Art

Shoals Marine Lab 2016

| nlysiak

Marine Mammal Biology at the Shoals Marine Lab was a fantastic experience this year!!  We had a wonderful group of students from Cornell, Brandeis, Skidmore, UNH, & URI.  Here are some highlights:

Bone puzzles
Sketching skulls
Sketching skulls
{SML Artist in Residence} Janis Goodman’s watercolor studies of Appledore Island
Barnacles
Halftide Ledges
Nature’s bubble wrap!
Seaglass
NH-ME peaks
Hornbill the humpback
Hornbill the humpback
Making the ID of Hornbill
Siren’s Cove
Copepods!
Bioacoustic analysis
Herring gull nest
Gull sticks – a necessary accessory
Swallows at Crystal Lake
Foxgloves at Celia Thaxter’s garden
Swim call, water = 56 degrees
Dogfish dissection
Pollen trails at sea
Basking shark sighting!!
Scrimshaw art project
[SML Artist in Residence} Chris Volpe’s charcoal studies
Star Island sunset

Week 2 @ Shoals

| nlysiak

The second week of IMMB 2015 flew by faster than the first.  The students were busy with more seal surveys, another whale watch, a fish lab, a scrimshaw art project, a seal necropsy, a post-necropsy swim call (water temp = 56 degrees!), and a stranding response to the rarely seen Delphinus inflatus.  In addition, each student completed an oral presentation for our class symposium, Seal Week – a theme that we modeled after Shark Week – to educate people about the misconceptions about the recovering seal populations of New England.

Artist Spotlight – Tristin Lowe

| nlysiak

Mocha Dick (2009): wool felt, vinyl coated fabric, and internal fan

“Mocha Dick is a 52-foot-long recreation of the real-life albino sperm whale that in the nineteenth century terrorized whaling vessels near Mocha Island in the South Pacific. Mocha Dick, was described in appearance ‘he was as white as wool’ in an 1839 magazine article from The Knickerbocker, engaged in battle with numerous whaling expeditions, often sinking smaller boats, and was a source of inspiration for Herman Melville’s epic Moby Dick.”

 Text & images via Tristin Lowe

 

Artist Spotlight – Jeff Briggs

| nlysiak

Last week, I took a stroll down the Rose Kennedy Greenway in downtown Boston, and loved checking out the carousel, featuring all local species.

“Newburyport Artist Jeff Briggs designed and sculpted a one-of-kind carousel for Boston’s Rose F. Kennedy Greenway. His challenge was to create decorations and rides inspired by the ‘land, sea and air’ of the New England environment. Boston schoolchildren were also asked to make drawings of the animals they would like to see on the carousel. Their drawings served as the inspiration for many of the fourteen unique characters that Jeff brought to life, including a sea turtle, a grasshopper, a barn owl, a codfish and a whale. The finishing touch for each animal was a bright, kid-pleasing paint job by artist Bill Rogers, a longtime collaborator.”

See a short video, “Art in the Round” about the carousel.

Photos by N. Lysiak, Text by Tufts University, video via Audrey Harrer