Join the Celebration of 18 years of Mud Paintings by Jenifer Wightman, senior extension associate in the section of Soil & Crop Sciences at Cornell School of Integrative Plant Sciences. From the most pristine to the most toxic, microbes paint transforming color fields.
This opening event for Jeni Wightman’s newest installation, “Microbial Landscape Paintings: Seasonal Color via Species Succession,” on display on the 1st and 2nd floors of Mann Library, will honor Gene Madsen, a Cornell microbiologist who convinced powers that be, that making art with mud and microbes is a safe and wonderful activity. We will learn about his life and work (Professor Emeritus Bill Ghiorse, Dept. of Microbiology), a microbial species named after him (Prof. Dan Buckley (Section of Crop and Soil Sciences, Cornell School of Integrative Plant Sciences), and Gene’s appreciation of art, and new ideas around art-science experiments with soil at and around Cornell (Prof. Johannes Lehmann, Section of Crop and Soil Sciences/SIPS). Afterward, we will mingle with the microbial paintings. Happy Earth Day!
“Microbial Landscape Paintings: Seasonal Color via Species Succession,” is on display at Mann Library through September 2022 in connection with the Cornell Bienniale 2022 of the Cornell Council for the Arts.