Lydia Kasumi Shirreff can create most anything out of paper. The UK-based paper sculptor has turned flattened sheets of dead trees into eye-popping 3D models of plants, animals, building, and food, just to name a few. But my fave is the geology-inspired work she produced for a 2011 show called Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Paper, scissors, meet rock.
*OK, maybe more biology than chemistry, but cupid hates pedants.
Xavier Cortada is an artist whose interests spread across many areas of science. His works have included projects at both the North and South Poles, and his subjects have ranged from DNA nucleotides to subatomic particles. This month, Cortada’s work is on display in two very different exhibitions.
The first, at Chcago’s Fermilab Art Gallery, focuses on art as a means of education and outreach, and features artists who have collaborated closely with scientists. Cortada is showing five large “digital tapestries” that he created as a fellow at CERN that portray the five search strategies which the CMS (compact muon solenoid) experiment used to discover a new Higgs-like particle. The exhibition, which also features work by Michael Hoch, Peter Markowitz, and Lindsay Olson, is open through April 22.
In a completely different vein, Cortada and a group of botanical illustrators have teamed up to create an exhibition called In Deep with Diatoms on display at the Frost Art Museum at Miami’s Florida International University, though February 22. The artists used traditional watercolor techniques to explore the unique and complex beauty of diatoms, single-celled aquatic microorganisms.
If you can’t make it to either show, you can see more of Cortada’s work on his website.
The news traveled through the science twittersphere like a bad burrito – you can sell your poop for big bucks! Rachel Feltman’s article in the Washington Post got all sorts of people interested in selling their, ahem, solid waste to a company called OpenBiome, which collects, banks and distributes fecal matter to hospitals, which use it to perform fecal transplants on patients with hard-to-cure C. difficile infections.
Alas for most of those who wish to cash in rather than flush away, would-be sellers have to pass stringent tests and also live near the company’s headquarters. And at the moment, there’s no demand for cat poop, although many of us collect lots of it every day. Darn.
The Finch and Pea 