upper waypoint

From the Depths: Inspiring Art and Science

Save ArticleSave Article
Failed to save article

Please try again

Metronome: 45" diameter, Acrylic on maple panel
Tiffany Bozic, 2007
Photo credit: ©Jack Dumbacher, 2007

For 154 years, The California Academy of Sciences has explored the world, gathering over 20 million specimens that are housed in the museum's collections. The new California Academy of Sciences Artist in Residence (AiR) program is pioneering a new way of interpreting these specimens, and its work will be unveiled for the first time to the public on November 15, 2007.

The research division of the Academy, although largely unseen, has driven the mission and public face of the Natural History Museum since its inception. Collections from the departments in this arm of the museum, along with collections from the Academy's library and archives, will serve as the focus of the residency. The Natural History Museum contains eight departments that are organized by taxonomic discipline: Anthropology, Aquatic Biology, Botany, Entomology, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate Zoology & Geology, and Ornithology & Mammalogy.

For the AiR program, the artist will explore the collections with an assigned mentor from a selected department, culminating in a final exhibit and associated programming. The hope is to blur the lines between the arts and sciences. Through partnership and collaboration, artists from multiple disciplines will be challenged to experience and interpret the collections in new and meaningful ways. By creating space for artists to inspire dialogue about the issues facing the Earth and the sciences today the AiR program is creating another way for the Academy to further its mission to explain, explore, and protect the natural world.

The pilot AiR program opens on November 15, 2007. Its first exhibit, From the Depths: Inspiring Art and Science, has been a year in the making. It is a contemporary art exhibit created from the collaboration between Oakland based artist Tiffany Bozic and Dr. Rich Mooi, curator of Invertebrate Zoology & Geology.

Sponsored

Inspired by John James Audubon and Ernst Haeckel, but delving more deeply into the imaginary and darker aspects of the natural world, Bozic questions the theme of survival in her pieces for From the Depths. Bozic views the making of art as a kind of therapeutic process -- a way to make sense of the world, of her relationship to life as it unfolds, of its power over us, and perhaps most importantly, of our power over it.

As a mentor, Mooi is a perfect complement to Bozic's musings. To Mooi, science and art are two faces of the same coin. Both fields are driven by inspiration taken from ideas that develop out of close observation of nature. This sense has evolved over Mooi's long career of specialty research in the evolution of echinoderms, the spiny-skinned animals that include sand dollars, sea urchins, and sea stars, along with his long history of drawing scientific illustrations in nature. Mooi's intersecting interests in art and the sciences have led him to spearhead the Academy's annual search for a biological illustration summer intern and have also interested him in mentoring Bozic.

Along with Bozic's paintings, the From the Depths: Inspiring Art and Science exhibit includes photographs by local photographer Billy O'Callaghan -- documenting the evolution of the residency, preserved specimens from the Invertebrate Zoology collection, and artfully designed tanks with live fish and invertebrates.

If you are interested in learning more about AiR and want to be added to the email list about this developing program, contact Lindsay Irving at lirving@calacademy.org or learn more about From the Depths by visiting http://www.calacademy.org/exhibits/air/.

Cat Aboudara is the Special Projects Manager at California Academy of Sciences and works in the public programs division. The Academy is a wonderful fit for her because of her curiosity about the natural world and her experience in working with native California wildlife.

latitude: 37.7819, longitude: -122.404

lower waypoint
next waypoint