Drawing on science | Otago Daily Times Online News

As artist Katherine Arad has discovered, scientific research has the power to change lives. She tells Rebecca Fox about the scientific research that has transformed her artistic practice.

Catherine Allard grows green beans all over her garden and even in her home.

It’s not because she loves beans or enjoys gardening. Quite the opposite. It’s all about art and science.

Arad is experimenting with how beans grow with and without the pressure of salt water exposure. She paints the beans as she watches them grow and experiments with pigments extracted from the bean leaves.

This is in response to the work of botanist David Burritt, part of this year’s Art + Science exhibition: Memory + Mind, which examines oxidative stress in plants and other organisms when exposed to pollutants and a range of other environmental stressors.

“I’m studying how plants have memories, which in itself is incredible.”

Curated by Pam McKinlay and Allard, the exhibition features 16 projects in which artists use a variety of mediums to respond to a range of scientific research.

“It’s quite difficult to integrate scientific knowledge into your brain and then apply it in interesting ways and have it integrate with your artistic practice. It takes a lot of time.”

This was the third exhibition Arad participated in, but it was the first one that changed her life.

About six years ago, Arad moved back to Dunedin, returning to the Dunedin Art School where she had studied 20 years earlier. She had worked in photography, public art and curating, but decided five years ago to focus more on her own practice. Then she discovered the Art + Science – Earth exhibition when the art school put out a call to all alumni.

“I have experience curating arts and science projects in the past, so this sounded like a good fit for me.”

She is working with geologist Sophie Briggs, who is studying zircon, an ancient mineral thought to reveal processes on Earth over billions of years.

Arad finds it difficult to reconcile its importance on that level with its widespread use in commercial fields such as industrial ceramics, and why it is not used as a pigment.

“To understand the material, I compared it to artists’ materials I knew, like titanium white pigment, and compared hardness, refractive index, and other properties. The reason for this is that it’s very hard.”

So she decided to experiment and make a sand-colored painting primer using zircon powder, which is more commonly used in ceramics.

“So I chose silver-tip pen as the drawing material because it has a fine texture and moderate hardness, making it a perfect silver-tip pen drawing base.”

On Zircon Ground, she painted an alpine landscape based on Briggs’ fieldwork site on McFarland Ridge. She exhibited that work along with a cabinet filled with zircon samples from the geology department, pigments she made, and reference books.

“Some of the scientists who collected these samples came to see the work. They did it for one purpose and were very interested in what else you could do.”

The discovery was a pivotal moment in Allard’s 20-year artistic career, and she has never looked back. She has spent the past few years working to perfect her silverpoint technique, using different pigments, and slowly stepping away from other work so she can spend more time in her garage studio.

“I’ve always loved drawing and it’s great to start again. In a way, it suits my personality.”

In silverpoint drawing, the artist uses a thin wire of silver, gold, copper or tin to draw on a prepared surface with a stylus. The metal used on white paper does not leave a mark. This was a practice used before graphite and later pencils became popular.

“It’s really fun, you can do this detailed and time-consuming work and then also play around with the materials on the ground and see how they react differently on the ground.”

Due to the purity of the metal, silver-tipped pens are suitable for delicate, detailed drawings.

“It works similarly to a pencil, but instead of a smooth plate, it’s like using a very hard pencil. When I work with pencils, I might snap a few pencils while drawing, but I’ve been using the same 2-inch (5-cm) piece of metal as a stylus for four years and I haven’t really noticed it falling off more than a few millimeters.”

The tonal range is limited to the darkest mid-tones, which forces her to think carefully about how light will affect the work.

“You have to build up very, very slowly.”

It also requires discipline as it does not allow for mistakes as most of the time they cannot be effectively ‘erased.’ She takes high-resolution photographs as reference for the ‘plant wilt’.

“It takes a lot of preparation. It makes me a better artist because you have to be focused all the time. You have to nail down the composition, the light source, the details before you start.”

Using silver also means that the pieces will tarnish over time and can appear to glow in certain lighting.

“I like the idea of ​​a painting changing a little bit over time.”

She can spend anywhere from two to eight hours a day painting, depending on the research required, and she finds that the process leaves physical traces: calluses form on her hands from the work.

“I like that.”

Following the success of Allard’s first Art + Science exhibition, she took part in the next one, in response to scientists’ research into wind dynamics in the St Kilda sand dunes.

To do this, she took Atriplex grass, which has a relatively high silica content, from the dunes and turned it into ash to see if it could be used as a metal tip subsoil.

“I enjoy working with silverpoint and observational drawing, but I’m also very keen to experiment with materials. I don’t know if the ash painting was a huge success as I’m limited in what I can do in my home studio. I’d love to have a scanning electron microscope to find out if there are any silica fragments in there.”

This year’s science experiments, while challenging, were more successful.

“I’m interested in how plants form memories under the stress of climate change, including changes in salinity.”

In addition to extracting beans grown under different conditions, Arad ferments the plant’s leaves in salt and water in a refrigerator for several weeks.

After she drained the water from the plant’s leaves, she was left with a green chlorophyll dye. To make the dye more stable and turn it into a pigment, she combined the dye with soda ash using alum to form a lake. This produced a bright yellow pigment that was the basis for homemade watercolor paint, but it was not very stable. Chlorophyll, as a colorant, is known to fade when exposed to ultraviolet light.

Using paint as watercolor, Arad used the silver-tip technique to paint stressed plants and healthy plants at various stages of growth.

“This salt stress state gradually weakens and eventually disappears, leaving only the unstressed plant pattern. It’s like the plant losing its memory and resetting, because retaining the stress memory at the expense of growth is bad for the plant.”

Since she used both watercolor and silverpoint in this piece, it required some work on a foundation that would work for both.

“A lot of materials need to be tested. Mixed media and silver-tip pens are often used, and people often use pastels. Watercolor is also possible. You just have to find a compromise.”

She works alone and enjoys the opportunity to work with scientists, whom she finds are always generous with their time and curious about what artists see in their work.

“You have to build a community.”

These projects make plants a primary focus of Arad’s practice, as she is fascinated by how plants are beautiful, yet hold a place in and give life to so many aspects of life, from agriculture to medicine.

“I’m not necessarily a gardening or plant lover. I’m fascinated by how they grow from these little seeds or bulbs and how all these crazy forms grow in response to their culture or environment. They’re like little sculptures that I’ve just discovered.”

She is involved with the New Zealand Botanical Art Society and Otago’s group of amateur and professional artists in different mediums, ‘The Botanists’.

“I like to paint plants as they really are, rather than an idealized version.”

Eventually, she dedicated herself to collecting her work so that she could mount a solo exhibition.

“It feels like everything is slowly getting better, but it’s taking a lot of time. I just like the feeling of being a little different.”

Art + Science: Memory + Mind Highlights