artscape, Baltimore

September 11-October 25  Voyage of Discovery reopens at the McLean Project for the Arts

September 13: Hyattsville Arts Festival, MD

September 14:  Art on Belmont, (Adams Morgan Day),  DC

September 27:  Barracks Row Fall Festival, DC

October 4: Art on the Avenue, Alexandria, VA

October 5: MPA Artfest, McLean, VA

Scientists Seek the Company of Artists

If Jane Austen blogged about science art, she would note that it is a truth universally acknowledged, that artists and scientists are rarely found in the same place. You don’t often find an artist in a lab, and you seldom see a scientist in a gallery. (Yes, yes, I know, there are exceptions! It’s not polite to interrupt Jane Austen.)

There are many reasons for this, involving various permutations of, well, let's not say pride or prejudice exactly, but perhaps a difference of sensibilities.  Now comes an opportunity to get around at least a few of these, by having artists meet scientists where they are.

Two major annual meetings of scientific organizations, The American Public Health Association and the Society for Neuroscience, have created opportunities for science artists to display and sell their work to their thousands of attendees. Rather remarkably, both take place on exactly the same dates – November 15-19, 2014.

The annual meeting of the American Public Health Association (APHA), held this year in New Orleans, attracts 12,000 attendees in a wide variety of fields related to public health. As part of a new initiative called Art @ The Expo, they are looking for 20 artists or crafters whose work is health, medicine or science related to show and vend at the meeting. The $200 booth fee for 3 days is a fraction of what APHA charges its large commercial exhibitors.  More information and guidelines for applicants are here. 

Do you delight in dendrites? The Art of Neuroscience, part of the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN), seeks artists whose work is directly related to neuroscience. For a $300 fee, artists can show their work at the gigantic gathering of some 30,000 neuroscientists in Washington, DC. Interested artists can find more information and a prospectus here  - the deadline for applications is August 29.

It’s really encouraging to see large scientific organizations take steps to include independent artists and crafters in their events. AAAS, ACS, ASM, please take note. If, to quote Jane Austen, “one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other,” at least some people are making an effort to provide a peek over the fence. Perhaps others may be persuaded?

(Cross-posted from The Finch & Pea) 

Cutting Edge: Art & Science of Climate Change at AAAS

AAAS has put together an event on the art and science of climate change on Thursday, May 1 in conjunction with the Voyage of Discovery show. You should come! Jessica, Ellyn and I will all be there. If you prefer to skip the speeches and head straight for the wine and art, you might want to come around 7:30pm. It's free but registration is required - click HERE to sign up.

What an artist's studio really tells you

My soul: Let me show you it

I read an essay online the other day, “Is an artist’s studio a window into their soul?” by Bob Duggan on BigThink, and it’s been percolating in my brain ever since. Unfortunately, probably not in the way the author intended. The piece compares the studios of NC Wyeth and Andrew Wyeth, which were preserved as museums after their deaths.  Duggan says some fairly interesting things about what you can infer about an artist’s life and practice from looking at the things he surrounded himself with.

The author also mentions visiting the preserved studios of Winslow Homer, Jackson Pollock, and Francis Bacon. (I’ve been to Francis Bacon’s studio too – it’s a big ol’ mess, apparently because he wouldn't allow people to clean up his stuff.) Notice anything about those artists? Yep, famous white men.

I work in my dining room. If my dining room reveals anything about my soul, it’s probably about the constant tension of wanting to keep working on things in progress and having to clean them up. I have another friend who makes gorgeous, large, paint-on-metal pieces in her living room. Her “studio”, if anyone ever visited, would probably reveal none of that, because, as a nice middle-aged woman, she, like me, would tidy up for guests.

We would both love to have nice, airy studios to create work in ideal conditions that we could tweak to our preferences. But we live in an expensive city, so we make do. So do many, many others in vastly more difficult conditions.

Martin Ramirez made his art in an insane asylum, while very successful Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama lives in one. A number of artists, including Frank Jones, did much of their art in prison. Should we draw conclusions about their souls based on that?

I might suggest another title for Duggan’s piece:  “Is an artist’s studio a window into his privilege?”

Voyage of Discovery has been Discovered

Well, at least a little. Some people have written some nice things about the show. Have a look:

Grist,  March 13, 2014

These Artists Will Take You on a Journey to the Melting Arctic, by Jessica Zimmerman

Inhabitat, March 10, 2014

DC’s Voyage of Discovery Exhibition Explores Climate Change in the Arctic, by Jon Dioffa

Last Word on Nothing, March 4, 2014

Voyage of Discovery:Art and the Arctic, by Helen Fields

BoingBoing, March 4, 2014

Art Inspired by the Melting Arctic, by Maggie Koerth-Baker

Symbiartic/Scientific American, March 4, 2014

Science Art on View in March-April, by Kalliopi Monoyios

And here's a link to video of my NAS talk on "Art and Science as Ways of Knowing"

News! Show at AAAS and Talk at NAS

Two pretty big pieces of news on the science-art front: First, today is the opening day for Voyage of Discovery, a show featuring artwork by me, Ellyn Weiss and Jessica Beels at the headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Second, I’ve been invited to speak at next month’s DASER (DC Art-Science Evening Rendezvous) at the National Academy of Sciences. Whew!

First, about the show:

Voyage of Discovery

January 21 – May 31, 2014

AAAS Art Gallery

1200 New York Avenue NW

Washington, DC

The artwork in Voyage of Discovery has its roots in the idea of a journey of scientific exploration, in the tradition of Darwin, Wallace, and the thousands of scientists who constantly travel the globe in search of new findings. This imaginary voyage takes viewers to a polar region where the iconic, seemingly eternal, landscape of ice and snow is in profound and rapid transition due to climate change. The pieces in this show, created by Michele Banks, Jessica Beels and Ellyn Weiss in a wide variety of media, are not strictly based on scientific data. They reflect the artists’ responses to the transformation of land and sea - the melting of glaciers and the thawing of permafrost, the movement of previously unknown species and microbes into the region, the dramatic shift of the color of the land from white to green to black. The artwork takes a broad view of these changes: the artists are deeply aware of the damage done by climate change, yet intrigued by the possibilities of what lies below the ice and snow.

The gallery is open to the public from 9am-5pm Monday to Friday. A reception is being planned for later in the show’s run – more information to come.

DASER:

D.C. Art Science Evening Rendezvous (DASER) is a monthly discussion forum on art and science projects held by the Cutural Programs department of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS) in the national capital region and beyond. DASERs provide a snapshot of the cultural environment and foster interdisciplinary networking. This month, in celebration of its third anniversary, DASER explores the theme of art as a way of knowing.

Thursday, February 20, 2014, 6 p.m. (doors open at 5:30)

Keck Center, 500 Fifth St., N.W., Room 100

Free and open to the public. Registration and photo ID required.

Sign up here to attend: http://www.eventbrite.com/e/dc-art-science-evening-rendezvous-daser-tickets-10211848915

Panelists: Michele Banks, Artist, Washington, D.C. ;  Diane Burko, Artist, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Robert Root-Bernstein, Professor of Physiology and Bioartist, Michigan State University, East Lansing; Nina Samuel, Art and Science Historian and Independent Curator, New York City and Berlin, Germany

If you can't attend, a livestream is available. 

I regret that I cannot provide the narrative you obviously desire

I’ve done six shows in the last seven weeks.  As anyone who has ever tried this knows, patterns begin to emerge in the way customers react to your work. As I have continued over the past two years to increase the amount of science-based art in the mix, I’ve noticed a major new one:  a huge increase in the number of people who walk into my booth and ask, “Are you a biologist?” And it’s starting to bug me.

I understand where that question is coming from, and that it’s not coming from a bad place. People recognize the elements of biology in my work and they want to say something.  It’s friendly. (Although I was slightly alarmed when one woman all but shouted in my face at one show: “science teacher!!!” – i.e., I must be one.) And, of course, there are many scientist-artists out there.

But I’m not a biologist, or even, as others suggest, a science major, and that seems to bum people out. I explain that I’m a full-time artist with a strong interest in science, and they say, “oh”. Or I talk about how I use biological imagery to explore ideas about what it means to be alive, and they think I’m a pretentious artiste.

Look, I’m sorry I cannot provide you with the neat narrative you so obviously desire.

Sigh. I’m a weirdo.

Maybe it runs in my family – my father was a born-and-bred New Yorker with a PhD from Columbia. And yet I grew up in Indiana and Pennsylvania with a gun-owning Republican dad. Yeah – same guy.  One whose grandfather was a Connecticut Yankee named Stonewall Jackson Banks.

Or maybe it doesn’t. Gun-toting Republican Chemist PhD dad certainly failed to turn me into (or even interest me in) any of those things.

I’ve made my own, sometimes odd, choices in life. I get that it doesn’t make a neat storyline. I’ve certainly considered lying and telling people I am a biologist, just to make them happy. But I am haunted by the fear that one of them will turn out to be Michael Eisen. And mostly, I just wish that more people would be comfortable with the fact that non-scientists can love and celebrate science.

Luckily, there are some - like the lady who bought one of my petri dish collages to hang in her bathroom to remind people to wash their hands, and the couple who bought a mitochondria painting because they think it’s cool that we have jelly beans inside our cells.

You don’t have to be a biologist to like my work.
And I don’t have to be a biologist to make it.