The wilderness has long symbolized unknown beasts and dangers, but it has also been a therapeutic place, a place to meet God. As a landscape, my work encapsulates the awe and terror associated with the sublime of the Romantic tradition—however, the sublime is associated with vast, expansive spaces. My work asks the question, what of the ‘tiny sublime’?
My recent work is titled Umbra, after the darkest part of a shadow, since the worlds that I am imaging are not illuminated by light. These alien landscapes are, in fact, microsculptures incorporating insect and plant fragments, imaged by scanning electron microscopy. Lit with electricity instead of light, the sculptures present as post-apocalyptic wilderness, with radiant glowing forms and seemingly unstable dark areas, all rendered in excruciating detail. The monstrous forms inhabiting these scenes appear massive and immense, but in reality the entire landscape is less then half a centimeter across.
This work raises questions around objectivity and the role of the artist/scientist’s hand in the production of imagery. Bruno Latour says scientific images aim to be acheiropoieta, i.e. not made by human hands. But I’ve taken a different approach. I’ve been using expensive and specialized scientific equipment for artistic pursuits, which emphasize, rather then subdue, visual artifacts. For Umbra, I utilized the scanning electron microscope to amplify the charging artifact, wherein a sample accumulates so much negative charge (often as a result of faulty specimen preparation) that it glows white and distorts the electron beam used to image it. For scientists, the charging artifact is a nuisance that prevents accurate and repeatable imaging; for me, the resulting image – warped, inconsistent, corrupted – is a source of aesthetic appeal and a challenge to the conception of the scientific image as objective and isomorphic with nature.
