Work­ing on Art about Small Things

by Lind­say Ol­son

When I be­gin a new project, the whole ef­fort feels risky. I am step­ping into a new and un­fa­mil­iar branch of sci­ence, a new work cul­ture, and us­ing ma­te­ri­als in a novel way. Add to this the nor­mal con­cerns that all artists have at the end of a project: will the work con­nect with gallery ma­nagers and the pub­lic. Work­ing this way re­quires a cer­tain com­fort with un­cer­tainty and con­fu­sion while I find my bear­ings in the project.
 

Carch­e­sium cil­i­ates, by L. Ol­son

The first thing I do is to ob­tain enough in­for­ma­tion to ground the work in ac­cu­rate sci­ence. We are liv­ing through an era of con­fu­sion and mis­un­der­stand­ing about sci­ence and I want the art work to clar­ify my mes­sage, not add to the con­fu­sion. I work care­fully with sci­en­tists as col­lab­o­ra­tors who can ar­tic­u­late their work to an out­sider. This col­lab­o­ra­tion has pro­vided me with a rich source of in­spi­ra­tion. Through such back and forth com­mu­ni­ca­tion, I find the com­mon ground for a novice to en­ter a given dis­ci­pline. Of­ten in our dis­cus­sions, a sci­en­tific col­lab­o­ra­tor will sug­gest an ap­proach to me or a novel way to use. They help keep me on the cor­rect path and de­pend on me to help get their mes­sage out into the world.

Vor­ti­cella cil­i­ates, by L. Ol­son

My sketch­book ‒ see ex­am­ples in last week's post ‒ is im­portant to my learn­ing process but it is not the only in­flu­en­ce on the fin­ished art work. Be­cause I am step­ping into some­one else's ter­ri­tory, I am sen­si­tive to the cul­ture of the lab­o­ra­to­ries with whom I work. It re­quires good lis­ten­ing skills and... thought­ful­ness.
 

Some of this work cul­ture winds its way into the fin­ished piece. When I worked with a po­lice de­part­ment, for ex­am­ple, I wanted to ex­press the grit of the street, some of the cop hu­mor I heard, and the chaos of pa­trolling a beat. In the ex­am­ple of the waste wa­ter treat­ment, I wanted to use a de­mo­c­ra­tic as­sort­ment of tex­tiles to ex­press how many peo­ple work to­gether in the treat­ment plant: op­er­a­tors, sci­en­tists, en­gi­neers, ad­min­is­tra­tors, and trades­peo­ple. I used silks, ta­ble linen, denim, heavy duty can­vas and lots of la­bor in­ten­sive hand processes. Such ex­trav­a­gant em­broi­dery, bead­ing and hand work are the sorts of tex­tile processes his­tor­i­cally re­served for roy­alty. In the Carch­e­sium cil­i­ates for ex­am­ple, I've stitched the stalks and heads on in silk and at­tached se­quins to ex­press the nu­cleus and food vac­uoles. By us­ing such fancy and these la­bor in­ten­sive tech­niques, I am el­e­vat­ing the sub­ject of waste wa­ter treat­ment in the minds of the viewer. I'm us­ing art to chal­lenge the cul­tural per­cep­tion that waste wa­ter is some­thing to flush and for­get.
 

As­pidisca cil­i­ates, by L. Ol­son

In the early stage of the work, I spend a great deal of time in­ves­ti­gat­ing ma­te­ri­als and how to use them. Whether I'm work­ing on pa­per or stitch­ing tex­tiles, the one part of the project I don't want to strug­gle with is the ex­pres­sion of my ideas. Draw­ing on my arts train­ing, I am in­cor­po­ra­ting the lan­guage of art & de­sign into the fin­ished work: color, line, tex­ture, size of the fin­ished work, value (light and dark), bal­ance and har­mony. Car­pen­ters ex­press this idea by the say­ing "mea­sure twice, cut once." I have a si­mi­lar apho­rism: "many sam­ples makes for stronger work".
 

So what I'm jug­gling all at the same time is re­search­ing the sci­ence, col­lect­ing vi­sual ideas, work­ing in my sketch­book and with art ma­te­ri­als, learn­ing the cul­ture in the lab, meet­ing staff, sci­en­tists , tak­ing train­ing, and braid­ing all this to­gether in the fin­ished art. The process is fluid, dy­namic and wholly sat­is­fy­ing. It's taken me years to fi­gure out how to put all these pieces to­gether and it's a rich and sat­is­fy­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

Lind­say draw­ing on the stage at Fer­mi­lab. Photo: Geor­gia Schwen­der

Lind­say teaches tex­tiles in the fash­ion stud­ies de­part­ment at Co­lum­bia Col­lege Chicago where she grad­u­ated with a BA. She worked in the fash­ion de­sign field for many years be­fore be­gin­ning her teach­ing ca­reer. She is known for her un­usual, sci­ence based res­i­den­cies. She worked with the Chicago Met­ro­pol­i­tan Wa­ter Recla­ma­tion Dis­trict in Chicago and was Fermilab's first artist in res­i­dence in 2014 – 2015.