Hillary Waters Fayle combines textiles and printmaking techniques with found botanical and organic material, exploring the symbolism, geometry and patterns found in nature. From simple lines and ribbing to fully rendered botanics, the thread-based embellishments interrupt the fragile matter. The resulting sculptures evidence nature’s durability while juxtaposing the organic material with the fabricated additions.
Ava Roth is a Toronto-based encaustic painter, embroiderer and mixed-media artist. For the past decade she has worked almost exclusively with beeswax. Combining techniques from both fine art and crafts, she aims to use natural materials and processes to explore the intersection between human beings and the natural world. Her current collection is an inter-species art collaboration between herself and honey-bees.
Patrick Huse is a Norwegian painter and multi-media artist. He studied landscape art and conceptualism during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. His works incorporate techniques as painting, drawing, photograph, video, wall based text material and objects. In the early 1990’s he started a project titled Rethinking Landscape, a trilogy consisting of the three parts: ‘Nordic Landscape’, ‘RIFT’ and ‘Penetration’. The traditional landscape art still plays a role as an artistic reference, but through a series of exhibitions from the mid-1990’s and later, he has challenged landscape art in a way which makes his project unique. In this interview with art and ecology author, John K. Grande, he discusses his ideas and work.
Amy M. Youngs creates eco art, interactive sculptures, and digital media works that explore interdependencies between technology, plants and animals. Her practice-based research involves entanglements with the non-human, constructing ecosystems, and seeing through the eyes of machines. She has created installations that amplify the sounds of living worms, indoor ecosystems powered by a rocking chair, an interactive museum for live insects, and an augmented reality tour of real nature. ‘Belonging to Soil’ is an art installation and virtual reality experience based on a critical ecological reality.
Cornelia Hesse-Honegger works at the interface between art and science. Describing herself as a ‘science artist,’ she worked for 25 years, as a scientific illustrator for the Natural History Museum at the University of Zurich. From 1969 onwards, she collected and painted True bugs, Heteroptera.
Inspired by the effects witnessed by the tragedy at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and a mutated Drosophila experiment in 1967, she has devoted her life to depicting the effects of radiation and fallout by radioactivity throughout the world.
Her work stands as both a testament to the harmful effects of high radiation levels and the harmful effects mankind has on nature and our environment.
Meredith Woolnough is an internationally acclaimed, award winning artist from Newcastle, Australia. Her elegant, embroidered drawings capture the beauty and fragility of nature in knotted threads. Vibrant coloured structures of organic shapes hover effortlessly above the surface, elegant and enchanting.
“The more I work with natural forms, the more I find myself drawn into the science of nature. I am fascinated by the way things are built, the way they grow and function. I often find myself marvelling at the perfection of a single leaf or the phenomenal beauty of a coral reef and it can be quite overwhelming at times, almost spiritual.”
Dr Natasha Ellison is a Mathematical Ecologist, currently working as a Postdoctoral Associate at Mississippi State University. Prior to her current position she taught in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sheffield. She completed a PhD with Dr Jonathan Potts and Professor Ben Hatchwell, focussing on partial differential equation and individual-based models of the home range patterns of Long Tailed Tits.
Maxim Lavrentovich is Assistant Professor of Theoretical Biophysics, University of Tennessee, working on theoretical problems in biophysics and soft condensed matter physics.
“Before moving to UT, I worked for three years as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania in the Soft Condensed Matter Theory group. I was a graduate student at Harvard University from 2008 to 2014, working under the supervision of David R. Nelson. I received a B. A. in Physics and Mathematics from Kenyon College in 2008.”
The purpose of this paper is to propose that learning from the behavior of migrating animals in different environments may help to understand the behavior of migrating cancer cells within the different environments of the human body.
Lisa Poncet is Doctorante en neuroéthologie, Université de Caen Normandie.
“Après un master en écologie, éthologie et écophysiologie, où j’ai travaillé sur le comportement d’animaux très variés (chiens, crapauds accoucheurs, chouettes effraies, corbeaux freux …), j’ai débuté un doctorat en neuroéthologie. Depuis 2 ans, j’étudie des animaux très particuliers : les seiches communes et les poulpes communs. Je cherche à mieux comprendre leur mémoire et leur capacité à planifier le futur, et à améliorer nos connaissances sur l’origine et l’évolution de ces facultés.”