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