Luke Jerram

Avian Flu - H5N1

Entovrus 71 (EV71) - Hand Foot and Mouth Disease

Smallpox

SARS corona Virus

E. Coli

Lately I've posted quite a few more successful artists. Sometimes it is difficult to tell just how successful an artist is even if I knew what constituted success for an artist. The point of an artist's website is to promote the artist, and that means highlighting successes. But when an artist can feature a photo of themselves shaking hands with the queen, I'm ready to concede that they are probably doing pretty well for themselves. Having pieces in the permanent collections of museums around the world is another good sign. Anyhow...

Luke Jerram does a lot of different kinds of work: installations, live art, sculpture. It's the sculpture that caught my attention. Actually just a single series of work; these giant glass microbes. I love it when science and art sidle up to each other and get cozy and occasionally share some koodies. I think art generally benefits more from these trysts than science and I'd say that's the case here as well. But Mr. Jerram does make some excellent scientific points concerning the work. Images of microorganisms are derived from electron microscopy and are usually enhanced with color. The color is generally arbitrary and used primarily to help distinguish the various elements of the image. But in fact most viruses are smaller than the wavelength of visible light, so they can't really have a color. His glass sculptures of these viruses, made in consultation with virologists using a variety of images and models, thus have a lot of merit as scientific illustrations and have been used as such. Beyond that, they're just really really cool.

Luke Jerram is an idea guy. It needs to be pointed ou tthat he did not make these sculptures himself. They were in fact produced in collaboration with glass blowers Kim George, Brian Jones and Norman Veitch.

There's plenty more viruses to look at and a lot of other cool stuff on his website: www.lukejerram.com