You Are Here
Created in fall 2023 for ARTS 409 (Art and Science: Merging Printmaking and Biology)
Prompt: You will use three different microscopes–a DIY microscope, a Compound microscope, and a Stereoscopic microscope–to look at and document a variety of things. In addition to gathering images, you will do some research to learn more about the things you look at. You are encouraged to explore the science further as you decide which images that you want to work with in the print project.
The biological concepts and images that you explore are your point of departure for the print. You will not be simply scaling up images that you collect from the microscopic looking. The print that you make will be constructed with at least two parts: using multiple images or versions of images collected, or in conjunction with other visual information that you collect or make in order to set up a visual dialogue.
Artist Statement: “You Are Here” frames the veins of a single leaf against a street map to evoke the similarities between the smallest and largest systems of life, as well as the natural and man-made world. By existing between these boundaries, humanity is literally constrained by, but metaphysically exceeds both.
I was inspired by this concept after viewing a leaf under a microscope, and realizing that its structure resembled city planning. Upon further research, I learned that leaves, tree branches, snowflakes, river systems, lightning, electricity, animal circulatory and respiratory systems, neurons, and even the cosmic web are all forms of fractal systems: infinitely complex, repeating shapes in which every part, regardless of how zoomed in or out you are, closely resemble the entire image. Whether coincidental, scientifically reasoned, or divine, there are other resemblances in the extreme micro and macro, including the iris of an eye and a nebula, the birth of a cell and the death of a star, and brain cells and the observable universe. Such similarities raise the question: how does the human race, and more specifically, a single person, fit into all of that?
Media: 32″ x 48″ woodblock print on muslin fabric
Final Product
