 Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of a likeable science here on ThinkTac Hawaii. I'm your host Ethan Allen. Today I have with me in the studio Michelle Swengel-Rigala and Kirsten Carlson, both science illustrators. And this is gonna be a little a little bit different show than we usually do. I usually have practicing scientists on and we spend a lot of time having to get them to explain in relatively clear simple terms some of the intricacies of their science. You guys are both artists. People understand what artists do in some sense. Science illustrators maybe a bit less so. But so we're gonna but we're gonna talk about that intersection and overlap of science, art, communication, naturalists, and all that kind of good stuff. So maybe start out you both have all these sort of parallel backgrounds right? You went the same science illustration program a year or two years apart or something and you also both end up doing the same naturalist sort of cruise or being illustrate. Tell me about this cruise thing. Sure. Kirsten and I both went through the science illustration science communication program at University of California Santa Cruz in the 90s. We can speak about how we independently arrived at that sort of graduate program but we didn't move here until different times and it was only about a year ago that we finally met each other and I'm so glad that we found each other. It seems like in other cities where we've lived there has usually been a nexus of science illustrators that we connect with but here in Hawaii I didn't meet that group of people for many years so it was frustrating to not have that sort of community but now that Kirsten is here we're finding other people coming out of the woodwork so we have a good group here. I'll have to maybe introduce you to one of my colleagues who runs a program called picturing science for our group and gets, helps kids learn science through doing doing art. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, so it's interesting stuff. So maybe you start out with a simple sort of question but what is a scientific illustrator or a science illustrator? A science illustrator is someone who creates illustrations in service of science and it typically is an illustration that tries to convey a scientific idea or a concept or an organism so when you for example see a bird book and it has drawings in it those are done by a science illustrator and sometimes in the role of more of an educator a science illustrator can take on the the role of an interpreter so I worked at Monterey Bay Aquarium where I did illustrations that helped interpret organisms to the public. Okay, so that is you can you can through that as is being seen here on the on the screen you can emphasize certain aspects of things in a way that maybe a photograph couldn't you can strengthen you can call attention to particular features in good ways so that a company text can discuss them and the reader will be drawn to that particular piece or facet of the work right? Correct. Okay, okay and there's there is very much then there's a communication and an illustration an education aspect to this and you've spoken of connecting with with children being a science illustration being a great way to help draw kids into science right? Yeah, yeah it's it's very very visual keeps language barriers down. I do a lot of work out in Asia so we have kids who don't speak English very well but you know this picturing science program my colleague does for instance overcomes that very neatly. One of the things about Michelle's work with Fiverr that I really like is it engages people who normally would look at an artist and think oh they can draw and when you're actually I mean what's the experiences you have had when people have said what it how do I knit that? Right, I think that after I was a more technical science illustrator and I shifted into the medium of fiber I found a connection to an audience that was familiar with things that were knitted or crocheted and and they could see how I approached this and yet they might not have necessarily thought about creating something that represents science in the work that they do so I like being able to bridge that gap between people making functional pieces versus making representational pieces that that tell a story about science. Right you don't you don't tend to think of yarn as being something that you create representational illustrations as we're in yet this is this is very evocative certainly I mean does it represent a particular species of there okay now you put me on the side I can't remember exactly what species I was considering when I was making this but but this is an example of a project that I coordinated in 2010 where I invited people from anywhere in the world to look at Hawaii marine science marine species around our archipelago and then take from that list or from those images inspiration be it a color pattern or an actual form and then this is meant to represent something like a nudibranch with the with the mantle that does those ruffles or maybe a coral head okay and and so this may not represent an exact species but it certainly gives the feeling of something you might see underwater so that's what we created with this with this larger exhibit right so this was all part of this this part of this hyperbolic coral reef project that's right I saw a little blurb I should refer to it it looked like quite an amazing amazing thing that had people from around around the world and you also do other large scale again weaving in a very different sort of way right right nowadays I've I've taken this this science idea and gone on a tangent I've started to work in three-dimensional forms rather than just on paper and it was a surprise it's not something that I would have imagined myself doing 15 years ago I thought I would have been a science illustrator for all my life but I'm I'm really thankful to have had this opportunity to explore these other modes of working right so some some of it really you actually are doing representations of scientific data right and and so just as that the two shots back with the cone thing that was there is actually water flow it's an interesting story I was seeking I was seeking an outlet to be able to create more abstract artwork and yet I'm so steeped in science and information and form that I didn't necessarily have a jumping off point to work in a more abstract manner without feeling disingenuous and so luckily this residency program that Kirsten and I have both been on gave me the outlet to do that kind of work the Schmidt Ocean Institute is an organization that supports scientific research they have a 277 foot research vessel that travels primarily around the pacific and it invites scientists to apply for ship time to go from point to point and to conduct research along that transit and they've been doing that for five years now in the past year they've invited artists to come on board to be embedded within the science crew and then interpret the research that's going on on board and while Kirsten and I I think had inclinations to both want to do this as a science illustrator and in the in the the chain of how many illustrators and artists have gone on voyages around the world in history you know that was so exciting for us both I decided to take the different tack and I decided to apply as a fiber artist so while I was on board I made these textiles it looks like a knitted square but on top of that square I've added some data points and those neon colored lines are this is a graph that shows different qualities of the water and one of each of the stations where we stopped along our voyage from Honolulu to Tahiti the data are either oxygen content temperature or light levels which are a proxy for different types of plankton in the water so so this is very different from working on organismal information which is more typical for the types of things we do but in this case at least I had a way to talk about the science that was being done on board so I think it was in fact a really good match on the part of Schmidt Ocean to ask me to do this and then those wire sculptures the larger pieces are essentially if you take that graph and then you look at the y-axis and then you wrap that graph around the y-axis that's what I've sculpted in those knitted wire rows so it's another way to make a form a volume showing information yeah absolutely no it's fascinating stuff it's a great way that again to show that intersection between art and science in a very functional way and that's so important people don't they often think of these things as being very separate worlds or world and science world but they're really very deeply meshed my wife is a kaleidoscopist and so the kaleidoscopists will consider an art form of course are very heavily based in science and reflectivity and precise angles and da da da da so yeah I understand that I think a lot of those points that you just mentioned about your wife's interests are also things that Kirsten was looking at on her voyage can you talk about that a little bit well actually I got stuck on what you said your wife does so she makes kaleidoscopes is that what I'm understanding right that's fascinating yeah so to bring it back to what I did so the when I was on the Schmidt Ocean Institute voyage that was just a couple months ago January the end of January to the end of February and I was on board with NASA scientists and a bunch of great researchers from educational institutions around the U.S. and internationally and I was charged with being the creative one on board while they tried to take ground-truthing samples of plankton to coordinate with the satellite imagery that NASA currently takes of the oceans to look at phytoplankton biomass and other important things relating to the to our cycles in the ocean so what was fun for me and I brought the plankton poster with as one of the images I as a result of that journey I created the plankton during the I illustrated plankton during the cruise and then formed it into a poster and I did that all on a rocking and rolling ship because that was one of the parameters of being an artist at sea and I was on seasick medicine the entire time but it was a fantastic voyage and in 21 days yeah that's it so I just want to speak to this really quickly so plankton are something that are invisible to our eye not many people even know what plankton are when you say the word so plankton are made up of lots of different tiny organisms that are both plant and animal like but there's nothing really comparable to it in what we look at when we say plants and animals so what you're looking at are all organisms that are smaller in diameter smaller than the diameter of your human hair so take a cross-section of your human hair and what I was fascinated by is the diversity of shapes and sizes and these are all phytoplankton so these are all organisms that actually use sunlight to make their food and that was the kicker for me because as a scientific illustrator I've loved plankton for a long time because I've been ocean focused but I'd never really got to see these many plankton for this long this up close across the entire pacific we went from Honolulu to Portland, Oregon and yeah this was a poster and so I'm thrilled with it because I'm hoping a person when I create something in this perspective I'm hoping a person is either interested in it and dives a little deeper and learns a little bit more or says it's not for me and continues on their day but my goal is to create something that's visually interesting. Sure you want to engage people at first that's the first step in learning right and the beauty of it is phytoplankton clearly is tremendously important right one of my guests from past show pointed out he had a little routine he said take two breaths if it weren't for the phytoplankton you couldn't do one of those you know they're producing half the oxygen on earth or something in that order as I understand it so it's really uh they're critically important and it should be more widely appreciated and understood it the effects of what we do to the ocean including making it warmer making it more acidic and dumping tons and tons and tons of plastic loop into it we should understand what that's going to do to the plankton right so it's great that's a great way to draw attention to a critical and a critical socially so far not yeah wonderful and you've also done things with for kids the like uh ocean seasons book yeah so i'll just speak to this part of my life right now so i fairly recently got into children's book illustration uh fairly recently isn't it it's been 10 years or so and it's another communication medium to another audience so for me a picture book is 32 pages with which i can connect kids and their parents because parents are actually the ones usually reading picture books to their children with nature and in my particular case it's ocean so the three books that you guys are sharing with people today out in the audience are an activity book called where the land and sea meets that has a little bit about marine organisms you find in the inner tidal zone all around the world so no matter where you are on the planet you might be able to relate to something you see even if you're landlocked you can learn to draw a crab and then the earlier one that maybe can come back up as ocean seasons and that was a book that was introducing the concept of spring summer autumn and fall sorry autumn and winter happening underwater in a different way but similar to what happens above water right because animals marine life migrates similar to how birds and mammals all migrate right they do this seasonally and except there are vertical components to migration too right it's true yeah up and down as well as north and so yeah and then sea secrets was a really cool non-fiction book that i worked with the national science science foundation on there are scientists all over the world doing long-term ecological research that are studying things over the long term as the name shows so when i was brought in as an educated as part of the education outreach for the antarctic program in palmer station and for the california current program i created i helped create the illustrations i did create the illustrations for sea secrets and what was really great about that book is it used plankton again in this form krill to tie in two really different ecosystems california and anardica together because they both are the bottom of the krill provide food for all the organisms in both those locations and we're going to go into this further but right now we're going to have to take a quick break uh you're here with us on likeable science and i'm glad you're joined us and i'm here with michelle twinkle regella and kirsten carlson and we'll be right back after a short break hi everyone ted ralsson here host of our think tech show where the drone leads and a lot of you of course have been setting your clocks at uh four o'clock on friday so that you can make sure you see our show it's now changed it's now going to be at noon on thursdays noon on thursdays new standard time for where the drone leads and where the drone leads is two systems like this capabilities that we're using here in hawaii these days and we need you to pay attention to this be part of it so see you at noon on thursdays thanks for watching think tech hawaii and look forward to seeing you at education matters on tuesdays with me carol mon lee hey stand the energy man here thanks for joining us on think tech hawaii and i invite you to join me every friday on think tech hawaii at 12 o'clock where i give you all the energy news that's worth talking about here in honolulu and uh i love to talk about hydrogen so join us on friday on my lunch hour here at think tech hawaii be there aloha hi you're back here with us on likable science i'm your host ethan alan and i'm here in the think tech studios with michelle schwengel regal regala and kirsten carlson uh science illustrators and we're talking about how they got into their science illustration career is what they've done with their science illustration careers and some of the power and value of being a science illustrator the education communication aspects of it so why don't could either of you tell me a little more about sort of some of the challenges i mean you mentioned the challenges of doing on a rocking boat but uh do you have challenges with the people who want you to do particular illustrations and then don't like them or there are lots of obstacles that have come up in large part there's simply a matter of having jobs to support the work that we are trained to do it seems like a lot of places don't always write in the when you're writing a grant for example you may not apply for monies that would cover the illustrations that you need to to accompany your research so it's something as museums universities are losing funding as time goes by it seems like sort of those um peripheral staff members as illustrators often are considered are among the first to go so that's that's a challenge on the greater scale um can you think of something about doing their particular work a lot of people think that photography should be able to replace science illustration why do we need modern people in a time of photography or or camera work but but certainly you know someone needs to operate this but you also need to know what to look for and how to highlight this the salient features of whatever organism you're talking about yeah i'll i'll um i want to say something about photography versus illustration and also about the challenges and the benefits of both so photography is an excellent medium there's no doubt about it but the one thing you have to remember is above all else a picture does tell without a picture is worth a thousand words but on the same hand when you take a photograph and it's representing one image one organism one frozen moment in time which can be fantastic if you're trying to catch the sunset but if you're trying to do an illustration of a sea turtle or coral or something that requires you to take all the characteristics of that organism and mute and meld them into one thing that's where illustration is really beneficial so the challenge of that is oftentimes when you're charted with doing a scientific illustration you try to have a scientist wading in the wings to make sure they review your work because a scientist has a keen eye when it comes to observing what's right and wrong in an animal or any kind of scientific illustration whether it be a process illustration or some of the ones that you guys have been showing about what we've we've done so yeah so that can be a real challenge because you'll be working on a piece of art and you might get the call that says uh you didn't really get the bill right on this scritter so please redo it or yeah that can be a challenge yeah absolutely absolutely and that there is that whole issue of sort of capturing the essence of the thing this is what my artist colleague talks about and it's not so much getting every detail right but it's giving a shark look like a shark getting the sharkiness of it has it were right yeah i have an interesting side story about that so again photography for taking a picture of a full grown great white has its challenges as we all would know so the fun thing about that illustration is it was blown up to adult great white size which is about 20 feet long and that was so people could get a sense of scale the pectoral fin alone is three and a half feet tall but the thing is is that when they had me draw it or paint it they said could you please make the mouth a little more close than normal because a normal great white shark the mouth would be open you could see the pearly whites because we wanted to look a little less threatening when the head of the audience is next to it so that was a fun thing that i could do because i was an illustrator so that's a little side story about that one that's great yeah you can adjust as needed i think one of the most challenging tasks that i was ever assigned was to draw a species of thrips and they look like little clear plastic bags and and trying to find the delineation between abdominal segments thoracic segments it was it was so challenging i mean i've illustrated genitalia where it also looks like a plastic bag but there might be some section that's more sclerotized you know the the chitin that creates structure in insect exoskeletons but yeah working on plastic bag illustration it's much harder than drawing a brown paper bag as is often the case in art school and i can i just add something to that okay so so one thing we're alluding to is we also illustrate for different audiences but we also have different clients so for the scientists having the specifications of a particular thing on the structure of the body is really important whereas like if you're doing for an educational public institution the position of the mouth might not be so important as the overall emotional response for it so that's something we get to play around with a lot which is really subjective sometimes and it's not always what you see it's not always drawing what you see so speaking of audiences can people see your work locally at the hub which is the former sports authority at ward center the Honolulu Biennial is going on right now and i was invited to be a participant in that one of the local hawaii artists and some of my wire sculptures and my knitted data sets are on view there the ones that we saw on screen i also just had some crocheted octopodes some cephalopods on display in Crete a little further away but that was an exhibit that had been here at the commons gallery and now is traveling so it's exciting to also have an audience and we will both of us have exhibits and things coming up off and on i'm pretty active online so you can always check out my information to see what's going on and then we both have our artwork traveling as part of the schmidt ocean institute booth that's going around to different i don't know where they are right now they're she's going they're going around to different events and i'm sorry i don't have that information but if you look at the schmidt ocean institutes website they may have that information so both our artwork when it comes back around to hawaii it might be available for the public it was at mark's garage excellent that's super there was just an exhibit in san francisco there's another one coming up in bermuda and also part of a sailing event and then i believe it'll come back to the bishop museum in the fall here so stay tuned for that wow that's that's very exciting to have your works traveling so broadly that's very very impressive you get you get a good audience and again it speaks to the by not having to tie the language to printed words you're getting a message to a potentially much broader audience right it's not limited to english speakers only or whatever at present i'm i'm in i'm filling the role of someone like an artist in residence but not necessarily under that title at the bishop museum during the journeys exhibit the previous exhibit they had at hawain hall i was invited to bring some of these pieces to be included in the exhibit and then i was also on display within the exhibit on tuesdays where i would do some work in view and then i would talk with the public about what i was working on and talk about the intersection of art and science and also reveal some of the specimens from their behind the scenes collections so i'm still doing that on tuesdays at the bishop museum and then christin is also an artist in residence locally i am i'm a little more behind the scenes though i'm i go out to coconut island once a week as artists in residence at a place called the maker lab there and i'm working on a couple educational outreach products with dr judy lemus who's out there yeah yeah well it's very important people just as it's important for people and that's why i do in the show lot is is sort of introduce scientists to the public and most members of public don't know scientists at all i mean literally surveys show if you ask people to name a scientist they know people don't you know are completely blank the vast majority people so it's important also the artist i suspect and particularly i think when we get into this interesting intersection of art and science very good to have people who are willing to sort of play that role of stepping out and sort of saying this is what i do this is how i do it and inviting that inviting the public on in at that level but i know there's great work going on out at uh on the island out there um i have a good good friend uh mary hagedorn you've probably run into her does you want to illustrate her a coral sperm or eggs i don't know and uh yeah again the uh it's it's it's a wonderful stuff it's so how can i put it it's so critical to do this to be able to focus people's attention and engage them and sometimes yes when you've got something that's virtually invisible like your plastic bag and uh frips you were calling them right you know to be able to make that engaging visually interesting so that people will stop and say hey what is this one you know or present an interesting shape that people say huh is that a new to brank or a coral head you know so and same with children's books of course that's one of the first introductions how you get kids engaged is is through you know pretty sort of pretty pictures you know that are powerful action-filled you know really suggests the whole story to them right yeah so that's vital um and let me ask you this moving forward where where do you both have these sort of odd careers in the sense of they've they've moved around or doing different things but where do you see yourself only gonna get out of where do you see yourselves in yeah five years well in in five months yeah in five years um my dream is to be making income my husband's retiring soon from the military and i would like to be bringing in a majority of the income through my skills as a science communicator and i would like to keep exploring nature and connecting different audiences to nature i've lived here 11 years and during this time i thought i would have illustrated a whole lot more endemic species so i know i have a long list to still get to i i am i was reluctant to move here 11 years ago but now that i'm here i realized quickly that this is a fantastic place for me for my family and i feel like there is so much that can be revealed through through the communication of science and art so i think this is a great place to keep working super super excellent well thank you so much kirsten thank you michelle it's been a real pleasure having you here on likable science you brought into the dimensions of the show and i appreciate it very much so i love how you both and i hope that you'll join us next week for another episode of likable science here on think tech hawaii