ARTIST'S STATEMENT

I feel a strong sense of privilege in my accidental profession, and thrilled that I can spend much of my time exploring an astonishing invisible world that most people don’t ever get to see. Using the scanning electron microscope to create my images has become obsessive for me. First, of course, is simply the surprise and beauty of this hidden cosmos parallel to our familiar macroworld, but unseen and even in many ways unimaginable. Because of the spectacular imagery of this tiny cosmos, my original intention to become an artist has come full circle through a long happy detour in research science. I have carried my journey back out the other side again, where I can embrace the just plain gorgeousness of the amazing structures and microscapes that lurk in small corners of secret places. Then - even better - these littlest of things can tell really big stories. And finally, I’m compelled to make these images because my access to this most powerful microscope combined with my training in art means that I can do it. I can capture a raw black and white micrograph of something exquisite, if perhaps blemished with a broken structure or sprinkled here and there with nanoscale debris, or maybe with technical artifacts from the imaging processes. I can clean out these distracting parts from a raw image and colorize it for visual punch. My process creates an idealized and more alluring version – actually, often several versions - of something very real that I have photographed with electron light.

So. In sidetracking a research laboratory’s high-tech visualizing instrument to produce revelatory - and relevant - art, my goal is to offer an arresting picture of the microworld that inspires a sense of wonder at its elegance, astonishment at its diversity, and delight in the stories it has to tell. I feel that my images must not only stir the imagination with visual impact, but also represent the best in technical operation of the microscope and subsequent graphic enhancement of the original micrographs. As a scientist grounded in the disciplines of research, I seek to maintain the integrity - the truth - of the specimens, these glorious pictorial gifts on a scale we were never expected to see. As an artist, I want my images to be utterly beautiful, and to speak to the viewer’s heart.