Exhibition to merge science, microscopy, visual art

Interface, an unusual art-and-science exhibition, will bring together elements of cell biology, studio art, and the sophisticated microscopy imaging techniques for a one-night presentation Friday, May 2, at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery.

	Images by Claire Beynon

The event, which is free and open to the public, will begin with a 6:30 p.m. reception, followed by a 7 p.m. talk and slide show exploring the relationships between art and science, intuition and knowledge, fact and the imagination.

The evening's keynote speaker will be the acclaimed New Zealand artist Claire Beynon. She will be joined by cell biologist Samuel Bowser of the Wadsworth Center, New York State's public-health laboratory, with whom she collaborates in cross-disciplinary presentations. Bowser studies a group of microscopic one-celled creatures called Foraminifera ("forams," for short), which he collects annually from the oceans of Antarctica. The vast fossil deposits that forams produce help paleontologists understand the functioning of both modern and ancient marine ecosystems?information crucial to understanding contemporary issues like global climate change.

Among the slides Beynon will present will be images of a series called "Katabatikos," inspired by a two-month stay in the laboratory's Antarctic field camp. The works on view at the Tang will also include charcoal and pastel drawings, scanning-electron-microscope and macro photographs, and a selection of artworks Beynon describes as "composed out of raw science ingredients." The Interface installation itself is a 10-foot-square, floor-mounted piece comprising 127 images, each mounted atop a glass laboratory beaker.

The exhibition will also feature artworks created during the past academic year by students in a cross-disciplinary microscopy/art independent-study research experience under the direction of biology Professor David Domozych. The students' work was part of an interdisciplinary initiative of the Skidmore Microscopy Imaging Center. The six Skidmore students transformed the often visually striking microscopy images that they obtained in their research in the college's Microscopy Imaging Center into paintings, sculptures, and video programs. The students' images are expected to be on view over the summer in the atrium of Dana Science Center.