The Artist's Blog
September 19,2007
I took a lot of images of the piece last Spring while The Evolution of Darwin was still being installed. Somehow I never got to put them on the blog before I went away for the summer......
These are wall images of Robert Axelrod and E.O. Wilson. Below is Barbara McClintock and Jeffrey H. Schwartz.
Below is an installation shot with an image of Theodosius Dobzhansky in front of the salt.
Above and below are images of Richard Goldschmidt and Thomas Hunt Morgan.
Below are several images. The one in the center has transformed so much that I'm not sure who it is anymore! To the left is Sir Fred Hoyle, on the top is David Haig, and on the right is Rosalind Franklin.
Below are various images of the heads that rusted on the concrete. Top to bottom, (and left to right) they are:
Niles Eldridge, August Weissman, Julian Huxley, Susan Lindquist, Addrianna C. Ocampo Uria, Robert Trivers, Desmond Morris, Mercedes Pascual, George Ledyard Stebbins, and Dian Fossey.
The plaza where the piece was installed is very expansive and it was very difficult to get a photograph of the whole space. My friend, Josh Touster, had a wide lens and did a much better job capturing the sense of the entire installation.
Below are two images of the wall of Darwins as they continued to rust and appear.
As noted below, for some reason every image I would put out of Richard Dawkins was a marginal "replication," and as I persisted in trying, there became a whole section of odd Richard Dawkins heads. Below is probably the best of the batch.
April 7, 2007
As the end of the installation draws near, I have been trying to put out as many heads as I can paint - both on the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the plaza. The plaza, being so large and open, seemed to overwhelm the heads. I hope the volume will have a visual impact when the whole piece comes together for the reception on the 27th.
The five Darwin heads on a wall are all slowly beginning to rust. (There hasn't been much rain.)
This is an image of Carl Woese that has come up on a vertical wall.
Below is an image of three women's heads- Nettie Stevens, (top) Jane Goodall, (left) and Sarah Blaffer Hardy (right). The image of Nettie Stevens was one of the earliest ones I did, (see image below on Nov.13) and it is definitely starting to fade.
April 1, 2007
As opposed to doing Darwin clones, I decided to do a wall with evolving Darwins - each painted from the same photograph, but each beginning slightly differently - and evolving to wherever they end up. This is them just after they were put out.
Below is an image of Eugenie C. Scott. It is strange in that it looks almost solarized.
Below are images of Alan Wilson (left) and Walter Gilbert (right). Some of the detail in Alan Wilson's head is starting to fade since I photographed it in February. It's hard to tell which of these heads will continue to evolve and which will fade away.
March 23,2007
Some of the images from the last time I put heads on the plaza have come up. I did several pairs of clones, which are interesting together.
The clone above is Masatoshi Nei. The clone below is Theodosius Dobzhansky.
Here is an image of another area where I put a string of heads together in a small area. (The image is a bit off as I stitched together a few different images to show a wider view.)
The portraits above (left to right) are Ernst Mayr, Sewall Wright, Joan Oro, Rosalind Franklin, Steve Jones, and Richard Wrangham
March 15, 2007
The Doublemint twins, (my pair of cloned Rachel Carsons) which have been frozen on the plaza for months, are finally finished. They have bizzarely transformed over time.
Similarly, the Darwin head that had a lot of iron filings has also made an interesting transformation.
March 5, 2007
When I started this piece it seemed I had an immense amount of time, (six months!) Now with the weather foreclosing days and weeks that I can put anything out, I have decided tTo put a large amount of images out until the end of the installation. The plaza is very large, and I am also hoping that this will make it easier for people to get a more concentrated sense of what is going on.
Today I installed 35 heads, almost all in one quadrant of the plaza. I am also experimenting to see how some of the images will come out if I remove the fabric after I press the image on the concrete. Another experiment is to cover some of the new images with only a layer of granulated salt. It will last a shorter time in the weather, and I suspect will change the image.
February 28, 2007
I follow the weather reports closely before I head up to BU to work. Everything looked clear for today, but when I arrived the plaza was still under ice and snow! The salt had melted little areas around the heads, but it was mostly unapproachable. I took some pictures and went home.
February 15, 2007
I've come to think of these two images of Rachel Carson as the Doublemint twins. The salt on them seems to be taking an inordinate amount of time to dissolve, and the longer stays outside the more stages it seems to go through. (This is in a completely frozen state.)
Here are a few more images : Alan Wilson on the concrete and Maydianne Andrade emerging on a wall.
February 5, 2007
I put out a new Darwin today. This painting has a lot of iron filings on it and should evolve quite a bit while it is out.
January 31, 2007
This is the third clone of Marie Curie. It is amazing to me how different each of them have come out. I suspect it is partly a function of the weather and how long it takes the salt to dissolve.
Here are a few images of Stephen Jay Gould as well as one on the wall of Thomas Huxley.
??
January 25, 2007
E.O. Wilson image coming up between the salt bricks. The dots on his face are not salt crystals, but ice crystals.
I continue to grow compressed salt blocks indoors as I wait for the warmer weather to come.
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January 19, 2007
The weather has finally turned cold, so I put out the salt in a new seasonal form - salt balls! (The images to the left are Stephen Jay Gould and Daniel Dennett.)
The fabric image has finally blown away, leaving the rust image of David Haig on the concrete. In the foreground is a new stack crystalized of salt blocks.
Richard Dawkins is proving to be hard to get a good image of on the concrete. I have done two Dawkins so far, and the rust around his eyes has become so dark he looks demonic. I painted a new one that's more graphic and has less filings on it. I'll put it out next week.
January 12, 2007
New images continue to emerge. Below are Sewall Wright, (on the left) and Erwin Chargaff and Jane Goodall, (on the right).
I keep trying new configurations of salt in an attempt to attract viewers.
January 5, 2007
I put out a pair of Rachel Carson clones side by side a few weeks ago. The salt is dissolving and their heads are becoming visible.
Gregor Mendel has come up on the sidewalk. On the bottom left you can see the salt bricks where I have started another version of Mendel right next to this one.
Decemember 18
On my way to BU today, it rained. The concrete surface needs to be dry to work on. I took this image of Rosalind Franklin, whose salt stalactites have dissolved, and her image has come up on the wall.
The salt continues to dissolve, revealing the heads rusting onto the fabric below.
December 12
The clone of Marie Curie appeared, looking quite different than the first. It's surprising that there is that much variation from what was essentially the exact same "genotype". I started a third one today right next to the other two.
There were quite a few heads, like David Haig and Richard Dawkins below, that had both ice crystals and salt crystals covering the fabric.
December 5
Although I keep building the salt higher, I'm not sure if that really impacts people's ability to see them.
November 29
Now that there’s a critical mass of salt and heads on the plaza, I must confess that I am amazed that the majority of people passing by do not seem to see them. And I mean this literally. It’s not that I was expecting an art piece set out in the public to galvanize everyone who walks past, or to get them to ponder what it might mean. On a more mundane level, I am surprised that there isn’t more of a “What in the world is that!?” response - just a basic identification of what is thrown in their visual field.
I probably shouldn’t be too surprised. A few years ago my class at Rhode Island School of Design did a group ice installation outdoors. The students froze some objects in a two foot square of green ice and left it out on a busy sidewalk where we could see it from our 4th floor classroom. It seems that almost no one passing by saw the ice. They walked around it, they bumped into it, they even stepped over it. But there was little recognition or outward signs of stopping to observe the curious nature of a large block of green ice in their path.
With this in mind, I tried to place a new salt structure on one of the heads that are even more visually obtrusive than the hanging stalactites or giant block of salt I installed recently. I put a freestanding stalactite in a salt block that stands up around a foot. It certainly was amusing and curious looking. Then I tried another, this time using 2 and putting one a bit higher on a seond salt block.
As the salt becomes more obtrusive, it makes me think of some flashy exotic flower whose purpose seems to be the maximizing of insect attention. Can the salt structures evolve to maximize entry into people’s visual fields? Curiously, on the other end of the spectrum, an engineering student told me that he noticed the installation from his 4th floor classroom and was so puzzled by what it was, he had to come down and check it out. How is it that he noticed it from four floors up and most people cant seem to see it from a few feet away?
November 23
Continuing to add new images around those that have already appeared.
Image of Joan Roughgarden |
Image of Daniel Dennett |
I’m doing a second Marie Curie, (a clone of the first - replicated by placing a second piece of fabric underneath the first image while it was being painted.) I’m interested to see how the conditions will change the subsequent rendering of Marie.
November 18
Trying out some variations of salt. I put out a head of Rosalind Franklin on a vertical wall and covered her face with hanging salt stalactites.
I also put an altered 50 pound block of salt on top of Rachel Carson. I suspect this salt block will last quite a long time, but I’m not really sure.
November 13, 2006
Got the news today that we had what amounted to a mass extinction! The first two weeks of the installation have been wiped out - not by a hurricane or meteor, but by an overzealous member of buildings and grounds. All the fabric and the salt was removed. I didn’t know how much of the images would have formed on the concrete, but when I got to see them, I was pleasantly surprised.
November 1, 2006
The piece has finally begun with the installation of 6 heads on the plaza. Five are on the horizontal concrete and one is on a vertical wall surface, (Alfred Russell Wallace). Despite the signs that are installed, people still seem confused by what they are seeing and don’t seem to recognize the salt to be salt. I’m always surprised by how difficult it is for people to see and comprehend anything that they are not expecting to see.
