Starry, Starry Night, by Barry Jacobs and Casimir A. Fornal, Department of Psychology and Princeton Neuroscience Institute. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Sometimes the connection between art and science is clear. When Barry Jacobs, a psychology professor at Princeton University, and Casimir Fornal, a research scholar, took a micrograph of a mouse’s hippocampus (shown above), they felt compelled to call it Starry, Starry Night, after the 1970s song by Don McLean about Vincent van Gogh. The dark, star-like bursts in the golden image are glial cells in the brain called astrocytes (“astro” meaning star in Greek).

A jury of photographers and scientists recently selected Starry, Starry Night and 42 other images for the 8th annual Art of Science exhibition at Princeton University. Each spring, the competition calls for Princeton students, faculty, staff and alumni to submit “images produced during the course of scientific research that have aesthetic merit.” This year, three winners selected by the jury, three people’s choice winners and 37 other works highlighted in the exhibition, currently on view at the Friend Center on Princeton’s campus, were chosen from an impressive lot of 170 entries hailing from 24 different university departments.

Worms and proteins, crystals and flames, even a compelling view of a fruit fly ovary are the subjects of the recent Art of Science images, which all in some way tie into this year’s theme: connections. “Some areas of research involve obvious ‘connections.’ Neural networks, for example, or the Internet. In other areas of research connections are more nuanced but just as valid. Fractal patterns in nature, the deterioration of architectural monuments due to the effects of acid rain, bridges, the wake that a jet of cool air generates as it passes through a hot flame, a qubit, the chemical signals than induce embryonic development,” according to the contest’s Web site.

In a statement released by the university, Adam Finkelstein, a computer science professor and one of the show’s organizers, expressed what he considers the strength of the Art of Science exhibition—its ability to create a new way of seeing for both artists and scientists. “At the same time,” said Finkelstein, “this striking imagery serves as a democratic window through which non-experts can appreciate the thrill of scientific discovery.”

Here is a selection from the exhibition:

East-West, West-East, by Martin Jucker. This image, which the jury named first place, depicts the east-west (shown in blue) and west-east (shown in red) winds that move around the globe. Courtesy of Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Bridging the Gap, by Jason Wexler and Howard A. Stone, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. This image, which earned the People’s Second Place, shows how negative pressure forms inside two drops of liquid (in blue), when those drops are between two transparent solids and viewed from above. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

C. instagram, by Meredith Wright ’13, Department of Molecular Biology (Murphy Lab). Wright snapped this photograph of C. elegans worms on an agar plate by holding her cellphone up to the eyepiece of her microscope. She calls it C. instagram because of the interest it sparked when she shared it on social media. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Merger and Acquisition, by Daniel Quinn, Brian Rosenberg, Amanda DeGiorgi and Alexander Smits, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. This image shows what happens to a drop of dye when it passes through still water. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Crushed Birch, by Michael Kosk ’16, Woodrow Wilson School. The jury awarded this image of the cellular structure of a piece of birch second prize. Courtesy of Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Messenger Meshwork, by Shawn C. Little, Kristina S. Sinsimer, Elizabeth R. Gavis and Eric F. Wieschaus, Department of Molecular Biology. Earning the People’s First Place, this image depicts four nurse cells in an egg chamber within a fruit fly’s ovary. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Maze Dweller, by Chhaya Werner ’14, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. A goby fish peers through coral. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Light Eddies, by Mitchell A. Nahmias and Paul R. Prucnal, Department of Electrical Engineering. This is a computer model of a laser that is designed to act like a neuron. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

Baby Mouse, by Celeste Nelson and Joe Tien, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. The vascular system of a baby mouse is shown here, in green, thanks to confocal imaging, which highlights the animal’s body with fluorescent light. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art of Science Competition.

The shelled sea butterfly Hyalocylis striata can be found in the warm surface waters of the ocean around the world. Photo: © Karen Osborn

The chemistry of the ocean is changing. Most climate change discussion focuses on the warmth of the air, but around one-quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere dissolves into the ocean. Dissolved carbon dioxide makes seawater more acidic—a process called ocean acidification—and its effects have already been observed: the shells of sea butterflies, also known as pteropods, have begun dissolving in the Antarctic.

Tiny sea butterflies are related to snails, but use their muscular foot to swim in the water instead of creep along a surface. Many species have thin, hard shells made of calcium carbonate that are especially sensitive to changes in the ocean’s acidity. Their sensitivity and cosmopolitan nature make them an alluring study group for scientists who want to better understand how acidification will affect ocean organisms. But some pteropod species are proving to do just fine in more acidic water, while others have shells that dissolve quickly. So why do some species perish while others thrive?

It’s a hard question to answer when scientists can hardly tell pteropod species apart in the first place. The cone-shaped pteropod shown here is in a group of shelled sea butterflies called thecosomes, from the Greek for “encased body.” There are two other groups: the pseudothecosomes have gelatinous shells, and the gymnosomes (“naked body”) have none at all. Within these groups it can be hard to tell who’s who, especially when relying on looks alone. Scientists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History are using genetics to uncover the differences among the species.

This effort is led by zoologist Karen Osborn, who has a real knack for photography: in college, she struggled over whether to major in art or science. After collecting living animals while SCUBA diving in the open ocean, she brings them back to the research ship and photographs each in a shallow tank of clear water with a Canon 5D camera with a 65mm lens, using three to four flashes to capture the colors of the mostly-transparent critters. The photographs have scientific use—to capture never-before-recorded images of the living animals—and to “inspire interest in these weird, wild animals,” she said. All of these photos were taken in the Pacific Ocean off the coasts of Mexico and California.

This gymnosome (Pneumodermopsis sp.) pulls shelled pteropods from their shells with a set of suckers. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Although sea butterflies in the gymnosome group, like the one seen above, don’t have shells and are therefore not susceptible to the dangers of ocean acidification, their entire diet consists of shelled pteropods. If atmospheric CO₂ continues to rise due to the burning of fossil fuels and, in turn, the ocean becomes more acidic, their prey source may disappear—indirectly endangering these stunning predators and all the fish, squid and other animals that feed on the gymnosomes.

Cavolinia uncinata. Photo: © Karen Osborn

For years, sea butterflies were only collected by net. When collected this way, the animals (such as Cavolinia uncinata above) retract their fleshy “wings” and bodies into pencil eraser-sized shells, which often break in the process. Researchers then drop the collected pteropods into small jars of alcohol for preservation, which causes the soft parts to shrivel—leaving behind just the shell. Scientists try to sort the sea butterflies into species by comparing the shells alone, but without being able to see the whole animals, they may miss the full diversity of pteropods.

This may be the same species as the previous sea butterfly (Cavolinia uncinata), or it could be a different species that has gone unnoticed for decades. Photo: © Karen Osborn

More recently, scientists such as Osborn and Smithsonian researcher Stephanie Bush have begun collecting specimens by hand while SCUBA diving in the open sea. This blue-water diving allows her to collect and photograph fragile organisms. As she and her colleagues observe living organisms in more detail, they are realizing that animals they had thought were the same species, in fact, may not be! This shelled pteropod (Cavolinia uncinata) is considered the same species as the one in the previous photo. Because their fleshy parts look so different, however, Bush is analyzing each specimen’s genetic code to establish whether they really are the same species.

Mass of Cavolinia uncinata eggs. Photo: © Karen Osborn

This string of eggs shot out of Cavolinia uncinata when it was being observed under the microscope. The eggs are attached to one another in a gelatinous mass, and, had they not been self-contained in a petri dish, would have floated through the water until the new pteropods emerged as larvae. Their reproduction methods aren’t well studied, but we know that pteropods start off as males and once they reach a certain size switch over to females. This sexual system, known as sequential hermaphroditism, may boost reproduction because bigger females can produce more eggs.

In the Arctic, this pteropod species (Limacina helicina) can compose half of the zooplankton swimming in the water column. Photo: © Karen Osborn

This pteropod (Limacina helicina) has taken a beating from being pulled through a trawl net: you can see the broken edges of its shell. An abundant species with black flesh, each of these sea butterflies are the size of a large grain of sand. In certain conditions they “bloom” and, when fish eat too many, the pteropod’s black coloring stains the fishes’ guts black.

The shell of Clio recurva is a perfect landing strip for a colony of hydroids. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Not only is the inside of this shell home to a pteropod (Clio recurva), but the outside houses a colony of hydroids—the small pink flower-like animals connected by transparent tubing all over the shell. Hydroids, small, predatory animals related to jellyfish, need to attach to a surface in the middle of the ocean to build their colony, and the tiny shell of Clio is the perfect landing site. While it’s a nice habitat for the hydroids, this shell probably provides less than ideal protection for the pteropod: the opening is so large that a well equipped predator, such as larger shell-less pteropods, can likely just reach in and pull it out. “I would want a better house, personally,“ says Osborn.

It was once thought that Clione limacina was found in the Antarctic and Arctic, but it’s likely that they are two separate species. Photo: © Karen Osborn

Gymnosomes are pteropods that lack shells and have a diet almost entirely composed of shelled pteropods. This species (Clione limacina), exclusively feeds on Limacina helicina (the black-fleshed pteropod a few slides back). They grab their shelled relative with six tentacle-like arms, and then use grasping jaws to suck their meal out of the shell.

  This post was written by Emily Frost and Hannah Waters. Learn more about the ocean from the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal.

ZnO Fall Flowers. Image by Audrey Forticaux, a graduate student in the Chemistry Department.

“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.”

—Jules Henri Poincare, a French mathematician (1854-1912)

Earlier this month, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced the winners of its 2013 Cool Science Image contest. From an MRI of a monkey’s brain to the larva of a tropical caterpillar, a micrograph of the nerves in a zebrafish’s tail to another of the hairs on a leaf, this year’s crop is impressive—and one that certainly supports what Collage of Arts and Sciences believes at its very core. That is, that the boundary between art and science is often imperceptible.

Zebrafish neural network. Image by Pui-ying Lam, a graduate student studying cellular and molecular biology. A fluorescent molecule makes the neurons in the tail of a live zebrafish visible.

The Why Files, a weekly science news publication put out by the university, organizes the contest; it started three years ago as an offshoot of the Why Files’ popular “Cool Science Image” column. The competition rallies faculty, graduate and undergraduate students to submit the beautiful scientific imagery produced in their research.

Brain image. Image by Christopher Coe, a faculty member in the Psychology Department. This image of a monkey’s brain was created, thanks to an MRI technique called diffusion tensor imaging.

“The motivation was to provide a venue and greater exposure for some of the artful scientific imagery we encounter,” says Terry Devitt, the coordinator of the contest. “We see a lot of pictures that don’t get much traction beyond their scientific context and thought that was a shame, as the pictures are both beautiful and serve as an effective way to communicate science.”

Middle Earth. Image by Sheryl A. Rakowski, senior research specialist in the Bacteriology Department. Slime mold, which typically live as single-celled amoebae, create “flash mobs” when faced with a food shortage. These flash mobs meld into multicellular organisms.

Most of the time, these images are studied in a clinical context, Devitt explains. But, increasingly, museums, universities and photography contests are sharing them with the public. “There is an ongoing revolution in science imaging and there is the potential to see things that could never before be seen, let alone imaged in great detail,” says Devitt. “It is important that people have access to these pictures to learn more about science.”

Air Sea Interaction. Image by Rick Kohrs, senior instrument technician at the Space Science and Engineering Center. Superstorm Sandy is colliding with the East Coast of the United States in this image of water vapor and sea surface temperatures from October 28, 2012.

This year, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s scientific community entered 104 photographs, micrographs, illustrations and videos to the Cool Science Image contest—a number that trumps last year’s participation by about 25 percent. The submissions are judged, quite fittingly, by a cross-disciplinary panel of eight scientists and artists. The ten winners receive small prizes (a $100 gift certificate to participating businesses in downtown Madison) and large format prints of their images.

Trichomes. Image by Emily Kief, undergraduate student, Botany Department. This scanning electron micrograph shows growths, or trichomes, on a leaf.

“When I see an image I love, I know the second I see it. I know it because it is beautiful,” says Ahna Skop, a judge and geneticist at the university. She admits she has a bias for images capturing nematode embryos and mitosis, her areas of expertise, but like many people, she also gravitates to images that remind her of something familiar. The scanning electron micrograph, shown at the top of this post, for example, depicts nanoflowers of zinc oxide. As the name “nanoflower” suggests, these chemical compounds form petals and flowers. Audrey Forticaux, a chemistry graduate student at UW-Madison, added artificial color to this black and white micrograph to highlight the rose-like shapes.

Hoodia. Image by Mo Fayyaz, distinguished faculty associate, Botany Department. A macroscopic view of the center of a hoodia flower—a succulent native to South Africa and Namibia.

Steve Ackerman, an atmospheric scientist at the university and a fellow judge, describes his approach: “I try to note my first response to the work—am I shocked, awed, baffled or annoyed?” He is bothered when he sees meteorological radar images that use the colors red and green to depict data, since they can be difficult for color blind people to read. “I jot down those first impressions and then try to figure out why I reacted that way,” he says.

Lunaria annua. Image by Kata Dosa, graduate student, Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. The seeds of Lunaria annua can be seen through the plant’s translucent seed pods. In fact, you can even see the umbilical cord-like structure, called a funiculus, that connects the seed to the placenta.

After considering artistic qualities, and the gut reactions they trigger, the panel considers the technical elements of the entries, along with the science they convey. Skop looks for a certain crispness and clarity in winning images. The science at play within the frame also has to be unique, she says. If it is something that she has seen before, the image probably won’t pass muster.

Automeris banus. Image by Peggy Boone, graduate student, Zoology Department. This moth, in its larva form, stung Boone when she encountered it in Mexico’s Palenque National Park. Nonetheless, with a swollen hand, the field biologist managed to capture this photograph.

Skop hails from a family of artists. “My father was a sculptor and my mother a ceramicist and art teacher. All of my brothers and sisters are artists, yet I ended up a scientist,” she says. “I always tell people that genetically I’m an artist. But, there is no difference between the two.”

Beta catenin. Image by Vastal Mehta, research associate in the School of Veterinary Medicine’s Department of Comparative Biosciences. This micrograph shows a cluster of cells in a transgenic mouse, exhibiting high levels of beta catenin, a protein that plays a role in prostate development.

If anything, Skop adds, the winning entries in the Cool Science Image contest show that “nature is our art museum.”

Wolfgang Laib, Wax Room. (Wohin bist Du gegangen-wohin gehst Du?/Where have you gone-where are you going?), 2013. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Photo by Lee Stalsworth.

When I step into the newly installed Laib Wax Room at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the floral smell of beeswax wafts through my senses. Psychologists say that scents can quickly trigger memories, and this one transports me back to my childhood: The fragrance of the amber beeswax coating the walls instantly reminds me of the crenellated sheets of beeswax, dyed pink and purple, that came in a candle making kit I had as a kid. I remember rolling the sheets into long tapers for Advent.

The warm glow of the closet-sized space is equally comforting. A single light bulb dangles from the ceiling, giving a sheen to the room’s waxy walls. Standing in its center, the spare room has a calming effect—it is a welcomed “time out” in an otherwise overstimulating world. As Klaus Ottmann, curator at large at the Phillips, puts it, the room has the “ability to temporarily suspend reality.”

Wolfgang Laib installing the wax room. Photo by Rhiannon Newman.

Wolfgang Laib, a 63-year-old conceptual artist from Germany, created the meditative space. Over the course of a few days in late February, he melted 440 pounds of beeswax, minding the liquefying material carefully because temperature swings could have resulted in batches of varying yellow. Then, he used a warm iron, spackle knives and spatulas to evenly apply the inch-thick coat of wax, like plaster, onto the walls and ceiling of the 6-by-7-by-10-foot space. The Laib Wax Room, as the museum is calling it, opened to the public on March 2.

In his career, spanning more than four decades thus far, Laib has turned many raw, natural materials, such as milk, rice and pollen, into artistic mediums. Earlier this year, in fact, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City exhibited the artist’s Pollen From Hazelnut, an 18-by-21-foot installation made entirely of bright yellow pollen he harvested in the last 20 years.

Beeswax, however, happens to be one of his favorite materials. Since 1988, Laib has created a temporary wax room for MOMA as well as for two museums in Germany and one in the Netherlands. For these, he nailed sheets of beeswax to plywood walls, so that the installation could be disassembled. Then, he developed a more intensive, irreversible process by building a couple of outdoor wax rooms in the past 15 years, in a cave in the French Pyrenees and on his own land in Germany. The Phillips Collection is the very first museum to have a permanent beeswax room.

Laib used a hot iron, spackle knives and spatulas to spread the beeswax. Photo by Rhiannon Newman.

Visitors to the Phillips Collection are encouraged to enter the Laib Wax Room—titled Where have you gone – Where are you going?—one or two at a time. ”Here this is a very, very small room but it has a very beautiful concentration and intensity,” says Laib, in an audio tour and video produced by the Phillips. “When you come into a wax room, it is like coming into another world.”

The Milky Way Galaxy Exploding from Mount Rainier. Photo by David Morrow (Everett, Washington). Photographed at Sunrise Point in Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, October 6, 2012.

David Morrow, a 27-year-old aerospace engineer by day and budding photographer by night, was perched at Sunrise Point on the evening of October 6, 2012. From the popular viewing spot in Mount Rainier National Park, he had a clear view of Rainier, the 14,411-foot beastly stratovolcano to his west. As he recalls, at about 9 p.m. the sun had set and the stars began to appear. Filling the viewfinder of his Nikon D800, quite brilliantly, was the Milky Way.

“It is not often that you see the Milky Way line up so perfectly with an earthly object,” said Morrow, when his resulting photograph (shown above) was selected as a finalist in Smithsonian.com’s 2012 photo contest. “The stars almost looked as though they were erupting from the mountain and I knew this was a moment in time that I had to capture.”

For a decade now, Smithsonian magazine’s annual photo contest has been a loving ode to these moments. Each year, photographers from around the world submit entries in five categories near and dear to us: the Natural World, Travel, People, Americana and Altered Images. Our photo editors, who have reviewed more than 290,000 photographs from upwards of 90 countries in the contest’s history, then select 10 finalists in each category.

This week, Smithsonian.com announced the finalists for the 2012 photo contest. At this point, the public is invited to vote on a readers’ choice winner, and, ultimately, our editors will select category winners and a grand prize winner, to be revealed later this spring. We here at Collage of Arts and Sciences have a special affinity for the Natural World images, which beautifully capture animals, plants and landscapes; geological or climatological features; and scientific processes and endeavors.

So what makes a finalist stand out from other entries?

“Quite simply, I look for something that I have not seen before,” says Maria G. Keehan, Smithsonian magazine’s art director. For the Natural World submissions, she and her colleagues sifted through a fair share of photographs of pets, rainbows, mating insects and horses in misty light (“Misty anything has kind of taken its toll on me,” says Keehan) to parse out images that accomplish something truly unique—like capturing an unusual or rare animal behavior. “Of course good technique and composition are always part of the judging structure, but originality is what strikes me. I really look for things that make you gasp or question,” she adds. “Not just, ‘Oooo, beautiful bird,’ but ‘Wow. Look at the perspective on that. They shot the image through the bird’s wings!”

To make the cut, a photograph has to evoke a visceral reaction. Future contestants, take note. Keehan’s advice is this: “Trust your (natural!) instincts about what is peculiar, remarkable or sublime.”

Without further ado, here are the remainder of the 10th annual photo contest’s Natural World finalists:

Baby Owl in Studio. Photo by Phillip Pilkington (Southport, UK). Photographed in Southport, UK, November 2012.

Phillip Pilkington snapped a portrait of a fluffy, four-week-old Tawny owl (above) at a bird enthusiast’s home in Southport, UK. “I was aiming to do a traditional studio portrait of an unusual studio subject,” he says. The owl was still, and so it made for an ideal sitter, the photographer recalls. “I just concentrated on the photography,” Pilkington adds. “I wanted to do a close-up shot, [but] at the same time I didn’t want to get too close, and that is why I chose to crop the image.”

Visiting the Bronx Zoo. Photo by Vanessa Bartlett (New York, New York). October 2012, Bronx Zoo, New York City.

When Vanessa Bartlett took up photography last year, she needed, in her words, a “subject that wouldn’t shatter my fragile photography ego.” So, she went to the Bronx Zoo. On an October day, she photographed baboons, giraffes and lions, but it was a gorilla that stole her attention. “They’re majestic,” says Bartlett, of the primates. “But the expression he gave was what made me take the photo.”

Bartlett sat with the gorilla for about 30 minutes, just a pane of glass separating them. “Just as a photographer likes a look a model gives in the middle of a shoot, I saw a look I loved from the gorilla,” she says. “What I caught was a personal, private moment. That’s what’s so captivating.”

An Onlooker Witnesses the Annular Solar Eclipse as the Sun Sets on May 20, 2012. Photo by Colleen Pinski (Peyton, CO). Photographed in Albuquerque, NM, May 2012.

On May 20, 2012, Americans, especially on the west coast, were privy to an annular solar eclipse—where the moon blocks all but the outer ring of the sun. “My husband and I heard about the eclipse a few days before it happened,” says Colleen Pinski, who captured the image, above. “So, I was compelled to take some photos of it…I couldn’t miss the ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to shoot it.”

Antheraea Polyphemus Caterpillar Striking a Rather Devious-Looking Pose. Photo by Colin Hutton (Durham, North Carolina). Photographed in Duke Forest, North Carolina, September 2011.

Colin Hutton was in the Duke Forest, a 7,060-acre tract of land in North Carolina used for research, when he took this remarkable close-up of a caterpillar of a North American moth (Antheraea polyphemus). He was actually searching for jumping spiders, but this little guy was a welcome diversion. “I really like the glowing quality of the caterpillar’s skin and the devious look of its defensive posture,” says Hutton. “It reminds me of the character Mr. Burns from The Simpsons as he says ‘Excellent…’ while tapping his fingers together.”

Mummy, I Am Down Here, and Hungry! Photo by Bjorn Olesen (Singapore). Photographed in Sarawak, Borneo, Malaysia, November, 2010.

Bjorn Olesen was on a week-long trip to Sarawak, Borneo, in November 2010, when he photographed this juvenile Spectacled Spiderhunter (Arachnothera flavigaster) calling out to its parents. “In my view the photo demonstrates the great strength of still photography: to freeze those magic moments that may have otherwise been unnoticed,” says Olesen. “The soft light, the inspiring pose, the color of the bird goes very well together with the beautiful palette of greens of the ferns.”

Breeding Penguins. Photo by Neal Piper (Washington, DC). Photographed at Damoy Point, Antarctica, January 2012.

Neal Piper spent 12 days in Antarctica in February 2012. “I have always been fascinated with penguins and dreamed of visiting Antarctica to see them in their natural habitat,” he says. To get to Damoy Point, where he took this photograph, Piper traveled three days by ship through the Drake Passage and then took a short jaunt on a small motorized raft to his campsite, where he would study a breeding colony of Gentoo penguins.

“Although it was a bitter cold evening, I woke up to a beautiful sunrise. The snow was glimmering upon the majestic mountains,” says Piper.  ”I looked over at the colony of Gentoo penguins and saw a few of them overlooking the cliff, almost as if they were enjoying the view. I grabbed my camera and watched them for about an hour until one of the adults and newborn chicks looked into the horizon. I knew right then I had the shot. After taking the photo I looked down at the viewfinder and instantly smiled.”

According to Piper, Gentoo penguins have funny personalities. “After studying them for a week, I discovered that they are very loving and protective to their newborn chicks. To build their nests, they pick up rocks with their beaks, usually stolen from another penguin nest, and place them on their nest. Once the perpetrator places the rock on its nest, the victim often reclaims it and places it back on its own nest.  It was a very entertaining scene,” he says.

A Man-Made Ice Geyser. Photo by Nathan Carlsen (Duluth, Minnesota). Photographed in Duluth, Minnesota, January 2012.

“A water pipe in Duluth is ‘bled’ every year to ensure it doesn’t freeze,” says Nathan Carlsen, the photographer who captured the finalist, above. “As the water freezes, it builds this amazing ice geyser.” As an experiment, the Minnesotan dangled a rope of LED lights down the geyser. “I knew it would light up well as it is perfectly clear ice, but I had know idea how beautiful it would be. Every year the formation looks a bit different and I go out to it to take a few more [photos]. But this one, the first one, still proves to be my best shot so far.”

Ants Holding Seeds. Photo by Eko Adiyanto (Bekasi, Indonesia). Photographed in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, April 2012.

Eko Adiyanto stumbled across this scene of ants fiercely gripping seeds in Bekasi, West Java, Indonesia, last April. He felt compelled to take the photograph, above, because it seemed like a super-ant feat of strength. “They are small but very powerful,” says Adiyanto. [Correction, March 13, 2013: As entomologist and Scientific American blogger Alex Wild addressed recently, Adiyanto did not stumble across this scene. In an email, the photographer has explained that he gave the seeds to the ants to bite and then lifted, placed and stacked the ants on the branch himself. Once the ants were in these positions, he took the photograph.]

A Pair of Bald Eagles Share a Meal. Photo by Don Holland (Dyer, Tennessee). Photographed in Reelfoot Lake State Park, Tennessee, January 2012.

Don Holland enjoys photographing birds in flight, particularly great egrets and bald eagles. He was driving a stretch of road in Reelfoot Lake State Park in northwest Tennessee when his wife spotted a pair of bald eagles in a dead tree nearby. “I stopped the car immediately and began photographing the eagle pair eating what appeared to be the remains of a coot. Since most of the food was gone, I realized I didn’t have time to mount the lens on the tripod to capture the action. I handheld the camera and lens for the sequence of photos I took in the short time before the eagles flew,” recalls Holland. “The sky was bright-cloudy, and the sun was beginning to peek through the clouds at 20-30 degrees over my right shoulder. With evenly dispersed and adequate light, I worked quickly to take advantage of the special opportunity of capturing the behavior of the eagle pair in an uncluttered background.”

See the finalists in the other four categories, and vote for the 10th Annual Photo Contest Readers’ Choice Award by 2PM EST on March 29.

Rowley’s Palm Pit Viper (Bothriechis rowleyi). This venomous snake, which ranges from two and a half to five feet in length, lives in the forests of Mexico. © Mark Laita.

Mark Laita captured plenty of photographs of snakes striking, their mouths agape, in the making of his new book, Serpentine. But, it wasn’t these aggressive, fear-inducing—and in his words, “sensational”—images that he was interested in. Instead, the Los Angeles-based photographer focused on the graceful contortions of the reptiles.

“It is not a snake book,” says Laita. As he explained to me in a phone interview, he had no scientific criteria for selecting the species he did, though herpetologists and snake enthusiasts will surely perk up when they see the photographs. “Really, it is more about color, form and texture,” he says. “For me, a snake does that beautifully.”

Albino Black Pastel Ball Python (Python regius). This three- to five-foot long constrictor lives in the grasslands and dry forests of Central and West Africa. © Mark Laita.

Over the course of the project, Laita visited zoos, breeders, private collections and antivenom labs in the United States and Central America to stage shoots of specimens he found visually compelling. “I would go to a place looking for this species and that species,” he says. “And, once I got there, they had 15 or 20 others that were great too.” If a particular snake’s colors were muted, Laita would ask the owner to call him as soon as the animal shed its skin. “Right after they shed they would be really beautiful. The colors would be more intense,” he says.

Red Spitting Cobra (Naja pallida). Dangerous to humans, the red spitting cobra of East Africa grows up to four feet in length. © Mark Laita.

At each site, Laita laid a black velvet backdrop on the floor. Handlers would then guide each snake, mostly as a protective measure, and keep it on the velvet, while the photographer snapped away with an 8 by 10 view camera and a Hasselblad. “By putting it on a black background, it removes all of the variables. It makes it just about the snake,” says Laita. “If it is a red snake in the shape of a figure eight, all you have is this red swipe of color.”

Philippine Pit Viper (Trimeresurus flavomaculatus). This two-foot long, venomous snake is found near water in the forests of the Philippines where it eats frogs and lizards. © Mark Laita.

Mexican Black Kingsnake (Lampropeltis getula nigritus). This North American constrictor can grow up to six feet in length. © Mark Laita.

King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah). The massive king cobra, found in the forests of southern and southeastern Asia, can grow up to 18 feet. © Mark Laita.

Royal Python (Python regius). Nestling its eggs, this snake, also known as a ball python, is the same species as the albino constrictor, shown further above. © Mark Laita.

He had a brush with this fear when photographing a king cobra, the longest venomous snake in the world, which measures up to 18 feet. “It is kind of like having a lion in the room, or a gorilla,” says Laita. “It could tear apart the room in second flats if it wanted to.” Although Laita photographed the cobra while it was enclosed in a plexiglass box, during the shoot it “got away from us,” he says. It escaped behind some cabinets at the Florida facility, “and we couldn’t find it for awhile.”

A black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis) biting Laita’s calf. The photographer told Richard Conniff that he wore shorts as opposed to pants because the swishing of his pants might have startled the snake and handlers advised him that there is nothing worse than having a snake slither up a pant leg. © Mark Laita.

He’s also had a close encounter with a deadly black mamba while photographing one at a facility in Central America. “It was a very docile snake,” he recalls. “It just happened to move close to my feet at some point. The handler brought his hook in to move the snake, and he inadvertently snagged the cord from my camera. That scared the snake, and then it struck where it was warm. That happened to be the artery in my calf.” Smithsonian contributing writer Richard Conniff shares more gory details on his blog, Strange Behaviors. Apparently, blood was just gushing from the bite (“His sock was soaked and his sneaker was filled with blood,” writes Conniff), and the photographer said the swollen fang marks “hurt like hell that night.”

Obviously, Laita lived to tell the tale. “It was either a ‘dry bite,’ which is rare, or I bled so heavily that the blood pushed the venom out,” he explained in a publicity interview. “All I know is I was unlucky to be bitten, lucky to have survived, and lucky again to have unknowingly snapped a photo of the actual bite!”

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Male Paraphidippus aurantius (a species of jumping spider), by Thomas Shahan

Thomas Shahan came eye to eye with a jumping spider in his backyard about seven years ago when he was living and attending high school in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since that first encounter, he has been “smitten,” according to a December 2011 spread of his macrophotography in National Geographic. “I began learning about their names and their ways, then looking for them in local parks and reserves like the Oxley Nature Center,” he wrote in the magazine.

Holcocephala fusca (robber fly), by Thomas Shahan

For the past seven years, Shahan has developed a hobby of photographing arthropods—insects, such as robber flies and horse flies, and spiders—in his native Oklahoma. He captures their eyes and hairs in such colorful and glistening detail that his images, shared on Flickr, have been featured in Popular Photography, National Geographic and on NBC’s Today Show. (In fact, if you look up “jumping spider” on Wikipedia, you’ll even see, at the top of the page, a close-up of an adult male Phidippus audax jumping spider taken by Shahan.)

Thomas Shahan in action. Photo by Sam Martin.

“I photograph arthropods because I love them and I want others to love them as well,” Shahan explained to me in an email. “I find them compelling. They are complex, fascinating and diverse animals that are all too often overlooked and unappreciated.”

Shahan prefers to shoot his subjects in their natural environs. “Now that I know where they are—their silhouettes are often visible through the leaves they perch upon—I can spot them quickly,” he wrote in National Geographic. Only occasionally does he bring his bugs indoors to stage them on a coffee table or other surface. Either way, “My subjects are always returned to where they are found and fed for their services if at all possible,” he told me.

Shahan’s ability to clearly capture individual spines on the legs of teensy-weensy spiders (jumping spiders measure anywhere from one to 22 millimeters in length) and the metallic sheen of their eyes might suggest that he uses fancy, top-of-the-line equipment. But, the photographer actually takes a do-it-yourself approach. “You can do a lot with a little,” says the 2011 graduate of University of Oklahoma, in printmaking, on his personal Web site. Currently, he uses a modestly priced Pentax DSLR camera with a set of modified extension tubes, a reversed 50-millimeter prime lens (a garage sale find!) and a diffused (and duct taped) homemade flash for lighting.

Habronattus cognatus (a species of jumping spider), by Thomas Shahan

The macrophotographer is especially interested in the eyes of arthropods—and it’s the creatures’ eyes that attract the attention of viewers. To look into the face of creatures as small as a 4-millimeter jumping spider and “see yourself reflected in their large glossy eyes is incredibly humbling. To know they’ve evolved relatively little in millions of years is absolutely fascinating to me too; they’ve had those wonderful eyes for a long, long time,” said Shahan in an email. ”Additionally, from a photographic standpoint, the arthropod portraiture anthropomorphizes them considerably. To get down low and look up into their faces and eyes changes our usual perspective and has a propagandistic quality to it making them seem more important and powerful than us.”

Tabanus species (horse fly), by Thomas Shahan

In changing our visual perspective, Shahan ultimately wants to change our general feelings about bugs. ”I want to turn revulsion to reverence,” he said. “Arthropods are amazing animals and a good first step to appreciating and loving them is to simply take a closer look.”

“Beautiful Beasts: The Unseen Life of Oklahoma Spiders and Insects,” featuring 12 of Shahan’s photographs as well as the video, shown above, is on display at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History through September 8, 2013.

Mates for Life, by Jacqueline Schmidt at Screech Owl Design.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Collage readers! I’ll be brief. I just wanted to pass along this cool find—a print by artist and designer Jacqueline Schmidt. In a style that smacks of scientific illustration, Schmidt depicts 12 species that, generally, remain loyal to a single mate over the course of a lifetime.

With gray wolves (#1, in the diagram), couples pair off Sadie-Hawkins style. The female determines her mate. The alpha female and alpha male are the only pair to breed, from January to March each year, in a pack of wolves, and they keep things monogamous. Meadow voles (#6) are quite loyal. The rodents make the most of their short lives; a female lives less than a year, on average, but starts breeding with a single mate about 28 days into life. Males are sexually mature by 35 days. Termites (#7) have been found to use a “honeymoon” period to welcome other suitors to the log, but they ultimately settle down with one partner. Sandhill cranes (#12) also form until-death-do-us-part bonds. A male and female perform unison calls to solidify their relationship; then, leading up to mating, there is an elaborate dance ritual. Both cranes take care of the nest.

As the founder of Screech Owl Design, Schmidt is known for taking on natural subjects and delivering calendars, t-shirts, stationary and posters in an urban-chic kind of way. “This ability was first shaped by childhood migrations between New York City, where she was born and raised, and her Catskills summer home,” says Schmidt’s  Web site. This particular print, made of 100 percent recycled paper, is titled “Mates for Life.”

To learn about ocean animals that (sort of) mate for life, read this Surprising Science post, provided by Emily Frost of the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal.

Judges Paul Rhymer, Catherine Coan and Brian Posehn. Photo courtesy of Ben Leuner/AMC

Taxidermy: dying trade or resurgent art form? As an outsider—I have never hunted, let alone stuffed and mounted an animal—I was tempted to think the former. Then, I spoke with Paul Rhymer, a former Smithsonian taxidermist and model maker.”Taxidermy is alive and well,” he says. “Commercial taxidermy, for hunters, has probably never been stronger than it is now—and probably never been better. The skill levels have just gotten so good with all the different advances in materials and techniques.”

Rhymer is a traditionalist. He hails from the museum world, where he spent 26 years (1984 to 2010) creating realistic taxidermy for display at Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Rhymer and his colleagues produced 274 mounted specimens for the museum’s Behring Hall of Mammals, which opened in 2003; he also had a hand in the now four-year-old Sant Ocean Hall. A bunch of his critters—a maned wolf, a grévy’s zebra, several primates and a pair of penguins, among others—still inhabit the museum. When he wasn’t making new mounts from donated animal carcasses, he was restoring existing ones. In 2002, he gave the museum’s panda a dye job, bleaching its yellowed hair white and dying it’s dark fur a deeper black.

But, even with his institutional background, the second-generation taxidermist is quick to express his appreciation for a new sect of bold artists working in the field. Armed with the know-how to skin, clean and stuff animals, these “rogues” place animal specimens in fantastical contexts; they even build strange hybrids of different species. “This element has been around for a very long time too. You have Victorian guys making whole wedding scenes with little kittens dressed up in wedding dresses,” says Rhymer. “But rogue taxidermists are just taking it to another level.”

“Immortalized,” a new television show premiering on AMC tonight (10/9c), pits taxidermists of both types against each other in what its host, Zach Selwyn, calls “creative combat.” I was able to screen two kooky episodes in the series’ first season, and although the show seems to lack the shiny finish one might expect from a big network, I have to admit I got a kick out of its premise. Oh, and its tagline too. “Immortalized,” says Selwyn, at the close of each segment, “where it is not whether you win or lose, but how you display the game.”

Immortalizer Dave Houser is a self-taught taxidermist and the owner of Truetolife Taxidermy in Marysville, Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of Ben Leuner/AMC

The concept of the show is this: There are four superstars in taxidermy—two traditionalists and two rogues—who, for the purposes of the show, are called “Immortalizers.” Each episode, one Immortalizer takes on an outside “Challenger.” The challengers, like the veteran immortalizers, can be artists or commercial taxidermists. The two contestants are given a theme—some examples include “End of the World,” “First Love” and, the even more confounding, “Self Portrait.” They prepare a piece at home over the course of a few weeks and then return to the studio for a face-off. Rhymer was tapped to be one of three judges; he is joined by artist-taxidermist Catherine Coan and the nasally-voiced comedian, actor and writer, Brian Posehn. Together, the trio scores each submission on craftsmanship, originality and adherence to the theme in each submission, and the total score determines the winner.

Rogue taxidermists, according to the new show, are “makers of macabre menageries that push the very boundaries of reality.” Immortalizer Beth Beverly studied jewelry design at Tyler School of Art and then acquired taxidermy skills at Bill Allen’s Pocono Institute of Taxidermy. Photo courtesy of Ben Leuner/AMC

“I thought this could really be a lot of fun, and it was! I had a great time doing it,” says Rhymer. “I have my favorites. But, I thought that, by and large, the work that all of the taxidermists brought to it was really, really neat.”

Rhymer has competed extensively at taxidermy conventions, but “Immortalized” was different. “The competitions I had been to in the past were ‘mount this duck,’ ‘mount this fish,’ ‘mount this deer.’ These [challenges on "Immortalized"] were much more open to the imagination, and just much crazier scenarios. Someone put a lot of thought into figuring out which themes would really produce some provocative pieces,” he says.

Immortalizer Page Nethercutt prepared his first-ever mount—a squirrel—for his elementary school science fair. Photo courtesy of Ben Leuner/AMC

In one bout, immortalizer Page Nethercutt, the award-winning proprietor of Moore’s Swamp Taxidermy in New Bern, North Carolina, and challenger CJ Fegan, an up-and-coming taxidermist from Edgewater, Maryland, presented two very different pieces meant to convey the same theme, “End of the World.” Nethercutt created a mount of a fierce bobcat attacking a quail; Rhymer describes it as “very intimate, natural, very precise.” Then, in the opposite corner, Fegan prepared a “sci fi and epic and colossal” scene capturing multiple animals in a panic.

Immortalizer Takeshi Yamada is a rogue taxidermist living and working on Coney Island, New York. He has been making freakish animal hybrids since he was a kid. Photo courtesy of Ben Leuner/AMC

Taxidermy is a unique blend of science and art. Any taxidermist with years of experience will have a solid understanding of animal anatomy. But that alone does not make for great mounts. “As an artist,” adds Rhymer, “you have the deer head that is just sticking on the wall and it is looking straight ahead, or there is a way of creating that thing, mounting it and doing something that is not only natural and scientifically accurate but also beautiful.”

Rhymer hopes that “Immortalized” will show that someone who prepares taxidermy can still respect animals. “I would like the general population to see taxidermy in a new light,” he says, “that it’s not just rednecks who do it and that even we who define ourselves as rednecks, and I count myself among them, have a real deep appreciation for wildlife.”

First Place and People’s Choice, Photography: Biomineral Single Crystals. Credit: Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert and Christopher E. Killian; University of Wisconsin, Madison.

When Pupa U. P. A. Gilbert, a biophysicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and her colleague Christopher E. Killian saw the scanning electron micrograph that they took of a sea urchin’s tooth, they were dumbstruck, says the journal Science. “I had never seen anything that beautiful,” Gilbert told the publication.

The individual crystals of calcite that form an urchin’s tooth are pointy, interlocking pieces; as the outermost crystals decay, others come to the surface, keeping the tooth sharp. In Photoshop, Gilbert added blues, greens and purples to the black-and-white image to differentiate the crystals. The resulting image calls to mind an eerie landscape in a Tim Burton movie.

Judges of the 2012 International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge, a competition sponsored by Science and the National Science Foundation, as well as the public who voted online, were equally ecstatic about the SEM image. Enough so, in fact, that they selected the micrograph as the first place and people’s choice winner for the contest’s photography division.

The 10th annual Visualization Challenge received 215 entries across five categories—photography, illustration, posters and graphics, games and apps, and video. The submissions are judged based on visual impact, effective communication and originality.

And…drum roll, please. Here are some of the the recently announced winners:

Honorable Mention, Photography: Self Defense. Credit: Kai-hung Fung, Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital in Hong Kong.

Kai-hung Fung, a radiologist at Pamela Youde Nethersole Eastern Hospital in Hong Kong, captured this image of a clam shell (on the left) and a spiral-shaped sea snail shell (on the right) using a CT scanner. The image won honorable mention in the photography category. The multi-colored lines represent the contours in the shells. Fung told Science that he took into account “two sides of a coin” when making the image. “One side is factual information, wile the other side is artistic,” he told the journal.

Honorable Mention, Photography: X-ray micro-radiography and microscopy of seeds. Credit: Viktor Sykora, Charles University; Jan Zemlicka, Frantisek Krejci, and Jan Jakubek, Czech Technical University.

Viktor Sykora, a biologist at Charles University in Prague, and researchers at the Czech Technical University submitted three miniscule (we’re talking three millimeters in diameter or less) seeds to high-resolution, high-contrast x-ray imaging (on the left) and microscopy (on the right). The above image also won honorable mention in the photography category.

First Place, Illustration: Connectivity of a Cognitive Computer Based on the Macaque Brain. Credit: Emmett McQuinn, Theodore M. Wong, Pallab Datta, Myron D. Flickner, Raghavendra Singh, Steven K. Esser, Rathinakumar Appuswamy, William P. Risk, and Dharmendra S. Modha.

Earning him first prize in the illustration category, Emmett McQuinn, a hardware engineer at IBM, created this “wiring diagram” for a new kind of computer chip, based on the neural pathways in a macaque‘s brain.

Honorable Mention and People’s Choice, Illustration: Cerebral Infiltration. Credit: Maxime Chamberland, David Fortin, and Maxime Descoteaux, Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab.

Maxime Chamberland, a computer science graduate student at the Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab in Canada, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to capture this ominous image of a brain tumor. (The tumor is the solid red mass in the left side of the brain.) Science calls the image a “road map for neurosurgeons,” in that the red fibers are hot-button fibers that, if severed, could negatively impact the patient’s everyday functions, while blue fibers are nonthreatening. The image won honorable mention and was the people’s choice winner in the contest’s illustration category.

A team of researchers (Guillermo Marin, Fernando M. Cucchietti, Mariano Vázquez, Carlos Tripiana, Guillaume Houzeaux, Ruth Arís, Pierre Lafortune and Jazmin Aguado-Sierra) at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center produced this first-place and people’s-choice winning video, “Alya Red: A Computational Heart.” The film shows Alya Red, a realistic animation of a beating human heart that the scientists designed using MRI data.

“I was literally blown away,” Michael Reddy, a judge in the contest, told Science. “After the first time I watched the video, I thought, ‘I’ve just changed the way I thought about a heart.’”

Be sure to check out the other videos below, which received honorable mention in the contest:

Fertilization, by Thomas Brown, Stephen Boyd, Ron Collins, Mary Beth Clough, Kelvin Li, Erin Frederikson, Eric Small, Walid Aziz, Hoc Kho, Daniel Brown and Nobles Green Nucleus Medical Media

Observing the Coral Symbiome Using Laser Scanning Confocal Microscopy, by Christine E. Farrar, Zac H. Forsman, Ruth D. Gates, Jo-Ann C. Leong, and Robert J. Toonen, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Revealing Invisible Changes in the World, by Michael Rubinstein, Neal Wadhwa, Frédo Durand, William T. Freeman, Hao-Yu Wu, John Guttag, MIT; and Eugene Shih, Quanta Research Cambridge

For winners in the posters and graphics and games and apps categories, see the National Science Foundation’s special report on the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge.

A leaf grasshopper (Phyllophorina kotoshoensis). Courtesy of the museum exhibition “Bugs…Outside the Box.”

As a kid, I was an avid bug collector. I had one of those screen-covered bug boxes, and I carried it with me on backyard adventures and forays into the woods behind my house. I have fond memories of the first nights of summer when the fireflies came out–I’d cup the air and catch one, put it in my box and lie belly in the grass, with the box at my nose, watching the little thing light up.

My brother and I had ant farms, sea-monkeys and kits to grow monarch butterflies from caterpillars and frogs from tadpoles. Seeing little critters up-close was fascinating.

Now, about 20 years later, Lorenzo Possenti‘s sculptures reignite that passion in me. The Italian artist, based in Pisa, creates detailed sculptures of insects—from beetles and grasshoppers to dragonflies and butterflies—modeled after actual museum specimens. Possenti is remarkably accurate, according to entomologists, but he does take one liberty. His inanimate bugs are up to 200 times larger than life. Some of the beetles are four feet long, and the butterflies have five-feet wingspans!

A giant cicada (Formotosena seebohmi), on left; a stick insect (Megacrania tsudai), in center; and a leaf grasshopper (Phyllophorina kotoshoensis), on right. Courtesy of the museum exhibition “Bugs…Outside the Box.”

“Like other children, I grew up thinking about monsters, extraterrestrials, dinosaurs…and huge bugs,” said Possenti, in an email. “When I was about 12 years old, I started to study insects and their biology, and I got a lot of books related to them. At the age of 15, I started drawing my own comics. Many dinosaurs, monsters and insects entered the stories.” Soon enough, insects took priority, and the artist transitioned from drawing to sculpture. “At the age of 25, I had the dream to produce my own exhibit about enlarged insect models, to show people how beautiful some of them (especially beetles) are,” he added.

Possenti builds his creatures piecemeal. Using museum specimens as reference, he sculpts each part of an insect from DAS modeling clay. Once the clay air dries, he uses sandpaper, knives and mini-drills to carve more details into the piece. This is his so-called “master copy.” The artist then covers the master copy with silicone rubber gum to form a mold. He removes the clay from the mold, pours a polyurethane resin into the mold and then, after the resin dries, extracts the resulting piece, be it a claw or an antennae, from the mold. Possenti cleans the part, joins it to other ones, paints the resulting critter and adds a special finish to the top, to give it a waxy-like surface similar to live insects.

“I can say that more than scientific issues, I am attracted by the art contained in insect body shapes, which comes from nature,” said Possenti. “That is why my models must be absolutely scientifically correct. The art shown in my models is not from me, it is from nature. My job is just to keep that safe, with as few changes as possible.”

Long-armed beetle (Cheirotonus macleayi), on left. Courtesy of the museum exhibition “Bugs…Outside the Box.”

The fact that Possenti has a degree in natural science, with a strong interest in entomology, helps as he strives for accuracy.

“He does a very good job at picking up on the details that usually an artist would miss,” said Katrina Menard, an entomologist and curator of recent invertebrates at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. The museum, located at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, is exhibiting 16 of the gargantuan insects in “Bugs…Outside the Box,” on display through May 12, 2013.

The herd of bugs includes a Hercules beetle (Dynastes hercules), a leaf grasshopper (Phyllophorina kotoshoensis), a stick insect (Megacrania tsudai), a jumbo dragonfly (Anotogaster sieboldii) and a giant cicada (Formotosena seebohmi), among others. But, Menard is particularly impressed by Possenti’s stag beetles.

“Along a lot of the different joints of these insects, they have large rows of hairs, called setae, so they are able to sense their position and movement,” explained Menard. “Usually, when you see pictures done by artists they sort of disregard these distinct little structures. In this case, he glued individual paintbrush hairs all along the joints that you would see only if you really looked at the insect very closely.”

A jumbo dragonfly (Anotogaster sieboldii), on left, and a watanabe’s lanternfly (Fulgora watanabe), on right. Courtesy of the museum exhibition “Bugs…Outside the Box.”

The artist also pays special attention to the scales and venation of butterfly wings. He has created panels that allow museum visitors to feel the individual scales and how they lay across a wing. For the sake of the Sam Noble Museum exhibition, Possenti also made a dynamic sculpture of a beetle that allows teachers and students to remove certain parts of the bug—like in an autopsy, says the artist—to reveal its internal anatomy.

“He does a very good job translating not only the science but doing it in a very aesthetically pleasing and inclusive way,” Menard said. “People who normally wouldn’t be interested in looking at bugs up close actually want to look at the details and see the fine characteristics.”

Possenti’s mission is simple: “I would love for people to discover the art and the beauty of nature everywhere.”

Great Hornbill (Buceros bicornis). © Katrina van Grouw.

Katrina van Grouw’s new book The Unfeathered Bird is a work of passion. A former curator in the ornithological division of London’s Natural History Museum, the fine artist, based in Buckinghamshire, England, has used her experience in ornithology and taxidermy to draw, over the course of her career, 385 beautiful illustrations of birds—all, as the book’s title suggests, without their feathers. Her work shows the skeletal and muscular systems of 200 different species, from ostriches to hummingbirds, parrots to penguins, in life-like poses.

Collage of Arts and Sciences interviewed van Grouw by email.

When did you draw your very first bird illustration for this book?

Twenty five years ago! But it was a couple more years before the idea for the book became a burning ambition. I was an undergraduate fine art student with a passion for natural history, and I wanted to produce a set of anatomical drawings as background research for my images of living birds. I found a freshly dead mallard washed up on the beach and began stripping off each layer of muscle, before boiling up and reassembling the skeleton. I drew everything from several angles. It took months! I decided—if you’re going to spend several months intimately involved with a dead duck, it’s got to have a name. So, I christened her Amy. Her skeleton still stands in a glass case in my living room, and the book is dedicated to her.

Skull of a Lappet-faced Vulture (Torgos tracheliotus). © Katrina van Grouw.

What have you done in your illustrations of birds that hasn’t been done before?

Several things, in fact. Of course, I’m not the first person to draw skeletons. There are some utterly gorgeous anatomical illustrations from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At this time however, natural history was preoccupied with taxonomy, and the emphasis was on showing obscure features that were thought to reveal evolutionary relationships. If whole skeletons were pictured at all, they would probably have been drawn from specimens mounted in static and inaccurate postures.

What I wanted to do was combine the aesthetic beauty typical of these historical images with information about living birds—their behavior and lifestyle. I wanted to focus on the effects of convergent evolution, or how different bird groups have adapted to similar niches. The skeletons in The Unfeathered Bird are shown flying, swimming, feeding—each in the way typical for that group.

Brown Fish Owl (Ketupa zeylonensis). © Katrina van Grouw.

What museum collections did you work from?

I used museums for many of the drawings of individual skulls and for skeletons of the species that I wasn’t able to obtain freshly dead. I’m indebted to the many curators and collections managers who allowed me to use their research collections, issued loans or sent photographs. (I only used photographs in conjunction with actual specimens, but they were nevertheless very useful.) Most articulated museum specimens, however, are not in a reliably lifelike position, and certainly not in active or characteristic poses. For that, we’d have to prepare our own.

Skulls of a European White Stork, (Ciconia ciconia), at top, and a Marabou (Leptoptilos crumeniferus), at bottom. © Katrina van Grouw.

When you collected your own specimens, where did you collect them, and how did you prepare them?

No birds were harmed in the making of the book. We approached aviculturists, taxidermists and conservation charities and received, as donations or on loan, a large quantity of birds that had died of natural causes. This way, we could prepare the skeletons at home in the required position. I say “we” but my husband, Hein, did all the work. (Hein, too, is a museum curator and ornithologist, with many years’ experience in preparing bird specimens.) He prepared most by boiling, then would clean and reconstruct the skeleton in whatever position I dictated. Actually, we discussed each at length and usually arrived at a decision we’d be mutually happy with! Our tiny house was soon completely taken over with skeletons in various stages of preparation—from pans boiling on the kitchen stove to toucans in the sink, and penguins in the bath!

Great Cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo). © Katrina van Grouw.

How did you keep the skeletons in position?

Once they were re-assembled, with a wire through the vertebrae and all the other bones either wired or glued in place, Hein’s skeletons are as robust as any museum specimen. Drawing the musculature of skinned birds as though they were alive, however, was much more difficult. Sometimes I’d rig up the carcasses on a Heath Robinson-esque maze of wires, pins, thread and blocks of wood to make a faintly grotesque artist’s mannequin. Otherwise, I’d just sit with the bloody carcass draped over my lap and use references of living birds to re-animate it directly on the drawing.

Domesticated English Pouter (Columba livia). © Katrina van Grouw.

How did you determine which species to include?

It was more difficult to decide which species not to include! I could happily have gone on adding drawings forever. The more I researched, the more I discovered things I felt I simply had to put in.

I tried to cover as many of the traditional groups as possible, with at least one bird shown as a complete skeleton and sometimes additional drawings showing the musculature or feather tracts of the whole bird. Extra drawings of skulls, feet, tongues, windpipes and other bits and pieces were included to show variation or adaptations of particular interest.

Red-throated loon (Gavia stellata). © Katrina van Grouw.

What types of information did you want your drawings to convey to viewers?

When I first had the idea for the book I’d intended it to be aimed primarily at artists and illustrators. Therefore, I wanted to focus on the way a bird’s anatomy affects its outward appearance—what’s actually going on underneath the feathers when a bird is moving. It was only afterwards that I realized that it would have wider appeal.

It might be easier to say what I didn’t want, and that can be summed up in two words: annotated diagrams. If you want to know the names of individual bones, look in a textbook! For The Unfeathered Bird I felt it would only clutter up the images and, worse still, make readers feel obliged to read and learn them. My aim was to convey general principles about the way birds are adapted to their lifestyle.

Some people might be surprised to find the arrangement of chapters based around Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae. There were several reasons for this, but it was chiefly so that I could compare similar adaptations in unrelated birds, whilst still following a recognized (albeit antiquated) scientific order.

About how long did you spend on each drawing?

The more practiced I am, the faster I get, or, more accurately, the better the eye-hand coordination with fewer rubbings out! But on average, a skull will take an hour or two and a whole skeleton may take up to a week, or even longer. Backache, neck ache, eye-fatigue and sore fingers are the things that slow me down.

Magnificent Frigatebird (Fregata magnificens), at right, with White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon lepturus), at left. © Katrina van Grouw.

What specimen presented the most challenges? And why?

Without a doubt, the greatest challenge was drawing lifelike skeletons from bones that were not articulated at all—the ones in scientific reference collections in natural history museums. As a former bird curator at Britain’s Natural History Museum, I know that the people using skeleton collections—mostly zooarchaeologists—need to study the articulating surfaces of individual bones, so they’re not much use if they’re glued or wired together. However, this makes it quite difficult for artists!

I worked out a clever solution: I would draw the skeleton of another bird already prepared in the position I wanted, then rub out and re-draw each bone in turn, with reference to the respective bone of the desired species. It works remarkably well.

Probably my favorite picture in the book, the Magnificent Frigatebird, was drawn in this way, from a disarticulated skeleton loaned to me by the Field Museum, Chicago, modelled from the position of the tropicbird it’s chasing. I’m a huge fan of both frigatebirds and tropicbirds (with feathers on), so it was important for me to get it right, and do justice to the dynamism and excitement of a real-live aerial pursuit.

Amazon parrot and macaw feathers. © Chris Maynard.

Chris Maynard is obsessed with feathers. The artist, based in Olympia, Wash., thinks feathers show “life’s perfection,” in the way that they overlap and contour to a bird’s body. “Their complexity as a covering beats any clothing we make,” he writes on his Web site.

Turkey feather. © Chris Maynard.

Going back a few years, Maynard started by photographing feathers. Then, he arranged them in shadow boxes. But, in his experiments in showcasing feathers, Maynard eventually came up with his own unique art form. The artist creates fascinating, feather-light sculptures, by cutting the silhouettes of various types of birds from actual plumage.

Crow feather. © Chris Maynard.

Maynard collects molted feathers from generous zoos, private aviaries and nonprofit bird rescue organizations. “Sometimes finding the right feather is the hard part,” he says. The artist may go into a design with a particular color or size of feather in mind. He uses pheasant and parrot feathers mostly, and, from them, he has cut out a whole slew of birds—hummingbirds, woodpeckers, cranes, swans, cockatoos, macaws, peacocks, turkeys, grouse, bitterns, crows and pigeons. Maynard sketches possible designs in notebooks, but to really nail one, he says, “I need to have a feeling about the bird I am portraying.” Maynard, an active member of his local Audubon group and supporter of a land trust that buys property for conservation, balances work in his studio with quality time in the outdoors. “I go out and observe a woodpecker whacking away at a snag or watch crows relating to each other,” he says.

Great Argus pheasant wing feathers. © Chris Maynard.

Next comes the cutting. ”When I work, I put on big nerdy magnifying glasses to see the feathers’ details,” Maynard says on his Web site. He also uses fine eye surgery tools he inherited from his father, an ophthalmologist. The scalpels and forceps are not completely foreign to Maynard, whose academic background is in entomology–the study of insects.

Great Argus pheasant feather and two small macaw feathers. © Chris Maynard.

The artist is certainly clever in the execution of his designs. Maynard will sometimes use the shaft of the feather as a branch or a tree trunk, perching one or more birds on it. When he wants to portray a singing bird, he takes fluffy down and makes a speech bubble coming out of its open beak. As shown in a couple of photographs here, the artist has also made some of his feathers appear as if flocks of birds are flying out of them. Maynard is a perfectionist (“I am pretty mathematical about it,” he says. “I want each piece to be in the right place.”), and it shows. In total, he has created more than 80 extremely detailed works of feather art.

“I hope that seeing birds in a different light through my artwork will encourage appreciation of avian life and hence a desire to conserve it,” says Maynard.

Mute swan feathers. © Chris Maynard.

Maynard’s exhibition “Feather’s Second Flight,” including 25 of his works, is on display through January 20 at the Row House Cafe in Seattle. From January 25 to February 15, his feather art will be shown at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts in Olympia. Maynard and Thor Hanson, a conservation biologist and author of the new book Feathers, will be giving a lecture at the center on February 2.

Dodo, by Ralph Steadman.

Filmmaker Ceri Levy was working on a documentary called The Bird Effect, about how our feathered friends influence our lives, when he took on a side project, organizing an exhibition, “Ghosts of Gone Birds,” at the Rochelle School in London in November 2011.

“Its purpose was to highlight the risk of extinction that is faced by many bird species in the world today,” Levy noted. “The premise of the show was to get artists to represent an extinct species of birds, and to breathe life back into it.”

Great Auk, by Ralph Steadman.

Levy sent a list of nearly 200 extinct bird species to famous artists, musicians, writers and poets, inviting them to create bird-centric pieces. A cut of the profits from the sale of the artwork would go to BirdLife International’s Preventing Extinctions Programme, which aims to protect 197 critically endangered bird species.

Acclaimed poet and novelist (also, environmental activist) Margaret Atwood knitted a Great auk—a large flightless seabird last seen off of Newfoundland in 1852. Sir Peter Blake, a British pop artist who famously designed the cover of the Beatles’ album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, submitted a collage, titled “Dead as a Dodo,” which consists of a long list of extinct and endangered birds. But the most prolific contributor by far was Ralph Steadman. The British cartoonist, who illustrated the 1967 edition of Alice in Wonderland and Hunter S. Thompson’s 1971 classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (and the labels on bottles of Flying Dog beer), painted more than 100 colorful and sometimes silly birds—or “boids,” as he called them in emails to Levy.

Cuban Macaw, by Ralph Steadman.

Steadman started by creating a beautiful Japanese egret in flight. Then, he painted a great auk and a rather plump North Island giant moa. A relative of the ostrich, the moa lived in New Zealand until hunting and habitat loss led to its disappearance by the 1640s. He quickly followed those up with a Choiseul crested pigeon. A regal-looking thing, the pigeon flaunts a big blue crest of feathers, like a fashionable headpiece; it was found in the Solomon Islands until the early 1900s, when it went extinct, quite dreadfully, on account of “predation by dogs and cats,” writes Levy.

At this point, the artist emailed Levy: “I may do a few more—they are rather fun to do!”

Steadman proceeded to paint a black mamo, a Jamaican red macaw, a Chatham rail and an imperial woodpecker. He added a red-moustached fruit dove, a Carolina parakeet, a Labrador duck, a white-winged sandpiper, a Canary Islands oystercatcher and a passenger pigeon to the mix, among others, all featured in his and Levy’s new book on the series, Extinct Boids.

Oahu ‘O’o, by Ralph Steadman.

Calling Steadman’s birds “boids” seems fitting, according to Levy. ”These are not scientific, textbook illustrations. These are Ralph’s take on the subject,” the filmmaker and curator writes. “He has stamped his persona upon them, and given them their own unique identities.” The cartoonist’s Mauritius owl looks dim-witted, and his Rodrigues solitaire is quite perturbed. His snail-eating coua is perched on the shell of its alarmed prey, almost as if it is gloating. And, his New Zealand little bittern is, how shall I say it…bitter.

“I was thinking that what is desirable is to get the spirit and personality of the BOID!!! Rather than some odd ‘accuracy’!!” Steadman wrote to Levy, in the process of painting the aviary. As a result, his ink-splattered portraits are downright playful.

Double-banded Argus, by Ralph Steadman.

Each one has a story, especially this drowsy-looking boid (above) called the double-banded argus. The focal point of the illustration is a speckled orange feather—the “only original feather,” as Steadman scrawls in the caption. In the book, Levy provides the backstory. Apparently, one feather, resembling the plumage of an argus pheasant but with a distinctly different pattern, exists to this day, leaving some to believe that a double-banded argus once lived. With just the feather to guide him, Steadman dreamed the bird into being.

Nasty Tern, by Ralph Steadman.

In fact, in addition to depicting numerous known species, the artist imagined a flock of fantastical, cleverly-named characters: the gob swallow, the nasty tern (“nasty by name and nasty by nature,” says Levy) and the white-winged gonner, to name a few.

Included in this wily bunch is Carcerem boidus, otherwise known as the jail bird.

“There’s always got to be one bad egg, and this is what came out of it,” says Levy, in response to the caged, black-and-white striped bird he imagined.

Courtesy of the Water Tank Project.

This New Year’s Eve, in addition to the typical resolutions to exercise more or spend more time with family, consider resolving to take better advantage of the cultural offerings of America’s cities and towns. Whether you seek to attend concerts, listen to lectures by authors and visiting scholars or become regulars at area museums, a few exhibitions slated for 2013 on the intersection of art and science will be must-sees in the New Year.

The Water Tank Project

Courtesy of the Water Tank Project.

The skyline of New York City will be transformed next summer when 300 water tanks in the five boroughs become public works of art, calling attention to water conservation. Artists, including Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Catherine Opie, Lawrence Weiner, and even Jay-Z, have agreed to participate in the project. Their original designs will be printed on vinyl, which will be wrapped around the mostly wood tanks, which typically measure 12 feet high and 13 feet in diameter, perched on top of buildings. The art will be a welcome addition to the city’s rooftops, while also providing more awareness of the global water crisis.

Teaching the Body: Artistic Anatomy in the American Academy, From Copley, Eakins, and Rimmer to Contemporary Artists

Female torso, by Lisa Nilsson. Photo by John Polak.

Naomi Slipp, a PhD candidate in art history at Boston University, is organizing an ambitious exhibition of more than 80 sketches, models, prints, books, paintings and other works that tell a full story of artistic renderings of human anatomy in America. On display at the Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery, from January 31 to March 31, the exhibition spans two and half centuries, from the very first anatomy text by painter John Singleton Copley, dating to 1756, to works by contemporary artists, such as Lisa Nilsson, who creates paper sculptures depicting cross sections of the human body. ”This exhibition examines both what that study of artistic anatomy meant for these artists and for the way we, today, think about our own bodies and how they work,” said Slipp, in her successful bid to raise funds for the project on Kickstarter. ”In looking at artworks created by artists and doctors, I hope to unite this diverse audience, bringing together people who are interested in art and those who are interested in medicine for a rich, shared conversation about what it means to occupy, treat and picture our own bodies.”

Portraits of Planet Ocean: The Photography of Brian Skerry

Harp seal, by Brian Skerry.

“I believe my most important role remains as artistic interpreter of all that I see. I need to understand the science, but I want to capture the poetry,” writes Brian Skerry, in his book, Ocean Soul. A National Geographic wildlife photographer with decades of experience, Skerry has captured enchanting portraits of harp seals, Atlantic bluefin tuna, hammerhead sharks, beluga whales, manatees and other creatures of the deep. His line of work requires loads of equipment—underwater housings for his cameras, strobes, lenses, wetsuits, drysuits, fins—to get the perfect shot. “While no single image can capture everything, in my own work I am most pleased when I make pictures that reveal something special about a specific animal or ecosystem, pictures that give viewers a sense of the mysterious or in effect bring them into the sea with me,” says Skerry, in a dispatch on Ocean Portal. Earlier this fall, Ocean Portal asked the public to vote for a favorite among 11 of Skerry’s photographs. The viewers’ choice and other images by the underwater photographer will be on display at D.C.’s National Museum of Natural History beginning April 5.

American Vesuvius: The Aftermath of Mount St. Helens by Frank Gohlke and Emmet Gowin

Inside Mount St. Helens Crater, Base of Lava Dome on the Left (detail), by Frank Gohlke, 1983. Courtesy of The Cleveland Museum of Art.

On May 18, 1980, stirred by a 5.1 magnitude earthquake, Mount St. Helens in Washington state’s Cascade Range erupted, forever changing the landscape surrounding it. Separate from one another, American photographers Emmet Gowin and Frank Gohlke documented the devastation (and in Gohlke’s case, the gradual rebirth) of the area. The Cleveland Museum of Art is bringing the photographers’ series together, side by side, in an exhibit, on display from January 13 to May 12.

Interestingly, the museum will also play host to “The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection,” looking at art by masters ranging from the 18th and 19th century artists Piranesi and Ingres to more modern contributions from Duchamp, Rothko and Warhol, all inspired by the deadly eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. The exhibit will be on display from February 24 to May 19.

Gogo: Nature Transformed

Maine seaweed cuff, 2008. Designed by Gogo Ferguson and Hannah Sayre-Thomas. Photo by Peter Harholdt.

Gogo Ferguson and her daughter, Hannah Sayre-Thomas, live on Cumberland Island, off the coast of Georgia. Morning, noon and night, the pair walks the beach, collecting interesting skeletons, seaweed and seashells brought in by the tide. “Nature has perfected her designs over millions of years,” writes Ferguson, on her Web site. And so, the artist incorporates these organic designs into jewelry, sculptures and housewares. Her first museum exhibition, at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from January 19 to July 7, features more than 60 works, including a six-foot by eight-foot wall sculpture modeled after seaweed from New England and an ottoman fashioned after a sea urchin.

View of the solar corona and magnetic loops during an eclipse of the Sun by the Earth. Solar Dynamics Observatory, April 2, 2011. Credit: NASA GSFC/Michael Benson/Kinetikon Pictures.

Michael Benson

Photographer Michael Benson takes raw images collected on NASA and European Space Agency missions and enhances them digitally. The results are brilliant, colorful views of dust storms on Mars and Saturn’s rings, among other sights. The American Association for the Advancement of Science Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. will be exhibiting images from Planetfall, Benson’s latest book, as well as his other titles, including Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle (2009) and Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes (2003), from mid-February through the end of April.

Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence

(Left) Firefly signals captured in slow-shutter speed photos. © Tsuneaki Hiramatsu. (Right) A re-creation of New Zealand’s Waitomo cave system, with sticky “fishing lines” dropped from the ceiling by glowworms. © AMNH\D. Finnin.

If you missed it at New York’s American Museum of Natural History this past year, there is still time to see “Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence” at its next stop, Chicago’s Field Museum, from March 7 to September 8. The exhibition highlights the diversity of animals, from fireflies and glowworms to jellyfish and fluorescent corals found upwards of a half-mile deep in the ocean, that use bioluminescence, and the variety of different reasons for which they do. A firefly, for instance, glows to catch the attention of a mate. An anglerfish, meanwhile, attracts prey with a bioluminescent lure dangling in front of its mouth; a vampire squid releases a cloud of bioluminescence to befuddle its predators. The show also explains the chemical reaction that causes the animals to glow. “The one real weakness,” wrote the New York Times, at the opening of the exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, “is that with only a few exceptions—like the tanks of blinking ‘splitfin flashlight fish’ found in deep reefs of the South Pacific—this is not an exhibition of specimens but of simulations.”