https://www.instagram.com/p/BmO6Lhughot/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet As some of you may know, I currently work at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Gene Editing and Screening Core Facility. What does that mean in English? I means that I do large (high throughput) experiments called screens to find novel drugs for regulating different cellular functions. Each project is different and unique... Continue Reading →
This is how SciArt ideas are born
Last year, while going through the SciArt Center residency program, I wrote a blog post about how I start planning out new projects and how my “blueprints” turn into 3-dimensional artwork. In contrast to (likely) most artists, my sketchbook contains more writing than drawing. This is how I capture ideas about different options that I... Continue Reading →
How do you make people see science behind the art?
Over the last couple of years, I have been thinking a lot about how SciArt can become more relatable to people who do not have a scientific background. How do we distinguish it from the more common concept of modern or abstract art? While art is often meant to be interpreted through the “eye 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 →
“Finding Your Self”
Finding Your Self, 2019 Here is the final version of this 5 month (!!!) long project. As a refresher, it is based on a closeup microscopy image of a retina, which is responsible for our sense of vision. The blue branches are blood vessels. The red strands are axons of neurons that transmit the information... Continue Reading →
Learning some new beading techniques
While in between projects, I decided to learn some new beading techniques. I recently came across some amazing beadwork on Instagram by Julie Mars (@jamfinearts) and got inspired. I have a ton of multicolored beads that I don’t use for my main projects, so I decided to use them for learning how to bead around a... Continue Reading →
“The Void” – an artistic experiment – Part I
Following my "Stages of Grief" series, I have set out to create a piece to represent the very first stage - DENIAL. While in my earlier pieces I did my best to stay true to scientific form, here I have come to border abstraction. This piece turns the biology on its head, showing the outline of a... Continue Reading →
Breaking the stigma
A while back I wrote about using art to fight disorder-associated stigma. As a preface to this post, I will quote a short passage and you can find the whole post here. A couple of years ago, I attended a large meeting, where people working in the biomedical community were presented with a new potential... Continue Reading →
So grateful for this feedback
This quote was recently posted on Facebook in association with my latest piece "Sunrise". I am so thankful for the kind words from one of my customers Carla Harris! "I love the art of Yana Zorina, a neuroscientist whose artworks are inspired by her field of scientific research. I have been following this blog for... Continue Reading →
Creating retrospective art stories
Between the lines I was never a big fan of English classes in school. I really like to read, but it always irked me when a teacher would ask us questions about what the author may have meant to be read "between the lines". Unless the author wrote an autobiography, there is no way to... Continue Reading →