ZooMed

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 20 Process

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Here are a couple of photos of the in-progress Vulture Sculpture! In the first image, you can see how I built an internal armature out of pink styrofoam insulation, wire, and disposable chopsticks. Armatures are really helpful for a few reasons: A) they provide structure and support to bolster strength and keep the clay from sagging, B) they weigh a lot less than clay which makes the piece-in-progress lighter so it puts less stress on weight-bearing areas while wet/uncured C) if you leave the armature inside - like you can do with QuickCure Clay - the finished piece is lighter than if it were solid clay which is typically desirable, and finally D) the armature materials usually cost less than using an equivalent amount of clay.

Then in the second image, it’s midway along; I’m still sculpting the QCC (note the head and wings are unfinished) but it’s taking real shape and I’ve already incorporated the artificial turf, though I have yet to “mold” it with the heat gun. Finally, there’s the finished piece in a similar orientation for comparison!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 20

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This is the final piece of artwork I completed on-site at LSU Vet Med during my two-month summer 2022 residency! I think finishing 20 exhibitable pieces including mixed media paintings, a relief, ceramics, and a sculpture in 7 weeks is a remarkable feat, so I am very happy with my productivity.

I worked right up until the day of the exhibition opening on this piece, but I managed to get it “finished” in time - I put that in quotes as I still needed to briefly borrow it back from the exhibition midway through to put a protective varnish on top!

I had wanted to do a sculpture this whole time because A) I’ve always liked putting on exhibitions that have multiple disciplines and media on display to more deeply engage a broad viewership, B) I wanted to really highlight QuickCure Clay, as I’d helped create it with Dr. John Pojman at LSU a decade ago and it felt right to use it in at least a couple of pieces this summer, and C) I had been given a couple pieces of artificial turf from the wildlife hospital that I wanted to incorporate into artwork in some way, and relatively early on I had a lightbulb moment wherein I thought the astroturf had vulture neck-feather vibes! It worked very well, in that a lot of people couldn’t figure out where the artificial turf was used and at least one viewer told me she thought I thought the gravel I used as an installation aid was astroturf. Another viewer asked me if this was a taxidermied piece, which made me feel really good about the likeness!

I titled this piece Vulture Sculpture mostly because I didn’t have time to think about titling it when I had to make the show labels (I didn’t even think it was likely to get finished for it!), but I also do like the rhyme and the clear identification of the species of the bird. I sold this sculpture that same evening to the fabulous Dr. Mark Mitchell from Wildlife and ZooMed and his partner Dr. Lorrie Hale Mitchell from Integrative Medicine! They very kindly were willing to let me take it on exhibit first (as I’m doing with the rest of the sold paintings), but I made some delicate choices with this piece - the claws, the beak tip - that meant I thought it best to let them just take it after my LSU Vet Med solo show came down instead of potentially injuring the piece in shipping.

This is Vulture Sculpture, a mixed media sculpture of a black vulture including QuickCure Clay and ZooMed’s artificial turf, 13.5" x 7.5" x 20.5", 2022.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 6 Process

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Here are process photos from Crèche Chic!

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 6

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As I may have shared before, I have met a bunch of amazing animals while here and there are a handful with whom I’ve really connected. This little fellow tops the list - you may recognize this brown thrasher from Wild Card, but here he is in his natural color palette and two different poses! I was fortunate enough to get to see pretty much his entire journey at the vet school in ZooMed’s wildlife hospital - from coming in as an abandoned nestling whose two siblings didn’t make it to his fledging and becoming a young adult, to his release! I will share his release photos in a different post.

The whole background is non-traditional veterinary media - namely, herbal treatments from Integrative Medicine! They created a really cool surface but were water-soluble and organic so I sealed over them several times with acrylic medium before painting the baby birds.

This is Crèche Chic, a mixed media painting including Integrative Medicine’s Jing Tang Herbal Concentrated Red Lung and Concentrated Prostate Invigorator and acrylic on panel, 18x24x1.5”, 2022.

A mixed media painting incorporating non-traditional veterinary herbs of two baby brown thrasher nestlings.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 2

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Here’s my second finished piece from my LSU Vet Med artist residency! I’m still mulling over the title - my current tentative selection is Wild Card, but I’m open to other suggestions.

I’ve met a lot of very cool animals here already, so this is high praise indeed - this is my favorite animal I’ve met thus far. ZooMed has a superstition they observe: you cannot name a wildlife patient, or its health will go downhill. This little fellow therefore doesn’t have a name, but he’s a real character. He has charisma and attitude in spades. When I arrived, he was a nestling and still had these “Einstein” feathers he’s rocking in the below image, but he’s now a fledgling and is getting closer to release every day!

I specifically chose the elongated landscape aspect ratio of this panel as mimicking the dimensions of the pathology slides. The coloration of the background comes from my novel usage of veterinary stains and medicine as art media, and I continued that color palette into the subject as well. However, as you’ll understand more clearly in the process post I’ll make soon, there was a lot of trial and error in the creation of the background, and a cyan coloration that was produced ended up quickly going almost entirely fugitive (bleached out). I reinforced it with acrylic droplets as a final step.

This is a mixed media painting of a wild brown thrasher nestling including Clinical Pathology's Diff-Quik methylene blue counter stain, Histology's light green stain, ZooMed's chlorhexidine antiseptic, and acrylic on basswood panel, 10x20x1.5", 2022.



LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Journal 3

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The following weekend I went to a Baton Rouge Cactus & Succulent Society sale due to a member who passed away and left some of his collection and pottery to the society; in order to make the most of the event they also put some tropicals and leftover bromeliads from the previous weekend’s sale out for purchase as well. I picked up a few nice plants and a large quantity of small ceramic pots as they were selling them for absolutely rock bottom prices - I think I paid a bit less than $1/pot. I also stopped by an estate sale happening nearby and then had some Vietnamese, followed by stopping in at an Vinh Phat Oriental Market and getting lychee! I love fresh lychee (I was a bit sad they didn’t have any mangosteen though). I also visited a friend and neighbor of Sandy’s named Pat who is a big art collector, and it was fun to see her collection and her house in general - it was a beautiful home. She had invited local artist Joy McDonald over too. Her artwork is very playful!

The next work week (June 13-17) I spent more time with the farm animal folks and met a couple more cute goats, visited the wildlife areas (main building and flight cages) quite a few times, and observed some ophthalmology appointments. I also booked a session with epidemiology to photograph mosquitoes, specifically Aedes aegypti. This was a more involved process than I’d have thought, involving first feeding the females a blood meal, popping them into a freezer just to slow them down/stun them, and then tweezing them onto a metal tray partially perched upon ice, which I could move further away from the ice to thaw them out more or push towards the ice if they were getting too mobile. Aedes aegypti are dimorphic; the males only feed on nectar, so their abdomens are quite thin in comparison while their antennae are lusher than those of the female mosquito.

On Friday morning I was interviewed live on KADN News 15! I will post separately if I can find a video clip to share, but it was a short info piece about the fact that I’m the inaugural artist in residence at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine, what that’s like, where I’m from, and when my residency exhibition and artist lecture will be occurring.

I also spent a good amount of time in the studio, of course!

Below are photos of my documenting/participating in a red-shouldered hawk’s release, a social media post from the LSU Museum of Art advertising my wares, live mosquitoes on ice (really, even the ones that are upside down), and some anole sightings including a hitchhiker from Florida on a bromeliad, two anoles mating, and the smallest anole I’ve ever seen next to my pointer finger for scale.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 1 Process

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I tend to be pretty bad about taking process photos, but I’ve been trying to be more intentional about it for this residency! Here are several images of Fortification in progress, culminating in the finished artwork.

LSU Vet Med Artist Residency Artwork 1

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I always aim to capture a sense of place or atmosphere in my residencies, and in this artist residency at the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine I have decided to incorporate medicines, pathology and histology stains, as well as veterinary chemicals, tools, and resources into each of my pieces as art media. (I have no idea how archival some will be - particularly how lightfast and stable the pigmentation of the medicines, stains, and chemicals is - but the evolution of how the artworks age will be interesting to witness and document, too!)

As you may already know, I work on multiple pieces of artwork simultaneously, so the first piece I start isn’t always the first to finish. This piece is actually the second one I began! It is of a Mississippi kite which is a beautiful raptor, and there were three here upon my arrival - two wild kites and one that has been habituated as an ambassador or resident raptor. The depicted wild bird is in a defensive stress posture, trying to look as big as possible so as to protect itself from predators.

This artwork incorporates ZooMed's PVP Prep Solution: povidone-iodine 10% topical antiseptic (also known as Betadine) and Integrative Medicine's AcuZone smokeless moxa-rolls for both the background and feet.  There’s also a bit of the Betadine on the eyes over a base of acrylic.

I have titled this piece Fortification, and it is a mixed media painting including the aforementioned veterinary materials as well as acrylic and cornstarch on basswood panel, 20x20x1.5”, 2022.