Six Month Studio Round Up

I love spending my summers being creative, whether it's working on art projects in my studio or doing my daughter's hair in pretty braids and weaves. What I look forward to the most in my studio practice is the feeling of satisfaction when I'm done. One of my favorite places to go plein air painting is the botanical gardens at the Riverbanks Zoo and Garden. I forget about the sweltering summer heat when I'm painting or drawing the landscape.

Darcy and her back-to-school summertime braids weaved by yours truly, and my White Daisy mixed media drawing completed at the Riverbanks Zoo.

Spring Exhibitions

University of South Carolina's academic year ended with a "high" for me this past spring. My artwork was featured in three exhibitions: one in California at the Cabrillo Gallery, Cabrillo College, of the greater Los Angeles area. It was a group exhibition, and the show was titled Who We are Portraying. The exhibit explored identity and how individuals represent or express themselves publicly.  

The other two exhibitions I participated in were in South Carolina. Both were 10th-anniversary shows. The first one was a salon exhibition celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the publication, The Jasper Project. The show and celebration were both held at 701 Whaley's Pool Hall space. Laura Garner Hine curated the exhibition. Other artists selected to participate in the show included Bohumila Augustinova, Eileen Blythe, Mike Dwyer, Michael Krajewski, Cait Maloney, and Lucas Sams, to name a few. 

 

The second exhibition 10th-anniversary exhibition I participated in this past spring was the ArtFields 10th-Anniversary competition exhibition. Located in Lake City, South Carolina, ArtFields is a nine-day festival that features up to 400 works of art at 40 venues in which on can view the artists selected to compete from the southeast region of the United States. Participating artists are juried each year by a prestigious panel of jurors. The 2022 ArtFields juror panel included:  Venessa Castagnoli, Executive Director of Ogden Contemporary Arts; Charles Eady, Contemporary Artist and Author; Jean McLaughlin, Arts Administrator, Educator, and Artist; David Reyes, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections, Huntsville Museum of Art; and Jaime Suárez, Sculptor, Architect, Educator, and Ceramicist.

Top, detail of one of The Darcy Inventory drawings, mixed media on paper, 11" x 14."  The Darcy Inventory, center, installed at The R.O.B. at this year's 10th anniversary ArtFields competition, Lake City, SC. 

Summer Fun

Darcy won a weeklong spot in the Walk on the Wild Side World Explorers camp in Greenville this summer. Campers dissected owl pellets, learned about various estuary habitats, and met a tarantula, chinchilla, and python at the Greenville Zoo. When Darcy was not in camp, we spent our time either swimming in the hotel pool or exploring the downtown area of Greenville, South Carolina. 

Check out our South Carolina Sunshine Instagram reel of the week here!

Darcy, outside of World Explorers camp, Greenville, SC.

Art of Neuroscience, Netherlands Institute of Neuroscience

I received an Honorable Mention for my artwork Dueling Cajals in the prestigious international sci-art competition, Art of Neuroscience. This year's competition jurors were Dr. Bevil Conway, Dr. Flora Lysen, and Dr. Sabine Niederer.

 

Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience Statement: 

"This submission struck the jury because of its emphasis on the history of neuroscience. The work highlights how any scientific process, particularly scientific image-making, can be influenced by a multilayering of cultural and historical factors. The jury admired how diverse periods in time from this historical perspective were weaved into one image, and appreciated the effort that went into investigating the sources that Cajal was exposed to. Dueling Cajals serves as an important reminder for neuroscientists to recognize history and its influence on their work. " - AoN, NIN, NL

My drawing was created by referencing primary sources from Cajal's life and scientific research while serving as the Fulbright España Senior Research fellow at the Instituto Cajal. Below this paragraph is an Instagram reel. In the reel, I am giving the viewer a glimpse into the creative process and some of the items (Cajal's scientific regeneration drawing and the original mold of his death mask) that I researched in creating my drawing.

Dawn Hunter, Dueling Cajals, Art of Neuroscience Instagram reel.

My artwork above, Dueling Cajals, mixed media on paper, 11" x 14."

The primary sources that I reference from the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, that inspire the Dueling Cajals drawing, left an original nerve regeneration scientific drawing completed by Cajal and the original death mask mold.

Cajal Club

It is with immense gratitude and a touch of modest pride that I share the news of my election to the esteemed Cajal Club Board of Directors. The trust they have placed in me to design and create a new website for their illustrious organization is both exhilarating and deeply humbling.

My life was full of hard work, collaboration, and feedback from and with top Neuroscientists during the transition from July to August. The new website is now operational. This is an ongoing endeavor; a garden that will continue to flourish and grow. More content is yet to come, so stay tuned!

The new website, designed by yours truly, can be found here: cajalclub.org.

Closing

We have had some wonderful adventures so far this year and we are looking forward to more! We feel honored and blessed by all of our opportunities.

Have a wonderful fall everyone and check back with us again soon! XOXO

Always,

Dawn

Portrait of artist Dawn Hunter, taken by her daughter Darcy, July, 2022.

Birthday Amusements: Cajal Tweets Freud

On the advent of Cajal's birthday (1 de mayo de 1852), I have been amusing myself by imagining Cajal's reaction to two things.

First, the Psychology Department at UofSC commissioned a Founders of Psychology mural  painted by a colleague, Marius Valdes. The mural includes great pioneers from Psychology disciplines. The first time I saw it, I got a good chuckle because included among the featured figures was Cajal, but not Freud. Cajal disliked Freud and disagreed with his theories. He invested a great deal of time recording his dreams to disprove Freud.  Ultimately, Cajal decided that what he had did not merit publishing. 

Founders of Psychology Mural, UoSC Psychology Department, by Marius Valdes:  http://mariusvaldes.com/#/usc-dept-of-psych/

Second, I recently ran across the interview Freud gave in 1934, where he proclaimed that he was by nature an artist.   It was published in August of 1934. I wonder if Cajal ever saw it. If so, from the perspective of someone who was truly an artist, did he get a good laugh from it before his death in October of that same year? . . . . How, if given the opportunity would he respond in a tweet?

Digitally Fabricated Tweet by Dawn Hunter, Birthday Card Comedy for Cajal, April 29, 2021.  #neildegrassetyson  #steakumms

https://www.newsweek.com/steak-umms-twitter-account-feuds-neil-degrasse-tyson-over-science-log-off-bro-1583236

"Everybody thinks that I stand by the scientific character of my work and that my principal scope lies in curing mental maladies. This is a terrible error that has prevailed for years and that I have been unable to set right. I am a scientist by necessity, and not by vocation. I am really by nature an artist...My books, in fact, more resemble works of imagination than treatises on pathology." -Freud quote from Giovanni Papini interview, August, 1934.

Cajal, I am sure, would be much more gracious than my featured comedy routine above. All too often in our digital age powerful political and business leaders clashing on social media can be daunting, demoralizing, and cringe worthy. It is more fun imagining historical figures from the past colliding in the ether.

If you have not had a chance to see my new web site, please take a moment to check it out.  Here is a link to one of my Cajal Portfolio pages highlighting my experiences at the Cajal Institute as a Fulbright Scholar:  The Fulbright Experience.

S

antiago Ramón y Cajal, top Dawn Hunter, bottom.

Re-creation of inside back cover of Cajal's first sketchbook from Valencia, Fulbright Espana, Instiuto Cajal, Madrid, Spain.

Drawing the Experience

"I am an artist, and I draw every day.  It is how I know and understand the world.  One day back in 2012, I was looking up neuroscience terminology to supplement an article I was reading on the claustrum, I stumbled across Cajal’s scientific drawings.  In the midst of trawling visuals on the web, I was swept away within “gesturely expressive” cellular images drawn in implied space.  I was dwarfed and transported into Cajal’s microscopic world.  Other neuroscience drawings were in the image cache, like those of Camillo Golgi.  However, I was not as taken with them, because Golgi’s illustrations were surrounded by a border that created closure and containment and possessed a topographical mannerism.  Based on those visual qualities, I felt Golgi’s drawings were “designed,” and that construction revealed a particular point of view regarding the role of drawing in his work:  that drawing was a vehicle to guide, transcribe, and organize nature in a manner that demonstrated a theory.  Instead of creating drawing from a designer’s perspective, Cajal’s work in comparison is drawn with a type of perceptual observation, one in which the inherent design of nature is discovered through sighting.  Drawing was a tool to observe, discern and recount microanatomy structure.  Cajal’s drawings are filled with actual lines and drawn with implied space.  I believe they demonstrate a philosophy that he was at the service of nature—recording and reporting the truthfulness of sight’s journey." - Dawn Hunter, November 2017

The above quote is from my piece "Drawn To, Drawn From Experience" written for the National Library of Medicine's, Circulating Now, blog.  It is the first of a three part series I am writing for them about Cajal, the latter two are forthcoming in 2018.

I completed my Senior Research Fulbright Fellowship at the Instituto Cajal, Madrid, España in December, 2017.  It was a remarkable privilege to commune with Cajal on a daily basis through studying and drawing his scientific illustrations.  There is information in those works that can only be accessed by active observation:  drawing.  Drawing provides a type of interaction with the works and entry into information about the maker and his theories that is not possible through passive observation.  Cajal proved to be a great teacher, and my "apprenticeship" yielded a fruitful scholarship of knowledge.  More, of course, is yet to come.  In the meantime, below are a couple of examples of my drawings of his drawings, as well as, information on my writing for the National Library of Medicine.

For more information about my past works on Cajal please visit my web site:  www.dawnhunterart.com or previous posts from this blog.  There are numerous posts about my Cajal project on this blog, here are a select few and some of my favorites to choose from:  Cajal Inventory, Cajal Inventory:  Head Heart and Spine, Sometimes Summer is All about the Work, and Started in the Middle.  

Dawn Hunter's study of Cajal's scientific drawing of pyramidal neurons, FRONT, 11" x 14," marker and pen on paper

Dawn Hunter's study of Cajal's scientific drawing of pyramidal neurons, BACK, 11" x 14," marker and pen on paper

Unfortunately, nature seems unaware of our intellectual need for convenience and unity, and very often takes delight in complication and diversity.

- Santiago Ramón y Cajal from his 1906 Nobel lecture 

"The structure and connexions of neurons."

Scientific Intuition: Lessons in Fundamental Neuroscience, the landscape and Ramón y Cajal

A busy and an inspiring month in the studio.  I am advancing many works while simultaneously enriching my practice by auditing a Fundamental Neuroscience class.  The drawings I am posting are comprised of completed works and drawings that are in progress.  I continue to increase my understanding of Ramón y Cajal and his work by intertwining my study of neurons, the landscape and the portrait.

Fundamental Neuroscience class notes, ink and pen on paper, 11" x 14"

Landscape study at the Nelson Atkins Museum, marker and pen on paper, 11" x 14"

Silveria Ramón y Cajal bathed in Goethe Color Theory, acrylic and ink on paper, 11" x 14"

Fundamental Neuroscience class notes, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Landscape study by Cooper Library, marker on paper, 11" x 14"

Santiago Ramón y Cajal bathed in Goethe Color Theory, acrylic and ink on paper, 11" x 14"

Drawing in progress:  Fundamental Neuroscience class notes, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Drawing in progress:  Fundamental Neuroscience class notes, ink and pen on paper, 9" x 12"

Intellectual work is an act of creation. It is as if the mental image that is studied over a period of time were to sprout appendages like an ameba—outgrowths that extend in all directions while avoiding one obstacle after another—before interdigitating with related ideas.   

-Santiago Ramón y Cajal