"Thinking outside the box" has become a bit of a cliché. But in science it is more important than ever. As the base of human knowledge propels ahead with lightning speed, it takes a special set of skills and knowledge to be on the cutting edge of innovation. When I was in graduate school, there... Continue Reading →
I just want to feel this moment
“If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”- Lao Tzu I recently heard this quote at it really resonated with me. Despite being a neuroscientist, I had a pretty hazy understanding of... Continue Reading →
Catching the dream
Those of you who have read my blog before, know that 2 years ago I (temporarily) left the field of neuroscience, which is the area of my expertise and passion. Due to life circumstances, I had to switch to an agnostic field of high throughput image-based screening for novel drug candidates. While this work provides... Continue Reading →
The Retina – Part II
After finishing the SciArt Center residency with Darcy Johnson, I eagerly returned to this project. It is based on a pretty well known sciart image of a mouse retina, which is much more complex than those on which I've based most of my previous work. I knew that this project would take a very long time to... Continue Reading →
The Retina – Part I
Since starting to create SciArt out of beads in 2016, I have mostly been making framed canvases with one or several central objects, mostly neuronal cells. These works were meant to resemble images acquired under a fluorescence microscope, primarily coming from in vitro neuronal cultures, which I have worked with so much in the lab.... Continue Reading →
“Lost in Manhattan”
The SciArt Residency is over and it is a good time to look at where it led me. Before embarking on this journey with Darcy, I had a few vague ideas that I wanted to coalesce into 1-2 projects. A lot of people talk about art being both a playground - where we can let... Continue Reading →
Purity of technique
SciArt Center Art Residency Program Week 12 - originally published on 12/5/18 As I have mentioned before, most of the time, art and science coexist in my brain. While the setting, such as being at work vs. at home, may dictate which side dominates, the other side rarely shuts off. In my scientific career, I... Continue Reading →
Evolution of ideas
The original idea for my current project was inspired by a specific series of events in my life last year. To me, using the layers of neurons in this work represents certain layers of my knowledge, interests and passions, which have been temporarily covered up and moved to the back burner. Looking through my... Continue Reading →
Propping up the cells
I am falling a little behind on posting these here, so I will put this blog post from the SciArt Residency program in quotes. Last week, Darcy, Kate and I had a very productive Skype call, where I expressed my concern about the technical challenges of attaching the beaded cells to the canvas in a... Continue Reading →
Creating art using the STEAM method
Last weekend, I mostly finished sewing the first layer of yellow rondelle beads. In the original microscopy image, the cell nuclei were colored bright blue, due to being labeled with Hoechst stain, which labels DNA. In Darcy’s version of the image, she switched this color to pale yellow, which makes them look more delicate and... Continue Reading →