Summer 2023 | ArtLab-VI4

VI4 AiR 2023

Heterogeneity of Mother and Child

Art has always been an outlet for me in times of stress and I hope that my works inspire others to use art in a similar manner. I tend to focus on drawings to create art and I have recently begun to dabble in digital art as a way to reach a wider audience. Drawing is not my only medium as I am also a choreographer/dancer who hopes to use dance as a way to bring about social change. Art, in its own way, is a feeling that one cannot put into words and, as I continue to grow as an artist, I hope to further discover what this feeling means to me and help to lead others to their own epiphany.

Hypertension

My name is Ereny Morcos and I am a senior at Bowdoin College. This will be my third summer participating in the VI4 artist in Resident program and my second year as a mentor for the program. I have always been incredibly drawn to science and art and through this program have started to learn greatly about science communication and ways in which this is integral for the future of scientific discoveries. This summer I will be working with the Alexander lab in creating figures for articles hoping to be published soon. The lab is studying Hypertension and the way in which the immune system in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease. I will also be working on hopefully creating cover art for a project within the lab focused on studying Psoriasis and its effects on both hypertension and increased renal dysfunction. Over the years I have worked with traditional artistic tools and styles including painting and drawing and have started to weave into my work digital platforms to create digital art. My cover art may take on a more artistic and traditional look and I hope through the different digital art platforms I use to create meaningful and accurate figures and representations for the lab to hopefully be published and used in their papers.

STING the brain

My name is Chloe Kim, and I am a sophomore at Vanderbilt University on the premed track. Art has always been a passion of mine since I was little. I love painting, creating sculptures, doing digital design, and crocheting. However, integrating art into my current life of science courses and research hasn't been easy. The AiR program allowed me to delve into this mysterious intersection of art and science and figure out how to incorporate art into my science interest. I will continue to decipher this relationship and combine my passion for art with science.

Panama Rocket Frog

Hi, I am Mackenzie. I am an up incoming senior at the University of Oregon, and I major in Art and Technology and minor in media studies and art history. I mainly with concept art, specifically characters and making comics. I have both dyslexia and ADHD, so much on my learning is through visuals and hands on experience. I want my art to be able to bring other joy and have them gain an interest in art either through learning or visual story telling with unique characters or world building through art.

Rarefaction

As an artist, I like to use various traditional media and techniques to create colorful, semi-realistic pieces that portray the world around me.

This summer I partnered with the Alexander Lab to create cover art for an upcoming paper. Their research has found that there is a recruitment of inflammatory regulatory T cells to the skin of hypertensive mice, which results in a loss of micro-blood vessels from the area.

Casual Problems in The Life of A Lab Salamander

Growing up, I always had a passion for art and its ability to communicate complex ideas. As a result, Leonardo Da Vinci's accumulated genius in anatomy and art has always been great inspiration for me. With Leonardo as my role model, I plan to direct my appetite for knowledge and creativity to revolutionize the state of interdisciplinary approaches ultimately leading to novel cancer treatments.

I chose this program for its interdisciplinary aspects which enabled me to combine my passion for both, art and research, into one project. I deem this experience as a crucial refinement of my skills while understanding the significance of visual communication to convey complex scientific advancements.

My participation not only led to an artistic creation, but it also afforded me the opportunity to explore new illustration techniques, understand complex research topics, communicate current events, and experiment with mediums that are outside of her comfort zone.

Through this program, I understood the importance of visual communication and discovered techniques to present data to a broader audience. Most importantly, I learned that every skill matters and gained the confidence that the diversity of my skills can be applied to projects to promote interdisciplinary collaborations and make research more accessible. With this new found purpose for my skills, I am excited to continue and promote such approaches to a broader audience by producing inspiring art.

The Intersection Between Fashion and Electron Microscopy Imaging

Tia Daniels is a rising senior biology major at Tuskegee University. Tia's connection to science began at an early age, and she has continued pursuing research endeavors and internships. Her connection to art also began at an early age through her modeling experience. For this year's project, Tia hopes to bridge the gap between artistic expression and research by creating wearable art pieces, displaying biomedical science research by her assigned lab.

Disparities in HIV

I have loved art since I was young, and I have been creating art since I was four years old. Growing up, I fell in love with science and the human psyche but never thought that my two passions could intersect. As my interest in science flourished, art fell to the wayside and became more of a creative and emotional outlet, as I did not think that my passion would be helpful in my future career in the healthcare field. Now, through my participation in the VI4 AiR program, I hope to rekindle my lust for art creation and understand how to use my talents to make science more easily digestible to the general public. With the information I learn through this fantastic program, I want tounderstand how to make important information easily digestible to the community I wish to serve as a public health professional and psychologist.

Innate Immune System Activation

The inspiration for this piece came from a rough concept shared with me by the lab I was working with. Over a series of discussions we worked together to make it clearer and more accessible to a broader audience, while retaining all vital scientific information. In the intersection of art and science, clarity of form and visual interest must find a delicate balance, which I worked to achieve in this piece.

Purple Zone

I am a senior at William & Mary, majoring in Biology and minoring in Psychology. I work with all mediums, but focus mainly on digital art. Partnering with the Guillemin lab from the University of Oregon, which does research on microbial processes in zebrafish, I challenged myself to combine my illustrative art style with microbial research. I worked on a project for postdoc fellow Laura Desban, who focuses specifically on chemosensory receptors in zebrafish, and chemical effects on social and environmental behaviors. This particular project investigates the body odors that fish rely on to perform social behavior.

This project expanded my interest in creating more abstract and fun illustrations that represent ideas from science, to make science more tangible and accessible to different audiences. For me, the AiR experience was an incredible exploration into the intersection between art and science.

T-Cell Torrent

I always held an interest in art, but as a kid, I thought it was just a hobby. As I got older and continued through school, I realized that art served as a useful outlet for helping me grasp concepts and lessons I used to think were difficult, especially in my science classes. Now I have gained the understanding that I'm a hands-on learner, where I can incorporate science and art to make complicated subjects more digestible not just for myself, but for others since art is universal. With my interest in medicine, biology, and art, I want to make learning about science accessible for all.