Art Meets Science
Educational posted of the Alexis Rockman original painting Pioneers, 2017, oil and acrylic on wood panel 72 x 144 inches. Poster produced by NMU includes the original painting and its key.
Dr. Leonard has developed a strong interest in the relationship between the arts (mostly the visual arts) and science (mostly biology). While she certainly has always enjoyed the arts, this interest really initially developed through her interactions with Alexis Rockman, a fine art painter based in New York who specializes in environmental themes. Dr. Leonard was contacted somewhat accidentally by a staff person at the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) who was arranging for a tour through the Great Lakes region by a painter who had been commissioned to produce a major project for the museum centered on the Great Lakes. This painter turned out to be Rockman and he travelled through the area meeting with many scientists and others knowledgeable about Great Lakes issues. His stop in Marquette included a coffee-date with Dr. Leonard. They hit it off and stayed in contact, with Dr. Leonard serving as a content expert for some of Rockman's paintings. These eventually turned out to be a series of five very large paintings that were accompanied by six large watercolors and a large number of "field drawings". These materials were completed in 2017 and were curated into a travelling exhibition that started at the GRAM and then moved on to a series of major museums in the region over the course of several years.
As part of her involvement with Alexis Rockman, Dr. Leonard developed a collaboration with local NMU Art & Design professor and painter Taimur Cleary. Initially they planned a short Artist in Resident program that brought Rockman to Marquette to meet with students and the public. Also around this time they were awarded an NMU collaborative PRIME grant to develop an online resource that accompanies The Great Lakes Cycle paintings and provides background material to the themes that are presented in the works. This etext is available via subscription and is used by educators and members of the public as a guide to exploring the paintings. Content spans science, art, history, and sociocultural themes and includes videos from scientists from around the Great Lakes region that work on the projects and issues portrayed in the Rockman paintings. For Leonard and Cleary, this project was new and required them to consider publication for a very different audience and in a very different manner than past projects. Several undergraduate students from both the Biology Dept and School of Art & Design assisted (supported by the PRIME grant) with the development of this project. We also received critical support from our web design guru Dr. Daric Christian.
Since she started with this interaction with art, Dr. Leonard has become more interested and engaged in the importance of such interdisciplinary thinking for her students. To this end, in 2020 Dr. Leonard and Professor Cleary developed a new course INTT 222: Art Meets Science that is designed to have students explore the relationship between art and science. In the course, students initially come to understand what is really meant by "visual art" and "science", then track through the relationship between these disciplines over historical time, and then finally explore the modern interaction between them. The culmination of the course asks students to consider how these disciplines might be brought together to enrich their own discipline or interest in creative and productive ways. This course will be taught in the summer as an asynchronous, online course co-taught by both Leonard and Cleary. The course is open to any student with any major and may be used for NMU General Education credits in the area of Interdisciplinary Thinking. If you are interested in taking this course, look for it in the summer course offerings through the NMU Registrars Office (note that in 2021 the course will be labelled as BI 296 and thereafter as INTT 222).
Check out a recent story written about the collaboration leading to this course here