Stories by Glendon Mellow

Kalliopi, Katie and Glendon wish you a spooky Hallowe’en! Watch Symbiartic for more spooky science-art!

Sometimes in my travels across the sciart spectrum, you see a work-in-progress so stunning, it has to be shared right away, even incomplete.

You’re proud of the science communication you’ve written for your blog. You want to add visual excitement to an announcement about science outreach.

Several years ago I painted a half-human, half-trilobite  hybrid in the style of a Minotaur. I’ve always been fascinated with the blended animals and humans from mythology (that’s where my Flying Trilobite handle comes from)  and trying out ideas with organisms that scientific discovery has revealed to us, everything from dinosaurs to microbes.

From: Drown Your Town: what does your hometown look like with sea level rise? by David Wogan at Plugged In. Source: Andrew David Thaler Amid a couple of harrowing weeks in the science blogging community, a madcap and dastardly plan was hatched by the Southern Fried Scientist, Andrew David Thaler.

Here on Symbiartic we’ve featured hundreds of fine artists, illustrators, photographers, sculptors, comic illustrators and cartoonists, jewellery-makers, dataviz designers since we began.

Part of the purpose here on Symbiartic is to put forth ideas about how science communication can learn from art, the way art is increasingly informed by science.

Since Bora Zivkovic first asked me to moderate a session back at ScienceOnline 2009, I’ve been hoping to instill the importance of imagery into the wider science communication conversation.

As Symbiartic’s representative Canadian, I’m at least one science illustrator who stands with Canadian scientists today to protest our Conservative government’s attack on science and science communication.

Ambient Plagues have been unleashed upon my fair city of Toronto by Elaine Whittaker at the Redhead Gallery. The show opened September 4th, with the reception tomorrow, Friday the 13th if you’re inclined to mix superstitious luck with scientific microbial nightmares.

Dinosaur fossil mounts can be breathtaking in their grandeur. It’s rare that illustrations of the fossils can have that affect. Scott Hartman has been illustrating dinosaur fossil skeletons for years, and is one of the clearest, most detail-oriented illustrators we are lucky to have describe our favourite, dynamic, prehistoric beasties.

Dinosaur fossil mounts can be breathtaking in their grandeur. It’s rare that illustrations of the fossils can have that affect. Scott Hartman has been illustrating dinosaur fossil skeletons for years, and is one of the clearest, most detail-oriented illustrators we are lucky to have describe our favourite, dynamic, prehistoric beasties.

Guilty, by Yummei a.k.a. Wenquing Yan is simply a stunning and extraordinary work of art in an attempt to raise ecological awareness about pollution in the oceans.

It is widely believed that Michaelangelo’s favorite medium to work with was Carrara marble. The single gigantic piece of quarried marble had been more or less ruined a generation earlier by the efforts of the sculptor Agostino who had carved deeply into the block.

Since Symbiartic began here on the Scientific American Blog Network a little over two years ago, we’ve been sharing the view from the rich intersection of science and art (at the corner of micro and macro) and helped connect image-makers around the razor edge of of the #SciArt world.

  Looking at Symbolist Master Gustave Moreau’s Orphée I am struck by something. No, not the exquisitely beautiful severed head. The two box turtles hanging out in the corner, trying to be under the radar.

  Rich Visual Vocabulary A lot of Renaissance art is stuffed with symbols we hardly see now: oh, that orange on the table in Van Eyck’s Arnolfini Wedding?

Summer went by swiftly, but my words of wisdom shall last throughout the ages. Come and be charmed by Bug Girl, Steven Hamblin and Morgan Jackson, while I deliver my sermon from atop the Canadian peaks of sciart greatness, and spread loaves of sage advice and tattooed goodness to gladden your heart.

Discovery channel asks if C. megalodon could still be extant, Tardar megalodon answers. You tell ‘em, Tardar megalodon! Drawing by Scott Elyard.

These are my unexpected deer in the woods. My chop wood, carry water. My contemplation of water flowing over pebbles. My deep breaths. Standing within the Royal Ontario Museum, sketching fossil skulls.

Red is a primary color, one of three. Coloratus in Latin means “colored” but also means red. It is a primordial color, despite being commonly found in flowers.