Below is a project which I have embarked on.... you will see the project description followed by my proposal. I have been selected as an artist, met with the group, but have yet to be paired with a scientist. I do have one in mind, and it happens to be in a direction that I nearly tailored my proposal to. More to come I am sure....

The Mary Condon Hodgson Art Gallery at Frederick Community College invites art professionals and emerging artists to submit work of all media for a juried exhibition, The Art of Science/The Science of Art. Following the preliminary selection, artists will be interviewed by scientists from the National Institutes of Health, and then paired with a scientist to begin work on a collaborative art project. This collaborative project may take up to one year to complete.

Goal: To foster an understanding at Frederick Community College (FCC) and in the community of the relatedness of the process of creating scientific discoveries and artwork. The project will focus on how art can inform science and how science can inform art.
Plan: To connect recognized scientists from the NIH with regional artists. The artist will interview the scientist and interact with his or her work, creative process and vision. The artist will spend time in the laboratory/clinic observing the process, the equipment, raw data and the scientist's interaction with their patients. The resulting work will be part of an exhibition in the Mary Condon Hodgson Art Gallery located at Frederick Community College during the month of April 2010.





Art & Science Project Proposal

My mother-in-law, Gail, was recently diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer. This was the first time someone close to my family has been faced with a serious illness. I have watched as she has experienced the different stages of the illness and continues to try new medical methods that aid her in this battle. Gail is independent, resilient and a self-starter. I have never known her to fail at anything she sets her mind to. When the news came of her diagnosis, followed by the six months of chemo treatments we all started to think about the things that she would miss out on. Her gardening, her work as an award winning realtor, visits with her grandkids and enjoying her life in a house she and her husband built several years ago to enjoy their retirement years.
For Gail, it has been hard to sit back and let others do things that she is used to doing, even simple tasks such as loading the dishwasher or making dinner. I wondered what other responsibilities she missed doing, things she missed experiencing and people she missed seeing as she was homebound and doing her best to fight off this illness.
As a photographer I enjoy capturing moments in time with my camera. It is a tool that can be used to record favorite memories and experiences as well a document important events or to share simple achievements with those who cannot participate. My project proposal is to photograph a few of a patient’s favorite things. This could be a portrait of a loved one, an image of a favorite place or even a still-life of a favorite item.
Collaboration on this project would involve the photographer to engage the patient in what it is that they may miss most in their previous day-to-day activities. Is there something that could be captured in a photograph and if so, would the patient like to have it captured? After the images are created and presented to the patient, in a form similar to art therapy, the patient’s doctor could then visit with the patient and glean from them the importance of what was captured in the image.
Art and science are similar in several ways. Both the artist and scientist set out with a goal, question or purpose to fulfill. They construct a hypothesis, create or perform the “experiment”, analyze their findings and then share the results. Artists of course may not follow the scientific method exactly, but the steps are very similar and sometimes the outcome that one hoped for turns out very different from what was hypothesized.
As a photographer I have had the opportunity to see how art and science are joined. Working with a camera as well as processing and developing pictures in the darkroom is systematic as particular steps must be performed to achieve the desired outcome. Of course there is also the creative side, which I enjoy, especially when it comes to portraiture. When photographing people you never know what the end result will be.

February, 2009