EMBRYONYC
September 21 – December 21, 2018
NEST’s inaugural exhibition, EMBYRONIC, presents preexisting, far-flung work, while also bringing local collaborators together anew: a chemist and a ceramicist; a wood sculptor and an ecologist; or a hydrologist and a filmmaker.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; it is the source of all art and science.”
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
EMBRYONIC Exhibition Gallery
The work in the exhibition can be viewed empirically, contemplatively, immanently, or with a sense of urgency for a world beset with endocrine disruptors, rising sea levels and rampant resource competition. Above all, the work here is germinal, full of potential, testing our thresholds for declaring fertile conclusions, intermediaries, and of course: inventive beginnings.
CU Up Close Image Competition Selection
The glass print is on loan from the BioFrontiers Institute.
"Activating Carbon" by Camila Friedman-Gerliczb & Aaron Lamplugh
This work is a replica of the Air-Cleaning Art designed in a collaboration between the Montoya Lab and the CU Boulder Art Graduate Program. The creation of this piece followed an iterative process of introducing adsorbent materials into ceramic and plaster matrices, and then testing their ability to remove toxic air pollutants. Several full-sized installations will be placed in local nail salons, in order to characterize their impact on indoor air quality.
"Outbreak" by Julie Maren
Outbreak is an artistic representation of the plight of oak trees when scale-insect infestation occurs, notably Kermes scales which affect regional oaks. This installation is composed of acorns harvested from all over
the U.S. where it seems oak trees, and trees in general, are more prone to disease and outbreaks than ever before.
"The Makings of Us" by Dakota Nanton
The images in these prints are based on actual magnifications of the LC phases of human DNA and RNA. Such biophysical research is leading to greater understanding of soft materials technology, the origin of human life, and the unique structures that make us individual as well as a part of a singular species.
"Calla Lilly" by Bob Sievers
Calla lilies belong to the genus Zantedeschia—an homage to the Italian botanist Giovanni Zantedeschi (1773-1846)—and they have come to represent rebirth.
Quantum Computing Research Specimens
Artifacts are on loan from R. Simmonds from NIST.
NEST Field Guide
"Cabinet of Curiosities"
Artifacts are on loan from the CU Museum of Natural History and J. Guillery; curated by J. Guillery.
"Bacterial Time Lapses" by Mehmet Berken & Maria Peñil Cobo
Time lapse photographs of various types of microbial growth in the MOCHA chamber, with corresponding publication in the Journal of Bacteriology.
"Migrant Water" by Toma Peiu, Alice F. Hill, Luiza Parvu, Timothy Dunn & Peter Cusack
Between the concepts of “migrant labor” and “virtual water,” we examine connections of the missing water to the missing people of the Aral Sea basin in Central Asia: a vast ecosystem whose arid, dry downstream flatlands are shaped by the state’s decision to pursue centralized agriculture, and whose upstream water sources in the high mountain glaciers of the Pamir and Tien Shan ranges are now increasingly affected by climate change.
Various Works by Kia Neill
These three works, selected from a larger series of mixed media paintings, combine techniques from naturalist field research drawings, anatomical studies, and vascular system diagrams to become speculative anatomies for forms that have not (yet) existed.
Various Works by Laurids Anderson Sonne
"Framework" by Aaron Treher & Molly McDermott
Framework is an installation artwork that examines the intersection of ecology and culture and its relation to traditional building styles.
"Aqsarnit (ᐊᖅᓴᕐᓃᑦ), or polar light" by Sarah Crump & Nodin de Saillan
This piece represents the dramatic yet abstract changes in Arctic climate and ecosystems that have occurred over the past 10,000 years as a contextual backdrop for modern warming.
"Weaved Nest" by Blaise Cayol
This piece was produced during a hands-on workshop in our exhibition space on Friday, October 26. Blaise Cayol worked with workshop attendees to make a human-size nest with harvested local material.
Science & Art Photobooth
"Notes from Promontory" by Laura Hyunjhee Kim & Jen Liu
Notes from Promontory is a joint collaboration between multimedia artist Laura Hyunjhee Kim and human-computer interaction researcher Jen Liu that re-examines the visual and sociocultural history of the technological wild west.
Golden Spike National Historic Site, located in Promontory Summit, marks the point where the Transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869. Bridging the American East and West Coast across mountains, prairies, deserts and forest, this railroad marks an “annihilation of space and time,” a popular catchphrase from the 19th century used to describe how new communication and transportation technologies, such as the railway and telegraph, can rapidly influence a society. Through re-envisioning this particular site, the collaborators weave together stories of systematized innovation, immigrant labor, and the formation of the American West.
The collection of displayed artifacts were collected onsite from a field study conducted in May of 2018.
"Various Works" by Mary Edna Fraser
Combining modern chemical Procion dyes, beeswax, paraffin, and silk, these batiks are based on maps, satellite images, and the photographs that the artist takes while flying her family’s 1946 propeller plane. She has collaborated with the geologist Orrin Pilke (Duke University) to engage viewers intellectually and emotionally.
"The Race for Life" by Kerry Koepping
"The Race for Life" was captured during a two-week winter expedition, with the Inuit hunters, in Greenland’s Scoresby Sound. The expedition is part of a multi-year series documenting and understanding the changes facing the Arctic’s indigenous do to climate change. The photo was taken at the base of a 400-foot-high iceberg that was frozen into the pack ice.
"Lupine" by Amy Richman & Megan Blanchard
Choices of scale are inherent to both scientific research and artistic representation. Two different conceptual impacts become evident when thinking about scale from a scientific and artistic perspective. From a scientific perspective, scale is often concerned with knowability and comprehension. From an artist’s perspective, scale is experiential, relative, and the body is the unit, or scale, of measure. In a field full of lupines, this body of work sits between knowability and experience, asking: how do the choices we make regarding scale limit and inform understanding, and how does the scale we choose to work within influence the way information is received, valued, and experienced?
"The desire for, and the impossibility of, infinite expansion" by Catherine Cartwright
Without the body, we look at human material in the abstract as it may appear to be forming or deforming into a human being, and the fate of these hypothetical specimens in the current environment is highly questionable.
"Quantum Computing Research Specimens"
A series of research artifacts created in the development of microwave-based circuit research for application in quantum computing. Circuits are designed (displayed hanging in the window), and then miniaturized (displayed in microscope). Custom-built mounts for the circuits (metal specimens) require withstanding temperatures below any that exist naturally on earth. Each iteration of this scientific research process, much akin to other artists’ work in this exhibition,
is demonstrated through the changing scales, physical shapes, and design configurations as research is refined over time.
"Extreme Ice Survey Time Lapse" by James Balog
The Extreme Ice Survey time lapse cameras record changes in the glaciers every half hour of daylight year round, yielding approximately 8,500 frames per camera per year. The time lapse images are then edited into videos that reveal how fast climate change is transforming large regions of the planet. The Extreme Ice Survey is a project of Earth Vision Institute.