Intern at the Intersection of Biology and Art

Hi! My name is Jenny and I’m a new intern working with Dr. Allen Collins and Dr. Karen Osborn! I’ll be making art pieces based on new research and cool things in the invertebrate zoology department here at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. I am an incoming freshman at Stanford who is interested in the intersection between biology, art, and creative writing. I am so excited to learn from all the amazing scientists here as well as the new and exciting research happening here.  

“Rhizobia” is an installation combining a painting with suspended petri dishes of a root nodule.

I first got into biology and biology research after joining my school’s Science Olympiad and Science Bowl teams! I studied a lot of plant anatomy and physiology as well as some classifications in my free time. Over the summer, I did genetics research at UC Irvine under the COSMOS program and also conducted research with Dr. Alborz Bejnood on computational biology on skin cancer.

“Waltz of Interstellar Volvox” is an interactive piece set in both deep sea and deep space. Petri dishes spin and mimic the dancing movements of volvox.

My art is guided by exploration. I never know where each piece will take me. I create paradoxical worlds when I paint. I love integrating the microscopic scale with the macroscopic in a single painting. For example, combining blueberries with antibodies, dandelions with viruses, waffles with neurons - abstract approaches that build unfamiliar landscapes.

Another installation type painting with mops in the front, inspired by the bear’s head tooth fungus. The painting is inspired by deep sea coral.

Below are a couple more of my invertebrate-inspired pieces, including the first work done as part of this internship.

A painting of polychaete worms weaving into and out of a jellyfish membrane!!

 

Finally, this is my first painting done this summer, based on the beautiful new species of glass sponge, Advhena magnifica, that was discovered recently by IZ postdoc Cristiana Castello Branco and collaborators! Here I depict it morphing into its spicules.

By Jenny Shi