Returning to my art practice after a long break, I reflect on momentum, memory, and the tension between scientific accuracy and artistic intuition while finishing a beadwork piece inspired by the olfactory epithelium.
Finished bead embroidery shows beauty, but hides the planning, decisions, and labor beneath the surface. This post looks at what polished images erase—and why understanding the process changes how a piece is seen, valued, and lived with.
Over the last couple of months, I have fallen off the face of the earth. Again. At least off of the blogosphere anyway. It has been a crazy couple of months for me, to say the least. Work has been stressful and I was in the process of being interviewed for a new job. Not... Continue Reading →
If you have been following my work for some time, you may have noticed that over the last several weeks I have mostly been poring over my older works and not really making anything new. I finished “Muted Potential” in early March, but I just couldn’t bring myself to start a new project. I have been marinating... Continue Reading →
Finally. Introducing my first completed project of 2021 - “Muted Potential”! While initially I was surprised that it took less than 2 months to complete the beadwork, I then took my sweet time assembling it and taking pictures. Guilty. As you may have read in some of my earlier posts, the cellular pattern is based... Continue Reading →
"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 →
The last couple of weeks have been quite busy and I have not had much time to sit down with my beadwork. However, I still think about it all the time. Especially about the question of what makes art abstract and how it relates to each person's experience. Welcoming the "Orange Pleasure" abstract painting One... Continue Reading →
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 →
Moving from right to left, I was working on filling in all of the empty spaces with the orange beads that represented nuclei of cells in the background. It was taking much longer than I expected, so I decided to take a break at have some fun at this point. While listening to the podcast... Continue Reading →
After returning from the winter break, I was eager to start working with the next color - orange. This turned out to be a very slow and painstakingprocess. These orange beads are a bit larger than the seed beads that I typically use and they needed to be tightly packed. I often struggle with turning off the scientific... Continue Reading →
SciArt that’ll make you feel Smart 