Curated by Jackie Hoysted and produced by Veronica Szalus, A Delicate Balance is an all-sculpture show that explores the idea of achieving equilibrium. Perhaps more than ever, today we have a greater awareness of how everything operates in such a delicate balance - be it ecosystems, politics, relationships or personal well-being. We must navigate life without tipping too much in one direction so that we can strive for harmony, but at times something radical is required to achieve it. The craft of making sculpture is no different. The sculptor balances their conceptual thought or ideation to material realization through careful molding, shaping and juxtaposition of often unlikely materials through to the selection of scale, color and presentation. 

Art & Science

For this exhibition, the American Philosophical Society commissioned local artist Rebecca Kamen to create visual responses to scientific concepts on view. Throughout this exhibition you will see these responses.

Rebecca Kamen, sculptor and lecturer on the intersections of art and science, seeks ‘the truth’ through observation. Her artwork is informed by wide-ranging research into cosmology, history, philosophy, and by connecting common threads that flow across various scientific fields to capture and re-imagine what the scientists see.

Currently, Kamen is serving as artist in residence in The Computational Neuroscience Initiative and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jody Rasch was commissioned to create four paintings for a science foundation and the works were installed in December 2023. 

The works are: Thought, Gravity Lens, Inner Working, and Sight. The artist coments about these paintings:

Thought

"The brain is the center of our rationality and irrationality and controls our conscious and unconscious reactions. My Thought series uses images of the brain, including MRI, to invite the observer to get into the minds of others and explore their own rationality."

Gravity Lens

 "Gravity lens is the proof of Einstein’s theory of space and time being one entity Space/Time.  It reminds us that there are no absolutes and that all we observe is based on our own view." 

Inner Working

“The core element of life is our cells. This image uses cryo electron microscopy to give the most detailed image of a cell. It allows us to peer into the basic building blocks that create life.”

Sight

“The eye is the way we take in the world and try to understand what is around us. It is one of our key senses that we use to unravel the myriad of images we encounter every day. The Sight series shows how we take in the information we need to interpret our environment.”

Jody Rasch has been invited to deliver a keynote speech at the Simons Foundation Society of Fellows symposium in New York on October 4 on the theme of "Perspectives Reimagined: Art, Science, and the Power of Creative Fusion". Additionally, a curated selection of his artwork will be displayed in a dedicated exhibition for the symposium.

The Phoenix Airport Museum hosts its first-ever Night at the Museum event: Art and Science Come to Life at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport on Friday, March 24, from 4-7 pm at Terminal 4, level 3 gallery.

​The event celebrates the Museum’s current Artist and Researcher exhibition presenting art inspired by science. The exhibition was developed by the Phoenix Bioscience Core where nine local artists were paired with researchers to create artwork based on their different areas of study. Working side-by-side in the lab, classroom, and art studio, the resulting works are visual representations of the scientific progress happening in our city and state.

Artist-in-residence in Penn's Department of Physics and Astronomy and visiting scholar Rebecca Kamen has blended AI and art to produce animated illustrations representing how a dyslexic brain interprets information.

LAMINAproject was invited to exhibit a curated selection of Biology-inspired paintings and drawings by Jody Rasch at Regeneron's October 2022 corporate event: The Power of Purpose, held in Greenwich CT.  We exhibited works from several current and recent series including Beauty-Skin Cell, Thought, Healing and Disease. The presentation was complemented by a video presentation that explained the science and broader meaning behind Rasch's work. 

Julie Harrison’s recent Brain Series drawings are fully in the organic realm, swarming with animate features, more alive than we might imagine any static image could be. You don’t so much look at these drawings as watch them—the way you might observe the activity of a life form through a microscope—tracking their dynamic movement. Her rendered globules swim and dive through veiled flows among wavering filaments and dendrite tendrils. As she says herself: ‘“I explore the liminal space between science and fiction. These works consider invisible living organisms and create impossible universes that aestheticize our understanding of what is real. … it’s as if the biological phenomena of my brain has been transported through my body and hands onto paper; my drawings represent the wake of life as we move through the water of time."

Harrison’s drawings are compelling images for this moment in the cultural imagination of the brain and mind. In their combination of variety and specificity, they make an argument for what constitutes the physiological infrastructure of intelligence in living beings. In other words, the features of Harrison’s brain drawings suggest that organic models have a potential that mechanical approaches do not. Is this romanticism and nostalgia for the embodied condition or a solid argument grounded in evidence?  

Michal Gavish has been invited to participate in the Changwon Sculpture Biennale 2022 in South Korea.  

Gavish will be working on site for three weeks to produce her new fabric installation on Neuronal Brain Networks. 

Delivering complex information to the masses is not easy. Artists have always stretched the boundaries of concept and creativity. The goal of the Artist + Researcher Exhibition is to see what happens when the talents of both science and art join forces to conceptualize a way to communicate the complex. 

The Phoenix Bioscience Core established the Artists + Researcher Program with Phoenix-based Bentley Gallery to connect the complex life science research happening on the PBC with a wider audience. Nine researchers from each of the three public universities — Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona — worked alongside local artists to establish a transformational piece of artwork that shares their research in a new medium.

All of these works of art + science will then come together to form the first Artist + Researcher Exhibition Tour. The Artist + Researcher Exhibition is one of many programs within the Art in Medicine initiative on the Phoenix Bioscience Core. The initiative aims to explore what happens when research is presented through an artistic lens. 

The first cohort of the PBC Artists & Researchers program finished their projects in the spring of 2022. They will be on display around Arizona during the 2022-2023 academic year. The first public display will be on September 2nd at the Health Sciences Education Building.

Tissue Study I

Mark Pomilio + Dr. Taben Hale

After agreeing on a date and time, I visited Dr Hale’s research lab and was introduced to her work. During our meeting, Dr Hale outlined her methods and goals through discussion and examples of which revealed the materials and systems utilized to achieve the desired outcome. Aspects of her research involve documentation through digital imaging. These images are both informative and visually fascinating. I asked Dr Hale to send several of these images, and they became a starting point for my inquiry. 

Description of the piece

Tissue Study #1 represents an integration of my creative mathematical, geometric methods developed over the last several decades and those images I experienced through the visual recordings of Dr Hale’s research with cardiac tissue pathological remodeling. First, I began by triangulating the relationships between two geometric forms: the pentagon and hexagon. These two forms are often utilized when expressing chemical cell structures in scientific documentation.  During each painting session, I added an additional layer of geometric forms, which were connected to the previous layer of forms through additional triangulation. This method was my attempt to mirror the naturally occurring building systems found in the myocardial connective tissue which provides the structural scaffolding for the heart cells and thus, relating my structural methods to that which I experienced in Dr Hale’s research imagery. This building method extended into many painting sessions and ultimately represents upwards of nearly twenty layers, one applied to another, with subtractive and additive decisions made throughout the long painting process.

New York based gallery LAMINAproject will present artist Shanthi Chandrasekar's rhythmic hanging piece, titled Entropy: Macrostates & Microstates, made of hundreds of hand-punched paper circles, portrays randomness within physical systems. Chandrasekar’s delicate suspension of reiterating disks cascade from the ceiling to the floor following a fractal reduction where the smaller parts mirror the larger ones. 

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.

Art and science typically don’t mix, but at the Phoenix Bioscience Core (PBC), they compliment each other perfectly. The PBC and its Arts Committee announced the second cohort of its Artists + Researcher Exhibit, which pairs local artists with PBC researchers to develop a collaborative piece of artwork showcasing the researchers’ work in a new medium. The first cohort is now on display at Sky Harbor Airport. The 10 teams in this second cohort have begun their collaborative process. The art will debut in the fall and will be available for public viewing following a grand opening.

“It’s really about breaking down that complex information into something that is understandable and approachable by the general public,” said Dr. Cynthia Standley, Chair of the PBC Arts Committee. Dr. Standley is a neurophysiologist with a passion for the arts as well. She’s worked in art and medicine since 2014 and believes now is the perfect time to bring these two passions together.

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.

The exhibition is curated by Omo Misha, and a percentage of the proceeds will go to the City College Center for the Arts' Youth Arts Empowerment Program

Julie Harrison is a multidisciplinary visual artist and educator who probes methods of science and mechanisms of technology to explore the dualities of nature and artifice. She currently makes drawings using repurposed biological images from various sources. For the past forty-five years she has been an active professional artist in New York City, has garnered awards and exhibited both locally and internationally. Her work resides in public collections at The Getty, the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Columbia University, New York Public Library/Berg Collection, Brown University, and others.

Michal Gavish was paired with the Polish poet, Julia Fiedorczuk, and responded to her poems called Psalms. She created her own "micro" psalms, a series of scrolls with images from genetic research, words genetics coding, the original poem  and from the book of psalms. She tried to transform visually in the rhythm of the poems. 

Plain Sight DC and the EU National Institutes of Culture in Washington, DC (EUNIC) present A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who will create work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. This exhibition series is presented in partnership with the EUNIC Global and the Delegation of the European Union to the United States.

The Europe Readr is a curated set of European literature brought together under the concept of “The Future of Living” to present a variety of perspectives that contribute to the debate on the future of Europe and to put an emphasis on the importance of culture as a driving force of international integration and sustainable development.

Featured exhibiting artists’ works will explore themes ranging from vulnerability, the natural world, identity, competing human economic and ecological needs, nostalgia, and the limitations of our physical bodies.

Rebecca Kamen, Penn artist-in-residence and visiting scholar, has long been interested in science and the natural world. As a Philadelphia native and an artist with a 40-plus-year career, her intersectional work sheds light on the process of scientific discovery and its connections to art, with previous exhibitions that celebrate Apollo 11’s “spirit of exploration and discovery” to new representations of the periodic table of elements.

Now, in her latest exhibition, Kamen has created a series of pieces that highlight how the creative processes in art and science are interconnected. In “Reveal: The Art of Reimagining Scientific Discovery,” Kamen chronicles her own artistic process while providing a space for self-reflection that enables viewers to see the relationship between science, art, and their own creativity.

As a trained scientist and artist, Michal Gavish works at the intersection of art and biology. Inspired by the colors and shapes produced by genetic DNA and viral sequencing research, Gavish adopts these visual languages to construct immersive environments. Gavish works with microscopic imagery to inform the resulting large translucent paintings that are thinly layered to create her environments.  As visitors interact within the space, these fragile works shift and react, immersing the visitors in both the complexity and vitality of the microscopic structures.

Julie Harrison has been invited to create a site-responsive outdoor work at The Residency Project, located in Pasadena, California. Bodies #8332: Pasadena, composed of images of microorganisms found in soil and plants indigenous to the Los Angeles-Southern California area, will be up from May 1 – June 30, 2021.

“I had always been interested in science, particularly physics, and read a lot about relativity and particle physics. The realm of particle physics is like discovering a new philosophy.  Particles can be everywhere at once and can both be waves or particles, depending on how we observe them.  In particle physics, nothing is certain. Physics tries to answer the big questions on the nature of the universe. I wanted to find a way to represent these concepts in my art. Some of the images I use are of bubble chambers, where atoms are broken down into subatomic particles, each with its own mass and charge, which make different paths in the bubble chamber. I try to incorporate these themes into the images by using phrases from particle physics such as “User Created Reality” or formulas such as the one for Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. The patterns are beautiful, and seem like abstract patterns if one didn’t know what the subject matter is.

The exhibition also includes three works on gravitational lensing which are based on the work Fermilab is doing to discover both dark matter and dark energy. The dark matter acts as a lens to bend visible light. Even though dark matter cannot be seen, it does have a gravitational effect that impacts the amount the visible light that is bent. I also wanted to include two recent spectra pieces, as the energy released by a particle is based on the energy levels of the electrons. Based on quantum physics, electrons have defined energy levels, which creates the emission or absorption lines observed in the spectra.”

– Jody Rasch

The event is the first part of Home Room Exhibition. The second part will be a gallery exhibition at Radiator Lab in spring 2021 at Radiator Gallery 10-61 Jackson Ave Long Island City, NY 11106
 

Shanthi will be collaborating with Leihae, who works at the intersection of physics, visual arts, and literature. She is an associate researcher at the University of Paris, where she studies the nature of spacetime with the gravitational waves signals emitted by black holes. She has previously extensively worked in the field of particle physics and has occupied positions in several research institutions and collaborations worldwide. She draws inspiration from her scientific research into her artistic practice, that takes the shape of illustrations, collages, curation and written pieces. Ultimately, she is as fascinated by the rigorous logic of science than the exhilarating freedom of art, and the beauty she can find in each.

“A State of Being: He Gong and Mark Pomilio”

Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Mesa AZ

December 13, 2019 – March 29, 2020

A cross-cultural exchange, this exhibition brings together the dynamic black and white works of Chinese artist He Gong and scientifically inspired geometric imagery of Arizona artist Mark Pomilio. Their friendship was forged several years ago during a residency program in Cheng du, China that He Gong hosted and Pomilio attended. Even with contrasting methods and subject matter, He Gong and Pomilio’s work capture the complexity of artistic expression and the human experience.

LunchBreak is a series of live, online interviews with artists who have shown in SciArt exhibitions or been part of our residency program. Join us virtually on Zoom over your lunch break to hear from science- and technology-inspired artists on what they’re working on right now.

Michal Gavish experiments in her new installations with color fields and genetics data. Adopting the molecular modeling color language that she has learned as a chemist, she transforms the subjects of her portraiture from macro to nano scale. Using collaborative microscopic and spectroscopic results, she focuses on DNA and protein molecules. She creates layers and magnifies the scientific imagery to human scale, giving a new presence to these living formations. The soft installations and fragile materials examine the delicate balance that is essential for bio-structures and their vitality.⠀
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Self-taught artist Shanthi Chandrasekar says curiosity has been the driving force behind her art, a combination of “scientific fact and theories with my wild imagination.” With a background in both physics and psychology, Chandrasekar has branched into different kinds of art, including drawing, printmaking, papermaking, photography, sculpture, and traditional Kolam drawings. Many of these skills are currently on display in Fermilab’s art gallery, where Chandrasekar’s exhibit, “Cosmic Design,” runs through Oct. 31.

Here Chandrasekar breaks down some of the inspiration, concepts, and thought processes behind 10 of the works from “Cosmic Design.”

LAMINAproject is exhibiting the work of Jody Rasch, Joyce Yamada and Nila Onda in Joyce Yamada's studio during the 2019 Bushwick Open Studios. The studio will be open on September 21-22 from 12-6 pm. The Address is: The AnX Building, 13 Grattan Street, #402, Brooklyn NY.

The U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies Program has chosen two "Biology" works by Jody Rasch for exhibition at the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The two works are:

Healing - White Blood Cell, 2016, oil on board, 45 x 45 inches

Thought - Cerebellum, 2019, pencil and pastel on paper, 42 x 42 inches

Jody Rasch is one of ten international artists whose work is included in a compelling exhibition curated by Louise Shaw

The World Unseen: Intersections of Art and Science gathers the work of ten international artists, including Jody Rasch, who draw upon microbiology, biotechnology, anatomy, and texts in their investigations of microbes and cells, DNA, history of disease and science, the body, and beauty. They all share a deep interest in science, and some are scientists themselves or collaborate closely with researchers. Some mine the images of the unseen world to comment about the debates that swarm around the intersection of disease and ethics—past, present, and future. Others are drawn to the abstract beauty of what is sub-visible—real and imagined. Several of the artists use their work as a starting point to understand the complex relationships between humans and their biological systems, as well as challenges facing us in the 21st century, including emerging infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance. Through paintings, drawings, installations, and videos, these artists ponder the humanistic and scientific implications of knowing and seeing what we normally cannot see.

The AAAS Art of Science and Technology Program features Jody Rasch’s paintings and drawings in a two-person exhibition which explores duality−abstraction and representation, the literal and the metaphorical, science and mysticism, the unseen and the seen− a predominant theme in Rasch’s work. The artist uses science images to look beyond what we see in the macro world of our daily lives and gets us to question our world-view and how we react to information.

The large-scale exhibition includes work based on themes from astronomy, biology, physics and spectra. The artist transforms images from radio astronomy, electron microscopy, particle accelerators and individual element’s spectra, discovering their underlying patterns and working with color and design to create work that is both representational and abstract. Rasch uses the scientific images as a connection between the unseen and the visible world. The scale of the actual images contrasts with the size of the artwork: the biological and physics images are massively enlarged and the astronomical images are drastically reduced. The goal is to bring the images to a more human scale so that the viewer can relate to the concepts and elements that underlie our world and universe. He utilizes a variety of techniques and media, including oil, acrylic paint, pastels, colored pencil and pen/ink.