Artists & Art
bioephemera | January 12, 2011
An unbelievable octopus chair - nay, throne - by Maximo Riera.
"the Octopus Chair places the animal and human being in harmony, where each is considered equal and one is not subject to the other. The octopus is not decoration; it is as intrinsic to the chair as the person sat upon it."
Via NotCot (there are even "making of" pictures!)
Want one? email info@maximoriera.com.
bioephemera | January 12, 2011Like a snake
Transfer/painting on aluminum
Berit Myreboee, 2010
Norwegian artist Berit Myreboee's aluminum transfer paintings are like troubled seaside dreams: tattooed skin dissolves into floating tendrils and tentacles of black and prussian blue. Each image is the product of an idiosyncratic layering process, first laying on photographs, then painting over them with saturated oils.
'U.T'
Transfer/painting on aluminum
Berit Myreboee, 2010
Since Myreboee's "canvas" is highly polished aluminum, the final paintings absorb and reflect a distorted version of their surroundings, like the surface…
bioephemera | January 1, 2011
Michael Reedy's drawings are like 1980s Visual Man and Woman models plopped down in a half-excavated quarry of visual and literary allusions. He achieves a cut-paper, graphic feel by composing on superimposed planes, sort of like a stage set, with strategic uses of outlining and negative space. And he is a master of figure drawing (he teaches it, so he'd better be). When an artist really knows figural anatomy, he/she doesn't need to do anything flashy with it: you can just tell.
While it's not one of the overtly anatomical drawings (like malum E, above), I'm totally captivated by Blash, a…
bioephemera | December 30, 2010
This series of sciart wallpapers by Dan Funderburgh were inspired by the Time-Life Science Library, a series of educational books published in the 1960s. For those of us old enough to remember them, Time-Life's series are objects of nostalgia in themselves. Coupling the vintage design and palettes of those books with vintage sci-art symbolism yields a sharply contemporary set of prints.
Funderburgh describes his work as "a repudiation of the fabricated schism between art and decoration;" you could also describe it as a repudiation of the fabricated gulf between science and design. (Fun…
bioephemera | December 29, 2010
I have no idea how I missed this before the holidays (sorry!), but NBDesigns has a line of oxidized silver embryo jewelry that is pure vintage lab-chic. The embryonic mice are particularly adorable:
And, on the less-cute, more-sciency end of the spectrum, her embryonic chicks look just like illustrations in an old dev bio textbook:
I should also note, since we are coming up on Valentine's Day, that she makes Erlenmeyer flask earrings and pendants with little hearts. (You can also request a glass heart worked into the chain of the zebrafish embryo pendant, or check out her sloth & heart…
bioephemera | December 28, 2010
Tatiana Plakhova's "Music is Maths": what cathedrals should look like on the TRON Grid.
Via fubiz.
bioephemera | December 28, 2010Via iO9, a Nature News slideshow of natural history engravings by physician Martin Lister's teenage daughters, who contributed technically accurate engravings of shells to one of his books, the Historiae Conchyliorum:
Historians now believe the pair were the first women to use microscopes to help produce some of their scientific drawings. Anna and Susanna's place in the history of science is explored in a biography of Martin Lister in preparation by historian Anna Marie Roos of the University of Oxford's Cultures of Knowledge project. In a recent web post, Roos describes how she stumbled…
bioephemera | December 27, 2010
The ultimate bioephemera: art you eat! This cephalopod by specialty cake artist Karen Portoleo is definitely NOT a cake wreck (although if there were a little cake(ship)wreck under those tentacles, it might not be a bad addition). Karen previously made a "gingerbread" house with an octopus icing and tiling the roof. For serious.
Thanks to Patricia for the link! (Check out Patricia's art blog, too).
bioephemera | December 26, 2010
Olivier Valsecchi's portraits of the nude human body, caught in motion, haloed in dust, could convey an incredibly complicated subtext. Or not. "Dust" by Olivier Valsecchi, via ChangetheThought via Street Anatomy.
bioephemera | December 21, 2010Water + physics = beautiful work by Shinichi Maruyama.
Via Neatorama - thanks to Rhett for the tip.
bioephemera | December 21, 2010
To Hold You Again
Chris Peters
Artist Chris Peters just wrapped up a winter show at Santa Monica's Copro gallery. I've blogged about his work before; it's inspired by vintage medical illustrations, but his agonized skeletons are ripped from their anatomical atlases to brood in Hopper-esque gas stations, Mad Men-like interiors, and smoky chiaroscuro. Whether you find his work creepy, Goth-chic, spiritual, or even humorous, it's a skilled and thoughtful reboot of the classic tropes of medical illustration.
I'm sorry I didn't get this posted before his latest show closed, but Copro has a…
bioephemera | December 5, 2010FYI:
Science Art-Nature and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) present the "Science Without Borders" online art exhibition in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C., February 17 - 21, 2011.This on-line art exhibition, was conceived to display and promote the best contemporary Science Art and to encourage discourse between the scientific and artistic communities. Designed as a companion to the national meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, each selected piece of…
bioephemera | December 4, 2010"Although science is seemingly the logical, rational, ordered antithesis of artistic creativity, artists and scientists still share a common drive to innovate, explore, dissect and reveal. They have a unified love and awe for the world around and within them."
--Mark de Novellis, curator of "Picturing Science," a sciart exhibition opening today at the UK's Riverside Gallery.
bioephemera | November 30, 2010APOD got some attention yesterday with this stunning photo of a supercell thunderstorm several kilometers wide, brooding over a Montana field:
Mothership
Sean Heavey, 2010
I'm not sure it's possible for a work of art or photography to more effectively convey the grandeur of nature and the awesome power of physics. The image is simply unreal (which is why the title "Mothership" works so well). But Montana photographer Sean Heavey has a whole gallery of these stunning storm photos.
I'm especially nuts about the ominous, Tesla-esque drama of "Base Reflectivity":
And for all you would-be storm-…
bioephemera | November 30, 2010Dave Hone's blog, Archosaur Musings, is hosting a wonderful series of interviews with paleoartists - artists and illustrators who specialize in resurrecting lost species for scientific publications, popular media, and/or fine art. Check out Mark Witton and Todd Marshall for particularly interesting perspectives.
Not only are these pretty posts with lots of eye candy, they're also excellent windows into that varied career options for anyone considering freelance medical or biological illustration. Kudos to Dave Hone for this truly useful (and I'm sure very time-consuming) series of sciart…
bioephemera | November 26, 2010
All shopped out? I can pretty much guarantee that difficult person on your gift list does not have a huge, one-of-a-kind mama Emperor scorpion carrying baby scorpions made of fleece, felt and pom-poms.
At $200, this plush scorpion sculpture may sting your pocketbook, but seller weirdbuglady also offers more affordable amoebas, tardigrades, fossils and insects. Check out her etsy shop and her blog.
bioephemera | November 24, 2010
David HochbaumGenisis
NYC artist David Hochbaum, the creator of beguiling ephemera-inspired art, is a long-time favorite of BioE (and our friends at Phantasmaphile). Check out his Open Call portfolio, and if you will, take a moment to rate it five stars - you could help him win an artists' residency!
(psst, cephalopodphiles: this is the artist behind Mother, a piece I blogged about way back in 2007.)
bioephemera | November 12, 2010With a poster titled "WE NEED YOUR BODY! For a UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY," microbiologist Steven Park and artist Anne Brodie invited attendees at the British Science Festival to
stand NAKED inside our live bioluminescent photograph booth and have your photograph taken. Enveloped by a living ethereal blue green light, the resulting faint and ghostly image will be used as part of an [art] installation. . .
The eerie results, which look a whole lot like TSA millimeter-wave scans, are appearing in an exhibition at the UK's Royal Institution through December 3. See a slideshow at the Londonist.
bioephemera | October 26, 2010
Wildlife of Vietnam, by Brendan Wenzel
This bundle of exotic animals by Brendan Wenzel is whimsical, yet unsettling. On the one hand, it would be perfect for a children's book; I imagine a tale in which the animals overcome their natural animosities, cooperate to free themselves, dump a hapless and ineptly nonthreatening poacher in the river, and return safely to their various homes, in the happiest of ecological endings. But we all know that's not how the story really goes.
Wenzel, a New York illustrator who until recently lived in Vietnam, says his work was inspired by the worsening…
bioephemera | October 23, 2010Just in: the 2010 Imagine Science Films Festival's Nature Scientific Merit award, given to "a short film that exemplifies science in narrative filmmaking in a compelling, credible and inspiring manner," is An Eyeful of Sound, a short film about audio-visual synaesthesia by Samantha Moore.
Here's the trailer:

An Eyeful of Sound - trailer from Samantha Moore on Vimeo.
It's a little hard from that clip to get a sense of what the film is like. But it's great that an organization is finally calling attention to science-themed short films. Bravo, ISFF.
Related: The Eyeful of Sound…