Tag Archives: Education

Returning the artist to the field: Utilizing printmaking’s multiplicity, mediation and materiality for enhanced science communication.

Visual art as a parallel practice to science research offers opportunities for communicating the complexities of many ecological systems to non-experts. Immersive and interactive artworks provide a means to complexity, perceived distance, and opaqueness of language surrounding ecological systems. This paper describes the use of printmaking and print installations as analogues that engage audiences in complex soil systems. The three projects discussed here trace the journey of artist observer to field collaborator and examine printmaking’s capacity to facilitate the communication of both explicit and experiential knowledge of soil systems.

Keywords: field research, practices of arts and sciences, soil science, tacit knowledge, fine arts, printmaking

Imagination in Education

“At this time, the world we live in is in great need of a balance between our heads and our hearts, so that we may connect to the ‘tap-root’ in us all by opening us to the realm of imagination, inspiration and integration.”

Sacha, Duchess of Abercorn OBE was an innovator in creative education and the founder of The Pushkin Trust, an organisation that supports creative learning and education across Ireland, works to provide and support a holistic model to spark imagination and deepen awareness of our collective creativity, our humanity and ‘the child’ within each one of us.

Sadly, Sacha died on 10 December 2018 and this interview, first published in the launch issue of Interalia Magazine, is re-published here as a tribute to her creativity, compassion and imagination.

Creativity, Imagination and ‘Finding Your Element’

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources in education and business. His inspiring TED talks have been viewed more than 25 million times and seen by an estimated 250 million people in over 150 countries. In an exclusive interview for the Interalia Magazine he discusses subjects such as the transformative role of creativity and imagination in education and how we can all ‘Find Our Element’.

The Mythic Imagination: From Ancient Troy to the Present Day

Lindsay Clarke’s working life has been devoted to his two principal passions, writing and education. In both contexts he has tried to put the power of the creative imagination – in both its inventive and compassionate aspects – into the service of the radical evolution of consciousness, which he believes is seeking to happen in these transitional times. His first novel ‘Sunday Whiteman’ was shortlisted for the David Higham First Novel Award; his second ‘The Chymical Wedding’ was awarded the Whitbread Prize for Fiction in 1989; and his novel ‘The Water Theatre’ was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Award. ‘Green Man Dreaming’, a collection of Lindsay’s essays, talks, poems and occasional pieces, was published in 2018,

South Africa’s Blombos cave is home to the earliest drawing by a human

Christopher Henshilwood holds a 10 year South Africa National Research Foundation funded Research Chair and Professorship at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is also the Professor of African Prehistory in the Archaeology, History, Culture and Religion Institute at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Karen Loise van Niekerk is an archaeologist working on Middle Stone Age sites, specifically Blombos Cave and Klipdrift Shelter, in the southern Cape, South Africa.

Drawing, research and philosophy

Joe Graham is a Lecturer in Drawing at Falmouth School of Art, Falmouth University. He is an artist who writes about drawing and conducts research through drawing using various propositions drawn from phenomenology and ontology. His interests revolve around understanding how drawing operates as both a vehicle for expression and a mode of thought.

Drawing Science

Bethann Garramon Merkle, MFA, is a multi-disciplinary science communicator and artist who specializes in sharing science through depictions of the natural world. In particular, her work explores the role stories play in shaping public perspectives of science and ecology topics. She is currently on staff with the Wyoming Migration Initiative, a research and outreach group within the Department of Zoology and Physiology, at the University of Wyoming. There, she directs the University of Wyoming Science Communication Initiative, conducts research on art-science integration and science communication, and helps researchers with outreach initiatives, offers trainings on sharing science, and creates images, text, social media content, and other outreach materials that convey research results.

Why the search for a ‘Brave New World’ is to be found in your back yard

Jasmine Pradissitto is a physicist and a painter who sculpts and creates installations in plastics, light, metal, and geopolymers, embracing the dual worlds of the Scientist and Artist.
Described as ‘holograms you can touch’, her sculptures in new and discarded plastics, change in colour as the observer moves. Inspired by nature, the human condition, and scientific breakthroughs, forms are melted and reshaped from plastics using an innovative process she has developed, as a commentary on an unsustainable, increasingly Anthropocene world slowly being reshaped by the things we consume and then disregard.