JIM LEE - ANIMALS IN ART
VIDEO | BIOFILM FROM MAPLEFISH POND
ABOUT JIM LEE
Jim Lee is an artist from Durham, North Carolina. He creates sculptures, collages and other things from the natural materials around him to photograph. He says his art is about finding hidden stories waiting to be told.
ABOUT THE ART
"Science, nature, and technology have always been integral to my art practice. I have long advocated for closer connections between artists and scientists to the benefit of both. So I was really excited about the call for participation in The Art of a Scientist exhibit. Collaboration with Dr. Jessica Brandt was my first choice among the scientists who offered their work to be interpreted by artists in this exhibit. Her images of phytoplankton and other microscopic organisms were fascinating in their own right and provide plenty of fodder for the creative process. The fact that they came from an aquatic environment just added to the intrigue. Nevertheless, it was important for me to get a better understanding of the theory and methodology behind the images.
One meeting over coffee and a subsequent visit to Jessica’s lab gave me what I needed. Getting the images starts with the accumulation of a biofilm (think of it as slime) on acrylic panels that are submerged in bodies of freshwater. These panels are collected, dried, and scraped. The dried scrapings are sent to a lab where images of the samples are captured with a scanning electron microscope. They can then be analyzed for populations of phytoplankton as part of her research on the effects of coal combustion residues (CCRs) on the ecology of various freshwater environments.
“Biofilm from Maplefish Pond” Is a combination of my own work and Jessica’s research images. The background is from a piece of mine called simply Maplefish (2014). Like Jessica’s images this one is also a scanned image. It just that I use a flatbed scanner on which I create a fanciful scene that does not exist in nature. In this case the fish are Silver Maple seeds and the aquatic growth is dried black coral. There is no water in the actual scene, just a gray-green background. The background image is partially obscured (except for a cutout circle) by one of the actual acrylic collection plates from Jessica’s lab. Her images from an unknown (to me) freshwater source are mounted under acrylic discs and the whole composition is suspended from a PVC pipe framework with cable ties in much the same way the plates are suspended in ponds in the field. One is left to wonder what fictitious phytoplankton from Maplefish Pond would look like. Maybe that is for another project."