Growing Impressions - Gulden/Baldwin

Working with Live Painting Materials

2011-10-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

In this collaboration between artist and scientist we have enlisted a natural organism, E. coli bacteria, to generate images that resemble paintings or prints, but that have a unique set of patterns that could not be generated using non living materials. We hoped that by letting nature generate its own patterns we would trigger the interest of the eye and the visual brain, which has evolved to pay attention to the irregular patterns generated by natural growing objects.

This blog documents our many adventures. Above are two prints pulled from the same petri dish. (Simply click on any image to see it in greater detail.) Please visit our website to see a gallery of current work, and leave us your comments... we'd love to hear your impressions.

Imagine Science Film Festival - now!

2011-10-16T17:38:00.000-07:00

We are honored to be among the roster of Artists in Residence at this year's Imagine Science Film Festival. Thanks to Thomas Jackson and Alexis Gambis for bringing us in! Check out the line up and get your tickets... festival ends Oct 21.

Time to paint some petri dishes....

2011-08-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

Had a great day painting at Katayoun Chamanay's lab with her summer Parsons/New School students. We worked with 2 strains of bacteria -- E. coli and Serratia marcenscens (aka "Blood of Christ"!). Here are a few resulting prints -- head below the jump to see us making these, and all the terrific comments by the students/artists. Thanks guys!

Of Painting and Pencillin - Studio 360

2010-12-21T16:56:00.000-08:00

Kristin and I find ourselves in fine company this weekend in a radio piece that features our art-making process alongside that of Alexander Flemming. Who knew he made paintings with bacteria too?! Now, if only we could stumble upon a world health solution while we are noodling with our drawings... (thankfully Kristin is working on that in more traditional ways).

Click through to Studio 360 here, where you can hear the piece, or go here to see the whole piece bundled with a video where you can watch me botch a print, and see a little slide show of our last working session. Our goal was to translate some of the "lab" science into the "home" lab, so i can work a bit more independently and bother fewer busy scientists.

Huge thanks go to Lindsay Patterson, the intrepid producer who sought us out, to the folks at Studio 360, and to our friend Katayoun Chamanay for loaning us some key supplies.

Leave us a comment and let us know what you think of the story.

(sorta) Big in Japan

2010-08-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

Toshihiko Katsuda, a reporter for the ASAHI Shimbun, visited us at the Museum of Arts and Design during the World Science Festival. He took lots of photos and asked great questions.We just received this PDF of the story he published, entitled "Artistic E. Coli". I was delighted... or at least, I thought maybe I could be? An unusual situation. I replied, "Looks great! ... but uh, What does it say??" He humored me. For the translation, read below. Thank you Toshi!

Toshi's note: "Please know that this is a direct translation from Japanese to
English. It might have some awkward phrases in English, but my article
in Japanese actually went very well. I had a good response from
readers. Thank you again for your cooperation."

August 7, 2010

Artistic E. Coli

Pigments are usually made out of mineral substance or resin. But the
team of a molecular biologist Kristin Baldwin and an artist Amy Chase
Gulden got an idea. They use E. Coli as pigment and call their work
"BioArt."

They pick families of E. Coli which are genetically engineered to have
a certain color for research. With the brush, they draw something on
an agar in the petri dish. The next day, E. Coli emerge as drawings or
characters.

Artworks displayed in New York were greenish blue and looked like
Chinese traditional ink paintings. Those E. Coli are not harmful.

"I was surprised to hear Ms. Baldwin's proposal of using E. Coli,"
said Ms. Gulden. But they are now busy showing "a great example of a
fusion of science and art" at museums and schools.

Amoeba to Zebra July 1 - July 25

2010-06-30T11:23:00.000-07:00

Very happy to have a chance to reinstall, anew, "The many (still) lives of E. coli" -- a set of our prints at the 440 Gallery (440 6th Ave in Park Slope, at 9th Street). Many thanks to Gail and Todd (he is pictured here) for helping me get it on the wall! And thanks to Ylva Rouse for selecting this piece for the show.

Come out and enjoy the opening, Thursday July 1 from 6-9!

Our Day at the Museum of Arts and Design

2010-06-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Here are fabulous students from Ms. Shu's class at the Juan Morel Campos school printing and painting designs to E. coli! They began by printing to paper the many images I'd already cultivated on stacks of petri dishes. (I'm demo-ing this above). Then they turned their attention to making their own original designs, applying the clear solutions of E. coli to the agar plates we'd prepared. After the prints dried, they sealed and mounted these in clean petri dishes; 2 students created a sculpture from the mounted prints. Lots more great photos below the jump!

Click here for more great photos of the workshop by Emily Shu.

Kelly pulling off a print with tweezers

Jeff pulling prints, Nico painting with bacteria

Kelly creates a sculpture from mounted prints. Katayoun interprets with excitement.

Take a Look at the World Science Festival Blog

2010-06-14T20:00:00.000-07:00

Molly Webster, the tireless producer of our Bio-Art program at the Museum of Arts and Design, has learned an awful lot about what goes into creating prints from cultured, hand-painted genetically-engineered blue E. coli bacteria. It's been great to read how someone with a bit more artistic-remove describes our work -- check our her two posts from our festival week here.

Preparing at the Lab

Printing and Painting at MAD

Thank you so much for all your help and spirited words Molly! Stay tuned for pictures of finished work soon to come...

Join Us at the World Science Festival!

2010-05-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

Once again, we will be offering an educational program at the World Science Festival. Come see us on
Thursday, June 3, 2010, 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Museum of Arts and Design

Ms. Emily Shu's art students from the Juan Morel Campos High School will be learning about microbiology as they spend the afternoon painting their own designs in bacteria, and printing other designs cultivated the day before by Amy. Throughout the program, the public is invited to visit the Museum's Open Studio, to observe the printing and painting process.

Participation by invitation only; public welcome to observe. Free with admission to the Museum of Arts and Design.
Special thanks to Katayoun Chamany, Associate Professor at Eugene Lang College, for providing lab space and support!

Hudson River Museum - Talk & Workshop

2010-02-10T10:36:00.000-08:00

Had a wonderful time working with the Yonkers-area teachers that attended my talk/workshop at the Hudson River Museum yesterday.

Since painting with bacteria requires 12-18 hours in an incubator to see the designs emerge, I instead asked teachers to experiment with 5 "mystery" materials to create opportunities to discover the properties of these liquids, much as i had to do as an artist, working with living bacteria.

When mixed in certain combinations, participants found that these mystery materials created surprising effects. Their task was to discover those effects, identify the materials, and use them to create works of art.

Thank you to Saralinda Lichtblau for inviting me up to share our work!

World Science Festival Street - What Grows?

2009-06-15T08:26:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who visited our tent at the World Science Festival Street Fair on Sunday -- and a special thanks to the 200+ artists who contributed drawings (or written ideas) to our Impressions of Growing collective art project. We will be very VERY busy in the lab growing your ideas in e. coli over the summer! Check back (or subscribe to our blog) for updates on our progress... and our plans to share this work with you. See more photos from the festival below...
*Annie, Lissa & Ivory... our deepest thanks, we couldn't have done it without you!

Printing Day at the Harlem DNA Lab

2009-06-15T07:54:00.000-07:00

photo by joey o'laughlin

Success! After 18 hours in the incubator, our bacteria designs emerged in a beautiful range of blues and effects. The students/scientists/artists had mixed both transformed and normal bacteria together to create subtle combinations of blue and white designs... and many strong blue images were grown and printed today. Bravo! See how it all came together after the jump...

photo by joey o'laughlin

After we printed all the work, and mounted them in petri dish frames, each student contributed 3-5 of their prints to an installation of their work. Here we are composing that piece -- and then velcro-ing our prints into place.

photo by joey o'laughlin

A huge thanks to Ileana Rios of the Harlem DNA Lab, Summer Ash of the World Science Festival, and Mr. Patton from the Thurgood Marshall Academy for making this experience possible.

Harlem DNA Lab - World Science Festival

2009-06-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

As part of the World Science Festival's outreach events, we introduced our living paint to 9th graders from the Thurgood Marshall Academy. Thanks to our host, Ileana Rios and the Harlem DNA Lab (a project of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) students learned how to perform a genetic transformation of e.coli bacteria (each making their own version of our "paint") and everyone made 8-10 bacterial paintings. We can't wait to see how the images grow -- all will be revealed on Friday when we return to print our work! Check back for updates.

Talk at the Brooklyn Museum of Art

2009-05-22T13:05:00.000-07:00

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to share the story of our collaboration with my arts-education colleagues at the April 21st "Inspiration is the Destination" conference at the Brooklyn Museum. A few photos from the slide-talk, thanks Emily Shu!

Ecoli -- natural variations on a theme

2009-05-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

This is a favorite piece from the show. A self portrait of our media.

Installation Images from Serrano Contemporary

2009-05-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

Our show is down -- but here are some photos in case you missed it. Above is the installation of 30 E. coli prints mounted in glass petri dishes. Close up below. Click on any photograph for a larger view.

Artist & Scientist

Upcoming Exhibition - Growing Impressions

2009-02-03T19:41:00.000-08:00

My scientist collaborator, Kristin Baldwin, and I have the opportunity to exhibit this work at Serrano Contemporary in NYC from Feb 19 - March 18. Invitation below. Come on by!

Work from Jan 09 -- growing and printed

2009-02-03T19:21:00.000-08:00

An image in bacteria, growing on agar -- and then printed onto paper

Translating Bacteria Prints to Cyanotypes

2009-02-03T18:27:00.000-08:00

Very excited about learning this old fashioned photographic process - using the sun to make contact prints from a "negative".

I've selected some of the bacterial prints, which are typically small on 2, 4 or 6 inch circles... and enlarged these onto transparency material using a photocopier. Then... waiting for a strong sunny day to printed these onto paper i've sensitized. The one above happens to be very dark... others come out much lighter, depending on the strength of the sun and length of exposure time.

Fern Shadow, Ecoli in Process

2007-08-13T08:01:00.000-07:00

This is one of the first successful bacteria paintings, cultivated with the help of Dr. Kristin Baldwin, it was later printed onto paper and stabilized with a coat of resin.

Fern Shadow: Transformed Ecoli Bacteria Print

2007-08-13T08:00:00.000-07:00

Here it is printed on paper.

It all Began with this Piece

2007-08-13T07:48:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kristin Baldwin was given this piece for her birthday. I made it by laying down threads in thick blankets of glue, and was exploring things two lines might do without touching. And it got her thinking... and next thing I know, she had proposed creating a living paint -- a strain of bacteria that she modified to turn blue when it comes in contact with another chemical -- a chemical I can paint with on petri dishes.

The first handoff

2007-08-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

We did our first experiment up at her lab at Columbia one evening in December of 2005-- here she is the following evening, after the plates had had a day in the incubator, handing them off to me so I can go print them up in my apartment. The blurred movement is her demonstrating how to quickly lift off the piece of filter paper to get a good print.

The first plates and prints

2007-08-13T07:42:00.000-07:00

December 05 - This is what grew and was printed. I substituted heavy printing paper for the more delicate lab-filter paper and that worked well. I sealed the bugs onto the paper with cytoseal (acrylic resin normally used to seal specimens on glass slides). These prints were beautiful to me -- with distinct colonies of transformed (blue) ecoli and unaltered ecoli (translucent/white) visible. The only problem was that no trace of my hand or brush stroke was visible. Not yet quite the 3-way collaboration we had in mind (scientist, nature, artist). Back to the lab.

Early Bacteria Prints - Learning to Gain Control

2007-08-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

These are other prints from further attempts to cultivate this bacteria into images. It took 5 days in the lab to gain some control over the media. When it is "painted" it is in solution and clear, and thus a little tricky to control.

At last, a way to guide my hand

2007-08-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

In the lab, trying to find some way to guide making a sharp image on the agar, I realize I have a sketchbook with tracings of shadows -- and discover that I can see and trace these contours through the transparent agar. Phew.

Printed Wildflower Bacteria Painting

2007-08-13T07:36:00.001-07:00

The completed print.
April 2006

Ecoli Bacteria Wildflowers - in process

2007-08-13T07:36:00.000-07:00

And the guided painting method works -- this time using a very dry plate to minimize running.

Fungi Hunting at STR June'06

2007-08-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Kristin and I brought our work to Montana last June 06, and it caught the imagination of Dr. Dave Sands, a plant pathologist at the University of Montana in Bozeman. He had us all combing the field for signs of "vascular rot" in hopes of finding some colorful fungi we could cultivate to create a different variety of native paints for me to try.Below is our makeshift petri dish (knox gelatin in a pie plate) and Dave extracting some of the fungi to see if we could get it to flourish and make some interesting colors.

It looked like a promising experiment, but our gelatin gave way after a few days and became liquid before the fungi had a chance to grow. Onward and upward.

New Bugs... shipped fresh from MT

2007-08-13T06:18:00.001-07:00

Thanks to the folks in Dave Sands' lab at MSU in Bozeman MT, a fresh palette of colors were cultivated off of the roots of an invasive plant species in Nevada (red brome), streaked for purity, and made safe (i.e. won't grow at body temperature). This is how they were sent to me.

Autoclaving the Agar

2007-08-13T06:18:00.000-07:00

Dr. Katayoun Chamanay offered to help me cook up the agar and pour the plates in her lab at the New School/Eugene Lang .

Making Paint

2007-08-13T06:16:00.001-07:00

Enjoying the luxuries of a pipetteman & bunsen burner, I measure out sterile water into tubes that will later hold dilutions of the bacteria (aka paint).

A Design in Yeast

2007-08-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

As I waited for my plates to dry, Katayoun let me experiment with some yeast that had undergone a haploid dissection process, allowing it to turn a lovely reddish pink... here I streaked a bit into the silhouette of the red brome plant.. in preparation for my painting with the bacteria cultivated from that plant. (Photo of the plate on the right = about 1 1/2 days of growing the yeast culture, plate on the left = the guide drawing).

Distribution of Red Brome in Nevada

2007-08-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

Here are prints of images of Nevada I grew on the t-soy agar plates using two of the bacteria strains that had been cultivated from the red brome plant -- a black and a red. The red areas show where this invasive plant species is prevalent in Nevada.

Outlines... Solids

2007-08-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

Working out how to achieve a thin line of color... and creating a wash of color. The guiding drawing for these was the same shadow cast from a bleeding heart plant in my back garden.

Freshening up the Cultures

2007-08-13T06:10:00.000-07:00

I traveled to Montana and got to visit Dr. Sands' lab and the core cultures of my paints. Since my batch was now about a month old, it was time to streak a fresh set of the cultures onto t-soy agar "slants" (in test tubes) - which is what I'm doing here.

Have Cultures... Will Travel

2007-08-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

Here Dave and I are at Silver Tip Ranch deep in the heart of Yellowstone Park, setting up our traveling painting lab and introducing another artist, Marianne Perry, to this new material.

Using a few colors at once

2007-08-13T06:06:00.000-07:00

Marianne and I tried painting some multi-color designs, using a new blue and also a yellow we discovered growing by chance on one of the plates (likely caused by water from condensation). This is one I tried.

Multi-color paintings

2007-08-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

Here is a plate by Marianne in the image of a Castilleja plant (Indian Paintbrush).

Making a Print

2007-08-13T06:02:00.000-07:00

Here Marianne presses paper onto the Castilleja image that took about 3 days to grow/develop.

Mandala in Warm Colors

2007-08-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

This took about 3 days to grow to this level of color and coverage. I used the orange and a red culture from Dr. Sands' lab, and the strain that resembles Naples Yellow is the one we discovered while at the ranch. We renamed Annex Yellow... our truly local color. They don't appear to fight with each other, nor spread over onto one another. I am starting to think about Rose Windows and Mandalas and their conveyances of faith/religion/spiritual beliefs and practices.