Entanglement and Interludes, 2022
Mixed media
Site-specific installation created for VOLTA NEW YORK 2022, dimensions variable
The Pull, 2021
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, foil, paper, gel medium, foam core
22.5 x 17 x 5/8 inches
Point of Impact, 2020
Mixed media: acrylic, gel medium, ink, paper, wood, false eyelashes, foam core, wire, glitter, polymer clay
24 x 18 x 2.5 inches
Pile Up, Pile On, It Never Ends, 2021
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, gel medium, paper, foam core, glitter, mica, wire, foil, false eyelashes, polymer clay, felt, wood, canvas
35" diameter, 4" depth
Mother and Colony, 2017
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, acrylic medium and varnish, magnifying lenses, adhesive foil, mica glitter, foam core, on wood panel
64 x 96 inches
Leaving the Crash, 2021
Mixed media: acrylic, gel medium, ink, gouache, watercolor, oil pastel, graphite, paper
30 x 22.5 inches
Jagged and Theft, 2021
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, gel medium, paper, foam core, false eyelashes, burned elk leather, glitter
24.5 x 17.5 x 0.5 inches
Cell Grid (Brown), 2019
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, gel medium, foam core, foil, glitter, polymer clay, artificial sinew, beeswax, wire, thread, copper crimps
58 x 35 inches
Before the Split, 2020
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, canvas, paper, thread, gel medium, foam core, false eyelashes, glitter, mica, wire, felt, polymer clay, magnifying glass, foil, resin beads, wood
7’ x 6.5’ x 4.25”
A Small Swath, 2021
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, foam core, gel medium, polymer clay, burnt elk leather, resin beads, wood, felt, false eyelashes, wire, foam sheet, cotton thread
22 x 18.5 x 3.5 inches
A Quiet Loud, 2019
Mixed media: acrylic, ink, paper, foam core, cotton twine, gel medium, wood panel
24 x 18 inches
As a native of the rural north Georgia mountains, Amie Esslinger was immersed in the rich traditions and visual oddities of the self-taught art world. While the vibrant palettes and the DIY-with-whatever-you-can-find of her upbringing still resonate with and influence her art practice, it is the natural world that grounds and motivates Esslinger's work. Drawing on experience with ceramics, fabric, and sculpture, her paintings and distinctive mixed-media installations attempt to bridge the gap between art and science.
Esslinger received a BFA from Georgia State University. She has shown in galleries throughout Atlanta, including The World Unseen: Intersections of Art and Science at the David J. Sencer Centers for Disease Control Museum in association with the Smithsonian Institution. Esslinger has been a resident of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Hambidge Center in Rabun, Georgia. She is a recent recipient of Idea Capital’s Antinori Visual Artist Grant and has work in the permanent collections of the CDC Museum and the Atlanta Central Library.
Amie Esslinger Artist Statement
As scientific methods increase our knowledge of the world, they concurrently expose the vastness of our ignorance; deeper knowledge yields deeper mystery. Nature reveals that which appears orderly is deeply chaotic, while deterministic laws of nature yield diversity and uncertainty. By exploring and expanding upon the hidden elements of the physical world, I attempt to illuminate the apparent contradictions between order and disorder, observable and unobservable, beauty and monstrosity. In doing so, I hope to emphasize the richness, potential, and threat of the physical.
Using motifs from microbiology, I experiment with material, scale, and replication to create abstract biomorphs of vivid color, hyper-texture, and dedicated detail. I stress the physicality of the world through a labor-intensive process of painting, drawing, cutting, stacking, and aggregating a variety of materials. By mimicking cellular and microbial structures and processes, my practice conflates randomness and mutation with order and life-generation. I attempt to generate an aesthetic that echoes the complexity inherent in natural systems, while creating new mysterious organisms, both alluring and repelling.
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The biomorphic art of Amie Esslinger draws the viewer into a miniature world of images that evoke microbes, cells, and viruses. Esslinger’s artistic process mimics the planned chaos of organic processes and takes the form of abstract, richly layered assemblages crafted from diverse materials, including felt, eyelashes, burnt elk leather, glitter, resin, and more.
On January 29, the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University will present the thought-provoking new exhibition, And I Must Scream, developed by Dr. Amanda H. Hellman, the museum's curator of African art. The show features photographs, sculptures, paintings, drawings, and site-specific installations from ten local, national and international contemporary artists. The accompanying programming will bring scholars and artists from around the world to teach classes, facilitate performances, and create new works of art.
At VOLTA New York 2022 LAMINAproject is presenting the work of three artists: Amie Esslinger, Michal Gavish, and Jody Rasch.
Amie Esslinger is equally accomplished as a painter, sculptor, ceramist, and textile artist and that is evident when looking at her dazzling and complex mixed-media works based on motifs from microbiology. Many are constructed layer by layer, with both traditional and very unique materials, and all have a very sculptural and tactile feel to them. Esslinger’s work goes beyond the visual in terms of meaning and message and her references to microbiology are suggestive of the complicated parts and systems that compose and surround us, but cannot be seen by the naked eye. The forms found in microbiology are visually beautiful and are governed by uniform laws, yet influenced by chance and opportunity. As the artist explains, “I attempt to generate an aesthetic that echoes the complexity inherent in natural systems, while creating new mysterious organisms, both alluring and repelling.”
For Michal Gavish, multimedia artist and former research scientist, viruses, proteins, and crystals aren’t abstractions—they are figures, objects and nano-scale landscapes. She is captivated by these minute shapes that are hidden from the naked eye, interpreting them in their intricate environments. Using innovative techniques, Gavish translates visual research data into paintings and soft installations, sometimes drawing and painting and at other times developing three-dimensional works by layering original chemical paint-combinations onto translucent fabric and fragile paper. The resulting works give presence to the microscopic living formations that we know exist but can hardly imagine. In her Neurodiversity series from 2022, the artist paints neurological portraits which make visible the fact that nobody is really neurotypical; our brains are infinitely complicated and each is unique.
Jody Rasch’s work is drawn from various science practices, including astronomy, biology, and sub-atomic physics. In his subject matter and techniques, Rasch builds on historical concepts and follows in the footsteps of artists such as Kandinsky, Dali, and Picasso and movements from Pointillism and Constructivism to Dada and Surrealism that were influenced by science. Abstract yet recognizable to scientists, the stunning patterns and colors in his drawings and paintings elevate the movement and behavior of their subjects. Particle showers are painted as glowing traces of post-collision movement, the blueness of Einstein’s ring is accentuated, and skin cells are transformed into a vibrant multi-color wonderland. Rasch brings images to a more human scale by enlarging the infinitesimally small or closing the distance to cosmic phenomena, making these hidden and remote elements of the universe relatable to our existence in it. As an expression of both the patterns of the natural world and the metaphors underlying modern science, his work reminds us that there’s more to the universe than meets the eye.
Although Science Art (“SciArt”) is increasingly used in science communication as a way to make content more engaging or accessible, little is known about why artists pursue this practice or what they hope to achieve through their work. This project addresses these questions through a thematic analysis of interviews with 131 practicing science artists. We identify a diversity of goals for creating SciArt, only some of which involve communicating science.
Jody Rasch, for example, who said: “There are multiple dimensions that I am trying to communicate in my work, but mostly I want the observer to begin to question what he/she believes”.
Some of the most innovative artists working today are fusing art and science and taking inspiration from science. LAMINAproject−a gallery/platform devoted to art/science−showcases artwork by emerging and established artists that integrates ideas, images and metaphors of science to convey fundamental truths about the world and explore different characteristics of art-science relationships. LAMINAproject’s artists not only show the beauty of science, but also communicate how these images relate to and help us see beyond our daily existence. As expressions of both the patterns of the natural world and the metaphors underlying modern science, their art allows us to see beauty in the repulsive, to find knowledge in the unknown, and to observe the unseen to more clearly see our world. By exploring the invisible, Esslinger, Gavish, and Rasch invite the observer to look beyond the “seen” to appreciate the beauty and mystery of the “unseen.”
The 10 artists featured in “And I Must Scream” touch on themes from the COVID-19 pandemic to human rights violations and hail from Africa, Asia, England, Europe and America (including one Atlanta artist, Amie Esslinger). They offer resistance and a frank assessment of the ongoing interconnected threats posed by climate change and consumerism in this group exhibition organized by the Carlos’ curator of African art Amanda H. Hellman.
Themes from consumerism, climate change, environmental destruction to the pandemic highlight this marvelous group show.
Review: Artists give powerful shape to global crises in “And I Must Scream” by Louise E. Shaw
Linking the galleries is a series of site-specific installations by Atlanta-based Amie Esslinger. Imaginary viruses populate the acid-color walls, nightmarishly replicating at a horrifying pace. Frenetically beautiful, the works set up a bait-and-switch situation in which we’re drawn into their complexity and lurid colors only to realize the horror that they represent.
Esslinger’s work takes on new urgency in the context of the Covid pandemic. She is not only visualizing our lived trauma, but also making a call to action to address contemporary unbalances between humans, animals and the environment that industrialization, deforestation and global inaction has caused.
As a native of the rural north Georgia mountains, Amie Esslinger was immersed in the rich traditions and visual oddities of the self-taught art world. While the vibrant palettes and the DIY-with-whatever-you-can-find of her upbringing still resonate with and influence her art practice, it is the natural world that grounds and motivates Esslinger's work. Drawing on experience with ceramics, fabric, and sculpture, her paintings and distinctive mixed-media installations attempt to bridge the gap between art and science. Esslinger received a BFA from Georgia State University. She has shown in galleries throughout Atlanta, including 'The World Unseen: Intersections of Art and Science' at the David J. Sencer Centers for Disease Control Museum in association with the Smithsonian Institution. Esslinger has been a resident of Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York, and the Hambidge Center in Rabun, Georgia. She is a recipient of Idea Capital’s Antinori Visual Artist Grant, and is a 2022 Forward Arts Foundation's Edge Award finalist. Esslinger has work in the permanent collections of the CDC Museum and the Atlanta Central Library.
“Complexity is the underlying focus of my work. My work is not rigidly representational but rather it’s suggestive of the very real and very complicated parts and systems that compose and surround us but that cannot be seen by the naked eye. Using motifs from microbiology, I experiment with material, scale, and replication to create abstract biomorphs of vivid color, hyper-texture, and dedicated detail.”
Drawing on her experience with ceramics, fabric, and sculpture, Amie Esslinger’s paintings and distinctive mixed-media installations attempt to bridge the gap between art and science.
Atlanta-based visual artist Amie Esslinger creates abstract yet exquisitely detailed biomorphs using a variety of material and electrifying colour palettes. Inspired by microbiology, her paintings and almost architectural installations invite us into the microcosmos to ponder our hidden biology and confront our understanding of complexity.
Equally accomplished as a painter, sculptor, ceramist, and textile artist, Esslinger uses a multitudinous array of material to turn cellular organisms into titanic beings. From acrylic, paint, ink, paper, foam, canvas, felt, and wood to polymer clay, burnt elk leather, false eyelashes, magnifying lenses, artificial sinew, copper crimps, mica glitter and more; anything is up for experimentation.
Ten of her works are currently on view in her solo exhibition, The Immeasurable Space. Presented in the LAMINAproject Online Viewing Room on Artsy, the digital gallery is accessible through May 31, 2021.
In this interview with Art the Science, Esslinger discusses the thoughtful and playful processes behind her biomorphs, how microbiology fascinates her, and the evolution of her work.
Which came first in your life, the science or the art?
Art came first. I grew up in an artist household with two working artist parents and we lived on twenty one acres boxed in by a national forest. I had the encouragement to be creative and the freedom and space to explore the many branches of creek and forest around me. I had access to a generous book collection with tons of reference books on animals and plant life. My first biological sketches came from the Audubon books on sea life. Later, I didn’t think twice about going to art school. Finding interdisciplinary courses that married art practice with environmental studies helped me to fully integrate science into my work.
Amie Esslinger works in the space nudged between art, research and science with the end result being mind-blowingly beautiful. This year, Esslinger is the winner of the Antinori Visual Artist Grant. Our interview with Amy covers travel, materials used in art and the current climate for artists like herself.
The concept of life thriving and adapting under extreme conditions resonates with Atlanta-based artist Amie Esslinger. Her painting “Hydro Vents and Other Difficult Places” appears as this month’s cover art.
