Art and Science

To most people art and science are completely different topics, but in my mind there are similarities.  Both rely heavily on observation and both rely on experimentation.  A difference is science has an obligation to stick to the truth whereas art can fudge reality and make it into what they wish.  I remember BPJ in one of his lectures telling us that we as artists need to lie to our viewers and fool them into thinking that 2D space actually has 3D depth.               Perhaps it is cliche to bring Leonardo da Vinci into a discussion of art and science.  He never wanted to be a painter.  He wanted to be a man of science, he wanted to be a medical doctor.  Unfortunately for him the way Italian society worked at that point in time a male had to have noble lineage on both sides to be a doctor.  Leonardo's father was noble, but his mother was a peasant.  A painting apprenticeship was the best Leonardo's father could do for him.  Really I think it should be stated that history owes Leonardo's father a debt of gratitude.  It would have been easy for him to be a dead beat dad, but he wasn't.  He took him into his household and saw to it he was educated.  I don't know what sort of education he would have received as a peasant.  Although he did not know Latin, which was required in advanced studies.  Anyways his desire to be a medical doctor was what fueled his anatomical studies of cadavers.  He believed his powers of observation he had gained as an artist were better than the rote memorization of misinformation going on in medical training at that time.  His work predates Vesalius, the doctor who first published an observation based anatomy book.  Galen was still the rule of the medical land at that time.  In other words his anatomical drawings were his fuck you to the medical establishment of that time.

Dr. Ionat Zurr and Oron Katts

I did some further digging on ORLAN's harlequin living skin coat project and found that she had worked with the duo of Dr. Ionat Zurr and Oron Katts, the master minds behind SymbioticA.  Dr. Zurr received her doctorate from the University of Western Australia.  Her thesis was "Growing Semi-Living Art" done under the faculty of architecture. The two are pioneers in the field of biology based art.  They are perhaps best known for coming up with Victimless Leather.  The project being to grow a seamless leather jacket.  They based the jacket on a biodegradable polymer, coated it with 3T3 mouse cells, and then overlayed that with human bone cells for added strength.  My understanding is that they are able to combine between different species because there is no immune system.  The work was presented at the MOMA, but it didn't go over particularly well, and they ran into technical issues.

Victimless Leather

  Other projects include their Pig Wings project, where they grew pig bone cells into wing shapes.  They also did a project where they grew frog steaks in their lab/studio, and gave them to exhibition attendees to eat.

                      Pig Wings

Thoughts on Neo Nazis

Years ago when I was working my way through my undergraduate degree I met a neo nazi.  We were both working at the local convention center.  I had no clue until she invited me back to her place.  Shocker of shocker she had a big nazi flag hanging in her room.  She was actually kind of apologetic about it.  She said she joined because she was scared of black people.   Admittedly at this point I should of confronted her then about it, but I was in dumbfounded shock.  Awhile later around Valentine's Day a women's group on campus were selling white and milk chocolate vulva lollipop.  I bought a mix and took them into work.  It was the neo nazi's turn to be shocked.  I let people pick which they wanted.  In hindsight maybe it would have been better if I had presented her with a milk chocolate vulva.  Then again maybe her seeing the supervisor she most liked go gaga over a milk chocolate vulva was worth something too.

Lady Chatterly at the Pump House

This is just an update.  The Lady Chatterly Print did get into the Banned Books exhibit at the Pump House Regional Arts Center.

INTP

I took the Myer Briggs thing last night.  I got INTP.  It said only about 3 percent of the population are this personality type.  Maybe this is a weird place to go with this info, but a few years ago I tried to do the eHarmony thing.  I say try because after I went through the trouble of filling out their personality profile they told me there was not a match for me anywhere in the country.  That being said I was an unmedicated schizophrenic at the time, and they did also say they thought I might be mentally ill.  I wonder how much the INTP thing was a contributing factor, though.  Considering what a small segment are INTPs.

Chine cole for a print about Uncle Joe

I was going to print a woodblock over this.  I kind of liked it how it was though, and this view was corroborated at an art critique.  It is supposed to be a jellyfish.

Bird? Print

I am pretty sure I did this at Marywood, but I do not recall where I was going with it.

I am trying to find a viscosity print by my Dad that he had given me.  It is in my flat file somewhere.  So far I have found some stuff I don't think has been posted before.  For a few years I was very prolific; maybe that is why I am so lazy now.  So some new old stuff here, some much older new stuff on the random beastly undergrad things, and possibly new old things on the naked beast.

                                            I don't think I posted this before.  This was from when I was at Marywood.  I didn't have a camera then, so I was unable to post larger pieces.  I was messing around with doing two colors at once on a lithograph as a single run.