from these things as influences as
much as I would an exhibition.
I recently watched your
2010 Green Art, Ted Talk
and you mentioned reading
Cabinet of Curiosities by
Albertus Seba.
That book is right there behind
you! I think as a textual artist and
a printmaker, books are like raw
material for me. Especially with
books like that, they’re really
historical and they represent this
fusion between art and science.
Art needs science and science
needs art. Science needs art a
lot. Scientists aren’t good at capturing our imagination without
visualizations.
mental in bridging the
gap between science and
art. These are people who
like to draw; they’re really
careful observers of the natural world.
You’d have to be truly interested in these things
because most of the language used in science
isn’t really accessible or
used anywhere else.
Yeah! Absolutely. Darwin
is a good example of a scientist who was also a naturalist. He was recording,
drawing, and cataloging
Sorrow, acrylic, graphite, ink, and marker on polymer plate everything that he collected, saw, and came across.
ing. They’re the artist’s interpretation of these His theory of evolution was written years after
The artists who did the illustrations in Cabi- dead, stuffed creatures. So, their imagination he saw the evidence for it. He had to collect,
draw, and think about it, and let it simmer, and
net of Curiosities had to reanimate all of these really makes all of these images come to life.
then this theory came out of all of that obserdead specimens. So, these forms that the snakes
are taking in the book are not actually happen- Naturalists, I think, have been always instru- vation—but it was just observation. He had to
Stress, acrylic, graphite, ink, and marker on polymer plate
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