The inspiration and energy of the BIO5 art collection speaks to the possibility of discovery, in much the same way the beautiful Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building does for the scientists who work in it. Lively, yet calm colors and patterns combine with natural elements so that observers discover something new each time they contemplate a piece of the collection. Scientists also find the “new” in their work, inspired again and again by the interaction and flexibility afforded by the artful architecture.
The art on the walls of BIO5’s home is the work of nationally and internationally acclaimed artists, chosen for inclusion in the collection because of their visions and their outstanding bodies of work.
Click on the artist names below to learn more about their artwork.
DOROTHY ARNOLD
Wedding In The Fog, Acrylic on Canvas, 1982
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Dorothy Arnold works in landscape, abstraction, and figurative genres. With a constant blend of movement and a sense of a figurative presence, Arnold evokes personal memories and experiences through her paintings. The artist says, “The rhythms of nature have always influenced not only what I paint but how I paint. Be it sky, clouds, trees, or water, my hand and my body must become a part of the rhythm.”
Not inhibited by materials, she uses found objects such as glass, beads, or paper goods that come closest to representing her original ideas. The feeling of movement throughout Arnold’s work leaves the audience with a sense of transition that carries one’s eyes fluidly over the canvas.
Known nationally and internationally, the artist who is a graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, has been showing in solo and group exhibitions for over 25 years. She has received numerous awards, including a Massachusetts Artist Fellowship. In 2002, Arnold’s work embarked on a three year retrospective that began in Germany, traveled to Russia and Italy, and completed its tour in the States.
JACKSON BOELTS
Sequences: Red Maize, I, Pastel in Paper, 2006
Sequences: Turf Grass, II, Pastel in Paper, 2006
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Jackson Boelts has been an educator, designer and artist for more than 25 years, and has won more than 500 awards for his art and design work. His work is exhibited in Moscow, Mexico, Poland, Germany, and numerous locations nationally. As a full professor of art at the University of Arizona, Mr. Boelts’ love and mastery of teaching is evident in his network of thousands of accomplished graduates around the globe.
IN THE ARTIST WORDS
Creating landscapes that integrate digital code into photography and traditional media was the focus of Maize Sequence.Inspired by abstract expressionist Adolf Gottlieb’s paintings of the 1950’s this series of works juxtaposes a digitally printed rectangle with a hand-painted circle. The contrast illuminates more than just the visual artistic elements of the piece – it also speaks to the vast gulf that lies between simple biological entities and our technological view of them.
A layered photographic image if an organism with its typographical DNA sequence (A, G, C, T), along with an abstract sphere, are used to create a pictorial landscape. In this series, images of grass; cotton; and red, yellow and blue maize are used as a background in the landscapes. Upon close inspection, the actual DNA sequence for that particular organism is seen subtly integrated with the photograph. A fiery circle symbolizing the life-giving forces of the sun completes the image. The molecule we know as the basic building block of life – (A) adenine, and (G) guanine, (C) cytosine, and (T) thymine – are used as a symbolic visual identifier in these works.
BARRY ENTNER
Flora Loose Group, Amethyst, 2006
ABOUT THE ARTIST
For more than thirty five years, sculptor Barry Entner has been exploring the properties of glass in the pursuit of his unique vision. Using a primarily tropical palette, Entner creates otherworldly forms, reflecting the relationship between kinetic and potential life. The elegant and vital movements inherent in his forms are the result of his innovative, vibrant designs. His work is shown in museums, public spaces, and private collections throughout the world.
Barry Entner works with designers, galleries, Architects and collectors throughout the world to create unique sculptures, from pedestal pieces to site specific installations.
Barry works personally with his clients from the earliest stages of design to the final completion of each unique sculpture. The level of detail and care Barry puts into each of his sculptures firmly inserts him into the upper echelon of today’s sculptural artists. In many cases, his pieces have grown in value since their original purchase and have become a centerpiece for both conversation and delight.
HEATHER GREEN
Living Cosmos,Mixed Media, 2006
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Heather Green’s projects and installations examine historical and ecological narratives of the Northern Gulf of California and Sonoran Desert. The collaborative nature of her work has allowed her to ally with a diverse range of individuals including scientists, poets and fishermen. Green is a recipient of the 2011 Arizona Commission on the Arts Artist Project Grant, the 2010 Community Foundation of Southern Arizona/Buffalo Exchange Arts Award, and the Oregon College of Art & Craft Emerging Artist Residency in Book Arts. Her work has been shown in Mexico, Uruguay, and in museums and galleries both regionally and across the United States. A native of Tucson, Heather currently works in Tempe as Assistant Professor of Book Arts at Arizona State University.
MICHAEL HOLCOMB
New Map of Hope,Print, 2006
ABOUT THE ARTIST
The confluence of technology, art, and culture has been Michael Holcomb’s central interest since the 1960’s. He works in collaborative teams on large, interactive design projects and as an individual artist for the creation of images. His work has been exhibited and published internationally and is held in both public and private collections.
IN THE ARTIST'S WORDS
New Map of Hopeis part of a series of abstractions I began in 2003. It has to do with using form and technology to imagine and reveal the unknown. I use computers and other electronics for most of my work and this image results from experiments with those tools. It’s kind of a serious play along aesthetic, technical and intellectual tracks that, for me, intersect with discovery and surprise. The images are a manifestation of that process. My pictorial inspirations come from disparate sources: scientific visualization, information culture, anthropology, and abstract art.
DAVID KESSLER
Cats Claw Elegance, Acrylic on Aluminum, 2005
Undercut Elegance, Acrylic on Aluminum, 2005
ABOUT THE ARTIST
David Kessler emerged as a photo-realist painter in California in the mid-1970’s. Known for taking the visual aberrations of unsuccessful photographs and incorporating them into compositions in hisRuin Slide Series, he departed from other painters in that genre and confirmed his interest in perceptions of abstraction, illusion, and realism. In 2003, this work was selected, from among 20 American painters, to be included in Hyper-realisms USA 1965-1975 at the Strasbourg Museum of Contemporary Art. In more recent series, Mr. Kessler has concentrated on the bravura rendering of photo-realistic scenes in nature. In the early 1980’s, he painted abstract dashes of color on Plexiglas, which he set up in front of a landscape to be photographed as source material, thus lending a surreal quality to the realistic scene.
In the 1990’s, he began painting on aluminum and rough-brushing the surface of the raw metal to create compositions that combine painted and non-painted portions of the surface. Mr. Kessler’s work is in the collections of many museums in the United States of Europe.
IN THE ARTIST WORDS
As a painter, it is important for me to address the concerns of painting – what has been done, and what I can add to this. My work contains the elements of simulation (refracted light simulating paint) and hybridization (the combination of aluminum, wire brushes, and paint). It is an attempt to create an image that contains aspects of both modernism and post-modernism.
The use of aluminum is an attempt to capture the qualities of refracted light and to have these qualities interact with the painting. The completed image is produced both by refracted light – created by abrading the aluminum with various wire brushes – a slightly holographic affect, giving the appearance of movement as the painting is viewed from different angles.
MARVIN LOWE
Coral Series, Acrylic Print Media Collage, 1991
Tiny Pale Blue Dot, Acrylic Print Media Collage, 1990
The Bridge, Black & White Intaglio Print 1958
Orion Arm II, Mixed Media, 1998
Religious Figure, Acrylic Collage Monotype, 1993
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Lowe’s work is included in over 200 national, international, and invitational exhibitions and 80 private, public, university, and corporate collections worldwide. These include the John F. Kennedy family’s private collection, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Brooklyn Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the British Museum in London. He had 50 one-person exhibitions and over 30 awards, most notably those from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
JOHN NELSON
El Futuro,Acrylic on Panel, 2007
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Nelson embraces the concept of artist as story teller, a chronicler of contemporary culture. His symbolic amalgamations, which often consist of a central image superimposed over a collage of symbols and text (anything from art criticism to nursery rhymes), make intuitive sense of the inundation that we experience in what Nelson sees as our “over-communicated, how-to world.” Bits and pieces from daily life are placed, layered, painted, sanded and repainted; in this persistent, almost obsessive editing and rearrangement we find the grammar of Nelson’s private language. And because the constant reworking of the surface and the rearranging of form describe the process of discovery and creation, the paintings end up being narrative in two ways: they ask us to invent our own stories based on the images and messages that Nelson uses, but they also present the “story” of their own creation and invite us to share the restless, somewhat anxious journey of the art-making process.
The strength of the work lies in the terrain between the narrative and the abstract, between what is immediately accessible to the viewer and what remains obscure. Masked in Nelson’s faux-naive style is a complex formalism designed to both present and obscure meaning. “Ambiguity and metaphor are central to my work,” says Nelson, “I think the ambiguous is more interesting, more engaging. Because there is always something more to discover it reveals itself more slowly and it has greater longevity.
BARBARA ROGERS
Ordinary Miracles: Life in the Desert, Oil on Canvas, 2006
Hot House Hybrids #4, Oil on Canvas, 2001
A Clear Day In The Valley, Oil on Canvas, 2005
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Barbara Rogers has exhibited nationally and internationally, including one-person exhibitions at major galleries and museums in San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Scottsdale, Germany and the United Arab Emirates. Her work is in major public and private collections including The San Francisco Museum of Modern of Art, The San Jose Museum of Art, and The ASU Museum.
Ms. Rogers sees the importance of the garden as a fundamental pivot where nature and culture can convene and where personal desires can assume political significance.
Ms. Rogers holds degrees from Ohio State University and the University of California at Berkley. She joined the faculty of the School of Art at the University of Arizona in 1990.
IN THE ARTIST WORDS
This former ocean bottom that we call the Sonoran Desert has life forms more beautiful, relevant and astonishing than any artist could ever create. The sun, winds, water, along with all the natural elements, shape the mysterious tales of survival of life in this tough little paradise. Ordinary Miracles: Life in the Desert is about the ever-evolving cast of characters and their dramatic environment that I can see from my window and in my travels through the Sonoran Desert. This cast of characters work so hard to stay alive. Each life is a miracle. Each life contributes something vital to our ecosystem even if we do not understand its role. Through the use of forms, colors and visual symbols for the sun – all suggesting the ancient oceanic beginnings, the struggle to create and maintain life, and the preciousness of water – the painting reflects my love for this inspiring environment. I feel part of a group of people highly privileged to live here.
MAURICE SEVIGNY
The Biomarble Series, Mixed Media on Paper, 2006
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Maurice J. Sevigny is a digital artist who specializes in creating mixed media original works on paper. He has served as the dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona since 1991 and holds studio art and graduate degrees from the Massachusetts College of Art and the Ohio State University. He did post graduate work at Harvard University and has studied and worked in Europe. Mr. Sevigny has taught studio art and administered visual arts programs at Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green University, The University of Texas at Austin, and the Roehampton Institute London.
IN THE ARTIST'S WORDS
In the past few years, personal computing and new technology have provided several tools that I have adapted into my visual art-making process. My paintings journey through a metamorphosis and synthesis of manipulated images that are printed with archival inks on watercolor papers to serve as under paintings for further enchantment with traditional media. These second stage images are often scanned again and reworked through electronic and traditional media.
I am a collector of glass art and have enjoyed watching the formation of molten glass into original works of art. In The Biomarble Series, I wanted to suggest a metamorphic or “bio” history that would be expressive of a reproductive process that captures the swirling of color into a marble form. I began by placing marbles onto my digital scanner and then manipulated these captured scans into a composition through cropping, magnification, color enhancement, and electronically twirling shapes in and out of them. In the studio, I added watercolor washes; wax pencils and pastels for color variation, enhanced contrast, and highlight.
GREGORY WEST
Table Wax,Giclee Print, 2007
Offering,2007
Diversity, Oil on Linen, 2007
Fiddlers Dream, Giclee Prints, 2007
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Making art is a curious thing. Most artists have a mind’s eye, that is, they see an image in their head. For some it’s only nebulous in form, but for others it’s crystal clear. I think it’s our mind’s eye that gets us started on each new piece. It gets us excited. But the first mark we make on the canvas changes everything. The painting at that moment has taken on a life of its own. We struggle to maintain the vision we had. We do everything we can to coax it out of the canvas. All our knowledge, technical skills and talents are brought to bear to create that original vision. In the end, the painting still wins. It has its own personality and, as artists, we’re sometimes reduced to being a mere participant. Still, painting is so much fun ... but maddening at the same time. Realism can be an evasive tactic, and trompe l’oeil painting is like quicksand. The minutia of detail can trap you. Because tactile qualities can be very seductive, meaningful relationships or interactions between the parts of a painting can be lost and it becomes all about execution. Trompe l’oeil is more of a delicate dance. It is a slow and tedious process. When painted well, the rewards are gratifying from a technical point of view. But if visual puns overshadow the narrative or fail to evoke something more than the illustrated, the painting becomes merely decorative. As an artist, I hope the aesthetic values of the painting triumph.
EMMI WHITEHORSE
Water Cure, Oil on Wood Panel, 2002
Salmon Berry II (Diptych), Oil on Paper on Canvas, 2006
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Born in New Mexico on the Navajo Reservation, Emmi Whitehorse and her family herded sheep and traveled between winter and summer pastures. She attended the University of New Mexico and earned a Master of Fine Arts. Ms. Whitehorse feels fortunate that she can devote all of her time to creating art and showing it here and abroad in private, museum, gallery, and governmental collections. She hopes to continue working in good health.
IN THE ARTIST'S WORDS
These works are done with chalk, oil bars, and small oil pastel sticks. Water Cure is on four large wood panels, while Salmon Berry is paper mounted on canvas, as are the majority of my works. I was trained as a print maker, so paper is my favorite material on which to work.
As a young person, I grew up with miles of space and spent summers tending the large herds of sheep that my grandmother cultivated. Spending so much time out in the open, I learned the art of observation, which is an important part of my process. My work has always been about the observance of nature, landscape, the color of time, and the chaotic rearranging of wind, light and the other elements. My job is to transform this seemingly chaotic information into order, into a balance or harmony in accordance with Navajo philosophy. All this activity is recorded in the color, light and activity of the circles, lines and ciphers of my work, creating an abstracted vocabulary.