Bridging the Art-and-Science Divide

While popular opinion tends to place art and science at opposing poles, artist Leah Sobsey is more inclined to focus on the ground they share in helping us understand our world.

A reception last week at North Carolina State University’s Plant Sciences Building brought artists, scientists and their supporters together to celebrate art that Sobsey created as part of a partnership between the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative and the Gregg Museum of Art & Design.

The reception was just one aspect of a semester-long, plant-focused interdisciplinary partnership between the N.C. PSI and the Gregg Museum.

Sobsey is a curator and associate professor of photography at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, and as artist-in-residence with the N.C. PSI, she shadowed three graduate students this semester and developed works of art reflecting their plant sciences research.

This is about noticing, it’s about caring, and it’s about creating, hopefully with empathy for our planet and for each other.

Each of the pieces unveiled at the reception is, as she put it, “an attempt to uncover some meaning — some unknown meaning — similar to how each of these researchers is working in the lab to uncover meaning.”

Quoting writer Maria Popova, Sobsey noted, “‘The aim of science is to eliminate the mysteries of nature. The aim of art is to give us a language for living with that mystery. Creativity in both is a style of noticing, of attending to the world more closely in order to love it more deeply.’

“For me, really this is about noticing, it’s about caring, and it’s about creating, hopefully with empathy for our planet and for each other,” she added.

Hannah Pil and ‘Somos Maiz/We Are Maize’

Sobsey’s interpretation of Hannah Pil’s maize genetics research is captured in an accordion-style book that melds text with cyanotype prints of corn tassels and roots. The work also incorporates the poem “Somos Maiz,” Spanish for “We Are Maize,” by artist, writer and educator Ana María Gómez.

Pil, a Ph.D. student working with N.C. PSI faculty affiliate Rubén Rellán Álvarez of the Department of Molecular and Structural Biochemistry, studies genes in teosinte, corn’s ancestor.

Corn is one of the world’s top crops, serving as a leading source of food, animal feed and bioenergy, but climate change and invasive pests pose significant threats. Pil’s goal is to provide plant breeders with a larger genetic arsenal for developing new varieties that are more resilient in the face of extreme weather conditions and other emerging threats.

Her quest to find answers to modern problems in teosinte’s ancient genetics are reflected in the themes of survival, culture and connection across time that Sobsey explores in the accordion book. As the exhibit label notes, the work invites viewers “to consider how living things, like the book itself, unfold through time, always bending toward light.”

Adarsha Devihalli and ‘The Fir-Tree’

Sobsey’s take on Adarsha Devihalli’s research related to Fraser firs delves into similar themes — resilience, memory and connection — but takes a much larger form. ‘The Fir-Tree’ is a larger-than-life, brilliant blue photo montage on bright white fabric.

As she does with ‘Somos Maiz/We Are Maize,’ Sobsey incorporates poetry into ‘The Fir-Tree,’ adding depth and meaning from 19th-century writer Josephine Preston Peabody’s reflections on the resilience of nature and the human spirit amid adversity. 

Devihalli hopes his doctoral research will lead to solutions that help instill resilience in both the state’s commercial Christmas tree industry and in ecologically important endangered wild populations of Fraser fir found on high-elevation peaks in the southern Appalachian Mountains.

I hope this art piece sparks conversation about native trees in North Carolina and across the U.S. and the effort that NC State is doing to protect them.

Studying with N.C. PSI faculty affiliate Justin Whitehill, of NC State’s Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, Devihalli is comparing the molecular-level interactions that take place when Fraser firs are infected by Phytophthora cinnamomic with those that occur when the pathogen infects two disease-resistant exotic fir trees.

“I hope this art piece sparks conversation about native trees in North Carolina and across the U.S. and the effort that NC State is doing to protect them, because that’s the goal,” he said. “We want to have a rich biodiversity by using modern science.”

Mohammadreza Zare and ‘Galn’

While Sobsey’s interpretations of Devihalli’s and Pil’s research play out in blue tones on soft surfaces of paper and fabric, her piece on Mohammadreza Zare’s research relies on harder materials — glass and metal — and a dramatic grayscale palette.

‘Galn’ is a collection of photographic prints on glass and metal. The work draws connections between materials and processes used in photography and those used in the plant sensor technology Zare is working on.

Light, metal and chemistry converge in these abstract black-and-white prints that reference landscape, the body and the solar system, inviting reflection on process, materiality, data and transformation.

Working with Michael Dickey and Qingshan Wei in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Zare uses a gallium-based alloy that overcomes some of the limits of using other materials in plant sensors. Unlike harder, opaque metals like gold and silver, the ultrathin liquid metal is transparent, allowing light needed for plant growth to pass through. It’s also flexible enough to bend as leaves do.

The plant sensors that Zare is helping develop sit on leaves and provide continuous data that can signal problems before plants show visible symptoms.

Similarly, film photography can reveal hidden phenomena, with an interplay of light, chemistry and metals revealing latent images. Sobsey uses a gallium-based material provided by Zare to create “Galn.”

As the exhibit label explains, the piece “explores the material and alchemical foundations of photography through process. Light, metal and chemistry converge in these abstract black-and-white prints that reference landscape, the body and the solar system, inviting reflection on process, materiality, data and transformation.”

Art to spark creativity and problem-solving innovation

For Sobsey, working with Zare, Devihalli and Pil was an extension of work she’s done at the intersection of art and science for nearly two decades.

“I still find it thrilling – always a little intimidating — to be working with scientists, but I feel that we have a lot to learn from each other,” she said.

Having witnessed the boundary-crossing learning come out of the artist’s residency and related art-and-science activities this fall, N.C. PSI Executive Director Adrian Percy believes similar collaborations could spark creativity and problem-solving innovation in and beyond the plant sciences.

“We have over 100 faculty that are part of our program coming from nine different colleges across campus. …  We literally have rocket scientists and nuclear engineers who are working on agricultural challenges across the state, and that’s very, very powerful,” he said. “But what we’ve lacked is the arts.

“I hope this experiment, if we can call it that, is one of a long line of things that … we do together with our partners.”

About the N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative

With over 100 faculty affiliates from nine NC State University colleges, the N.C. PSI brings together the brightest minds from academia, government and industry to solve complex agricultural challenges through interdisciplinary scientific discovery and innovation, extension outreach and engagement, and education and workforce development. It is part of NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, with ties to the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs.

This post was originally published in Plant Sciences Initiative.