SciArt Spotlight: Michele Banks

If you're a fan of science and art colliding, then you'll be drawn to today's post like a fruit fly to, well, a tasty piece of fruit. That's right, art appreciators, we've got sciart creator Michele Banks on the blog today. Michele, a.k.a Artologica, is a big name in the sciart world and even bears the distinctly cool designation of 'The Monet of Drosophila' to prove it. (Drosophila, to the uninitiated, is the scientific name for the fruit fly, and fruit flies are some of Michele's most notorious muses.)

Speaking of inspiration, Michele creates breathtaking works of art based on science topics ranging from physically small subject matter like cells (and those fruit flies we mentioned) to hypnotic brainscapes to very large concepts such as climate change. Michele's art explores the beautiful, the unusual, the unexpected, and the inevitable. She works often in watercolors, but also in ink, and with other materials including mixed media.

Not only is Michele's art incredibly interesting, but, of course, so is she: Michele has an unusual pedigree as a sciartist in that she has no formal art training and does not come from a science background. Frankly, we love that! Michele proves that anyone can paint their own path their own way and that a unique perspective is critical to creativity. One day you could be a political science major (as Michele was) and then another day you could find yourself in a Parisian laboratory (as Michele did) studying drosophila thanks to a sciart grant! Flipping fruit salad, how fierce is that?!

Michele's art has been featured in numerous shows and galleries, and outlets such as Scientific American, Microbe Magazine, and Washington Post have written about her work. She currently has a piece showing at the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee, and you can peruse and purchase her art on Etsy. We were thrilled to ask Michele about her creative process, what her advice to aspiring artists is, who inspires her, and more. Meet Michele Banks, The Monet of Drosophila!

When did you know you were an artist?

Wow, that’s a hard question! I’ve been painting for about 20 years, but it definitely wasn’t until I had been in maybe half a dozen shows and festivals that I really felt like an artist. I still have occasional moments of doubt that I’m actually any good at this, which I think is common to almost all artists.

When did you first combine your art with science?

By accident. I was doing abstract watercolors with a lot of wet-in-wet work, and people told me that they looked like microscopic creatures or cells. That fascinated me, so I started looking up images of dividing cells and incorporating them in my work on purpose. I got drawn more and more into the subject matter, and I’ve been pretty much completely science-focused since 2010.

How do you define your artistic style?

I aim for simplicity, and I try to walk a line between representation and abstraction. So, for example, if I’m painting a virus, I try to make it recognizable, but I might exaggerate a feature or eliminate some details. I always try to make it clear that I’m not a scientific illustrator, but at the same time, if I make things too abstract, people don’t get it.

What does being a SciArt creator mean to you?

It’s an opportunity to try to help bridge a gap between communities that don’t always communicate very well. And it’s an amazing privilege to get to play with scientific concepts and knowledge and express them in a new way.

Do you feel you have a unique perspective as a science art creator who does not come from a traditional science background and who is not a formally trained artist? 

Well, sure – the perspective of an outsider is always valuable, and I am an outsider in both the art and the science fields. But it’s also a drawback, I can’t lie. Sciart creators who have a background in science have an instant authority and an ability to “speak the language” that I lack. And my lack of an art degree definitely has been a drag on my career as an exhibiting artist. I hacked out my own career path, and that will always be harder than following the path that already exists.

Can you tell us a bit about your work as a blogger for The Finch and Pea? 

The Finch and Pea is a delightful group blog created by two geneticists, Josh Witten and Mike White. Their idea was to create a “pub” for people to talk about science and how it overlaps with society and the arts, so we had a mix of contributors on everything from NIH funding to poetry. I wanted to try to build the audience for SciArt, so I wrote about cool science-inspired work or shows that I had seen, or sometimes about the science of art. I wrote about things like how different artists responded to earthquakes, or about artists working with dangerous materials. And, of course, I wrote about my work and my inspirations for it.

Incidentally, I also contributed dozens of Science Caturday posts, featuring nerdy cats, some of which are pretty funny.

The Finch & Pea kind of died out along with much of the science blogosphere, but it’s all still up there for people to look at, and I hope they do.

Can you talk a little bit about your experience with drosophila and how they inspire you? 

I wasn’t so much interested in drosophila as a species, more as a symbol of how science works. I was reading about evolution, which is just a huge, engrossing topic, and I discovered that a lot of our knowledge of evolution comes from studying incredibly simple creatures, like bacteria, worms and, yes, fruit flies. I’m amazed at how scientists can study minute changes in model organisms and uncover patterns that are repeated everywhere in nature, and that underlie enormous evolutionary shifts. It just fascinates me that you can learn so much from these tiny creatures, and that they vary so much. And artistically, the fact that their life cycle is so short (which makes it easier to study evolutionary changes) is very poignant. 

Following that, is there a story behind your [very cool] designation as ‘The Monet of Drosophila’?

Yes! In 2018, I got a grant from the DC Commission for the Arts and Humanities (DCCAH) to do a joint sciart project with Virginie Courtier-Orgogozo’s lab at the Institut Jacques Monod in Paris. It’s a drosophila lab studying evolution, so after I got back, I created a number of ink paintings exploring differences in drosophila wings (natural and lab-created) and had an exhibition of them at a gallery in Maryland. A writer did a piece on the show, and I guess the French connection and the idea of painting the same subject over and over with small variations, as Monet did with water lilies and haystacks, led to the “Monet of drosophila” label. I love it : )

You’ve created some amazing art (an example here, The Arctic Bride) around the theme of climate change. Was there something in particular which inspired this? 

Climate change is the great existential issue of our age, so naturally, artists are drawn to it. But yes, there’s a story behind that particular piece. Back in 2014, I was working with two other artists to create an exhibition based on an imagined voyage on a scientific vessel. We initially thought it might be something like Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle, with discoveries of strange new species. But all our research kept leading to the subject of climate change – how bird migration patterns were changing, the ocean was rising and acidifying, even microbes in the soil were affected. So we decided to lean into that, and the whole show ended up being about climate change in the Arctic.

The Arctic Bride, which I made a few years after that show, came out of that same research. When you look at photos of the Arctic, you see these amazing landscapes of brilliant white snow and ice, and how they are gradually giving way to the brown and green of soil and plant life as the ice sheets melt. So that was the visual reference of the pristine white wedding dress, and I wanted all the social baggage that went with that – the idea of how it represents purity – and how the changing climate is affecting that.

When inclined towards a particular scientific concept, how does it speak to you and your identity?

I can’t say exactly. There are plenty of scientific things that I find fascinating – lots of areas of physics and space, for example – that don’t pull me to make art. As an artist, I’m consistently drawn to tiny things that make patterns. Things like dividing cells and biofilms. I love depicting things that are happening under the surface.

What advice do you have for young artists who are interested in creating SciArt?

Try to make art that stands on its own, regardless of inspiration. One thing I strongly believe is that beauty sometimes just happens, but art is intentional. So don’t just think about making something that looks good, think about what you’re trying to say.

What determines which medium you choose for a certain piece? 

A bunch of factors, ranging from the very mundane (do I know how to use that and how much does it cost) to the aesthetic (watercolor for organisms that are translucent or have natural fractal “bleeds”) to the philosophical (ink for evolution because there’s no going back to fix your mistakes).

Do you have any upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about? 

The Arctic Bride is in a show called “Unsustainable” at The Ewing Gallery at the University of Tennessee, which features lots of work on – you guessed it – climate change. It runs from January 9 – February 16th. And I’m hoping to show my work at the American Society for Microbiology meeting in Chicago this summer.

Which [historical or modern] artists inspire you? 

I love tons of artists but Björk is my hero. She is so utterly original and just does whatever the hell she wants, regardless of trends. Her Biophilia album from 2011 is an underrated sciart masterpiece.

(You can find lots of my other sciart faves in my archive of Art of Science blog posts from the Finch & Pea here: https://www.pinterest.com/finchandpea/the-art-of-science/)

Do you have any favorite artist characters in books/movies/other art forms? 

I find most of them very unrealistic! But Harriet Burden, the main character of Siri Hustvedt’s novel The Blazing World, is a fantastic character, and her experience of sexism in the art world is all too real.

If you were a superhero, what would your go-to wearable tech device be?

If I were a superhero, I wouldn’t need one! But if I could pick powers, definitely flight. And super strength. Invisibility, maybe. 

Where can people find you online?

Please find me online! If you want to talk, Twitter is your best bet: @artologica

Lots of photos of my work on Instagram: @artologica

Online shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/artologica

Main website and event schedule: https://www.artologica.net/