Art+Bio

Till IJ.ONVRIK) GALLERY ART+BIO IIn October 1993, George Gessert and I participated in a symposium en­ titled "Assisted Migration," which was hosted by the University of Oregon and fea­ tured the work of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison. For the better part of a week, we attended presentations, group dinners and colloquia in Eugene, Oregon, and at the town hall of Deadwood, Oregon. Other participants included students and fac­ ulty from the University of Oregon, employees of the U.S. Forest Service and mem­ bers of the Deadwood community. During the event, and later while writing an essay about it, I began to realize the extent to which some artists were attempting to recon­ cile the practice of art to the methods of science. Gessert had been actively involved in such pursuits for years, through his interest in genetics and through his hybridizing experiments with Pacific Coast irises, and he was well acquainted with other artists working with living media and biological themes. The ART+BIO exhibition [1], which took place at Central Michigan University in March 1998, grew from a series of running conversations that Gessert and I have had about art and its relation to science. We wanted to create a venue and continuing fo­ rum for artwork that addresses subjects such as botany, ecology and genetics. As human beings enter a new millennium with an increased awareness of and sen­ sitivity to the natural environment, it stands to reason that such issues will be re­ flected in art. The inhuman beauty of nature, long a staple source for landscape painters, now yields to interpretation of a different kind. If the history of human ex­ pression is an outing of emotion, the following work can be thought of as an emo­ tional response to the expanding macro- and microcosms. It is the future writ large in the music of the interstices. DAVID STAIRS Curator, ART+BIO Art Department Central Michigan University 132 Wightman Hall Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859, U.S.A. E-mail: Reference 1. Artists exhibited in the ART+BIO exhibition, curated by George Gessert and David Stairs, included Benjamin Potter, Suzanne Anker, Gail Wight, Ted Purves, Sonya Rapoport, Martin Zet, Marta Lyall and Hubert Duprat. See Hubert Duprat's work in his article "The Wonderful Caddis Worm: Sculptural Work in Collaboration with Trichoptera," Leonardo 31, No. 3 (1998). See also Sonya Rapoport's article in this issue.© 1998 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 263-269, 1998 2 6 3 Ä 4 ♦ -i Suzanne Anker, Cellular Script (Yves Klein Blue), tempera on Mylar, 25 x 40 in, 1991-1995. Throughout all cultures and time periods, sys­ tems of writing have been held as a transcendental form of the divine. The word, the book, the text are all attributes associated with God. Through symbols inscribed on a surface, the lexicon functions as a communicating forge. In addition, calligraphy, automatic writings and genetics can be considered transcribing entities that unfold in time and space. As noted by Simon Leys in his review of The Art ofChinese Writing: "Calligraphy is a form that unfolds in time by a dynamic sequence of movements. Each character of the script is made with a pre­ cise number of strokes which must be traced to an invariable predetermined sequence. This is a medium that tolerates no error, no cor­ rection, no hesitation" (Simon Leys, "One More Art," New York Review, 18 April 1996). Leys's description also holds true for chromosomes ("colored bodies"), which unfold in time as part of the cell cycle. A dynamic sequence of movements allows them to for­ mat chains, replicate and spin apart. DNA is a medium that tolerates no error, no correction. Slight deviations in replication result in grave consequences. By automatically writing life's gestures, genes process our cellular script. (Suzanne Anker, 101 Wooster Street, #7, New York, NY 10012, U.S.A.) 264 Leonardo Gallery ■! *.- -hi'' Benjamin Potter, Afterlife, bird wing suspended in honey, 8 x 8 in, 1997. The artifacts of scientific collection and classification are fasci­ nating to me: boxes and cases full of wings, old teeth, eggshells, carapaces. I wonder what life resided in herbarium specimens pressed flat or labeled...