Dinosaur renderings in fruit

This was pretty interesting.  Stylized dinosaurs rendered as fruits by computer intelligence, although clearly a lot of instructions were needed.  Still they are pretty neat.  Enjoy. 

Ergot & art

One of the things TPP misses the most about teaching is finding interesting connections between botany and other cultural things and lacking a class of interested (?) students to present them to.  Perhaps TPP is weird in this regard, but people who find "connections" interesting always seem to have the best scholarly attitudes or at least an intellectual curiosity. 
Ergot is a fungal parasite of cereal grains and when its spores contaminate flour and bread, it can produce dramatic side effects, various forms of ergotism, the stuff of the Salem witch trials, and effects that include hallucinations.  So this article investigates whether hallucinations ever influenced art especially a fellow like Hieronymus Bosch who really painted some strange images, strange enough that it is not difficult to imagine he was under some kind of hallucinogenic influence.  Image shows an ergot spore body replacing a cereal grain where it could contaminate flour ultimately leading to the idea that the whiter the flour the more pure it was (image from the Wikimedia Creative Commons complements of Accipiter). 

Friday Fabulous Flower - paper art

Every now and again TPP likes to present you with a bit of culture in the form of botanical art.  This floral image is made of paper, the product of Yulia Brodskaya, a very talented artist. Your first impression is that these are small works of art, but actually some of them are the size of a wall.  Check out her webpage for more.  Enjoy.  HT to HuffPo for calling attention to this artist. 

Much ado about very little: office art

Our local newspaper sounded the outrage about a relatively minor government official who bought “over $1000 of art” for their office.  Now there are several things wrong here, so let’s look at them in no particular order.  “Over $1000 of art” is obviously meant to enrage the taxpayer that so much of their money was spent on art.  The amount was actually something like $1027, yes, over $1000, but $1000? That’s not a lot of art. The Phactors have several pieces in their living room (well, at least 4) that cost more than $1000 each.  So what are we talking here?  Oh, 5 or 6 Art.com framed prints or something like that for just over $1000, so just about nothing. Now the real outrage should be that tax money was spent on cheap-ass, knock-off  pseudo-art that was probably bought to match their sofa.  But that isn’t the most troubling part.  What kind of cultural Philistine thinks art in a public work place is some kind of outrageous waste of tax money even if it is art.com stuff?  This is a university city, so starving artists abound, and buying one nice piece of art from a local artist would be a better expenditure; local economy, quality of life, support the arts, and all that. Apparently if your workplace is a public one, then you should just live with the blank, institutional-pastel walls and be content in your bleak, soul-sucking, gray cubicle.  

Botany and Art

Now gentle readers, the data show that among your diverse interests, the art-botany intersection is not your favorite.  Well, TPP will try and try again to introduce some culture and art appreciation.  Here's a nice article where a colleague of mine, Tim Gerber, has been collaborating with an artist and science educator so that students can explore the intersection of art and botany.  This study was published in the journal Science and Children published by the National Science Teachers Association.  Any elementary teachers out there should have a look. 

Get some culture

To the people the Phactor works with day to day, get some culture means getting a petri dish out of an incubator. But while surrounded by many cultural philistines the Phactor is a patron of the arts, an appreciation developed by minoring in art while majoring in biology. Probably because artists and biologists dress more alike than any other two disciplines, their only strong similarity, no one really noticed this fellow slipping back and forth. If you've never had to move to have more wall space, then you aren't an art collector. Why Ms. Phactor recently had a lighted case built to display the art glass. So every now the science is put on pause to call attention to an artist's work, especially if of a botanical bent. This came to my attention from another science blogger, so a big HT to Bioephemera. Linda Behar constructs photo realistic embroideries that are simply wonderful, and it is no accident the there is a Monet-like quality to some of the images as you will discover while exploring her gallery. Truth be known, several years ago while searching the web for articles about waterlilies (the kind of thing like yesterday's Friday Fabulous Flower, and yes, it's Friday again!) up popped a surprise, an art gallery link, and this resulted in the purchase of a painting of waterlilies. So why not also mention that an artist is a new Phactor Phollower, and you can see her gallery here. Welcome.