Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.

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ERIC SLADE: Tonight on Oregon Art Beat: WOMAN: Science is my muse.

Yeah, I think this is good.

I think it's time to fill it with gas.

Artists get inspired by science, revealing what's inside, and creating truly singular work.

MAN: I think of myself sometimes as a portrait painter, only instead of painting someone's portrait, I'm painting their eye.

Oregon Art Beat starts now.

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MAN: When people come to me, they're experiencing a trauma that has not been addressed.

They're missing something.

And I have an opportunity to help them to get that something back.

I think of myself sometimes as a portrait painter, only instead of painting someone's portrait, I'm painting their eye.

And then when they insert it, it becomes a part of them.

I've seen people's entire lives changed by this little piece of plastic.

My name is Fred Harwin, and I'm an ocularist.

I start with an iris -- sometimes we call it iris button.

Let me measure the diameter.

I'll compare it with the seeing eye to get a good base color so I can then go ahead and work up in layers so I can get a realistic iris effect.

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Next, I shape the wax model.

Wax is pretty easy to work with.

And I can add to it and remove quite easily.

Turn please.

Okay.

Look down.

And then I see how that fits.

But this is a hard wax, so it really simulates what the finished prosthesis is going to feel like and look like.

Once I'm satisfied with the wax model, then I make that model into acrylic.

You put it in this mold that you made from the wax, and then you put it in to cure.

After it's cured and it's cooled down, I separate the mold.

And then I will grind that down and carve it down, get ready for painting.

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My first job out of college was at University of Michigan, Wayne County General Hospital.

And I was the medical illustrator there.

What I love about medical illustration is the opportunity to tell a story, to teach in a sequence.

One of the things I'm particularly proud of as a medical illustrator is having the opportunity to work in developing a two-volume atlas on cardiac surgery.

So I attended every surgery that was in the book, some of them several times.

And I was interested in beginning an official prosthetic clinic at the Oregon Health Sciences University.

And then it happened to get down to eyes.

Found out I really, really enjoy the process of making them.

I spend approximately eight hours with a person over four appointments.

And I think that that is also part of the healing process.

And they see me working and caring about them, because I do the work in front of them.

The fact that I'm in no rush.

I want to make this the best that I can.

The challenge is how close, how real can I make this eye look?

I could look at this as a business.

I look at this as an artist.

I look at this as a studio.

I look at this as I'm creating a piece of art.

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Some of the blood vessels are so fine, it's difficult to paint them, so I use a fine cotton thread.

And I lay these down on them and move them around, and I'm trying to get a pattern that's similar to the other eye.

I always tell people not to party the night before I'm going to paint.

So I'm going to put a little something to mark the top.

Okay.

I always put a little painting on the top of each prosthesis, and it's something that's personal for that person.

Recently, I decided I'd like to try painting.

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Oil paints are limitless.

It's an amazing medium.

And I don't plan anything.

I just start going.

I love trees.

So I'm doing a combination of blood vessels and trees.

And I'm really enjoying this.

This is freedom to express myself.

When I'm finished painting and I'm satisfied with the way everything looks, then clear acrylic is put over the top of that... grind, pumice, and polish the prosthesis... and then the prosthesis is ready to insert and to put in place.

Look down, please.

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What keeps me going is it's never perfect.

So I'm always trying to make it better.

It's a combination of art and science.

Close your eyes tightly.

Squeeze down.

Open.

In our society, we think of them as opposing.

Open real wide, please.

I don't see it that way at all.

It's all part of the same.

Yep, 11 3/4.

Wow.

That's awesome.

That looks totally different.

I have the opportunity to work with an artist who's getting to paint something I'm going to carry around with me and show off to people, every person I meet, right, because every person I meet sees my eyes, and basically what they're seeing is Fred's art.

HARWIN: I feel if we have the opportunity, we can help others.

And so my little way, I feel I'm doing my part, and I feel good about that time that I have.

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WOMAN: Science is my muse.

[ blows ] And the way that I see that artists and science intertwine is that both are process-oriented, they both take a lot of creativity, they both have... insatiable curiosity.

Stepping into maybe places that are uncomfortable, and also observing things that other people haven't observed before, taking notice, and then delighting in the act of discovery.

I'm always fascinated when scientists use metaphors.

Memory as the neural echoes of experience, and I really love that.

I thought that the chalkboard was a great metaphor for the scientific method, which is where people put out an idea, an educated guess, and then people can test it.

And a chalkboard is the very sense of impermanence.

Sometimes, you know, it will be completely erased, but there's sort of a history of the whole process there.

I was encouraged to explore art and science by not only my parents, but also my grandparents.

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My grandfather is Francis Crick.

He's best known for his work on the discovery of the structure of DNA and the hypothesis that DNA is a code, so made up of four letters, and that it's universal to all life on Earth.

FRANCIS CRICK (ON FILM): Although we had the basic idea of the structure now, namely that the phosphates are on the outside and we had to put in base pairing and so on, we still had to show that we could build a model with acceptable coordinates.

KINDRA CRICK: My grandmother is Odile Crick.

She was a painter.

She was the first person to draw the diagram of the double helix.

So that accompanied the 1953 paper describing the structure of DNA.

And she had infinite amounts of patience and the idea that mistakes are part of the process.

Mistakes, I think, are undervalued.

Sometimes when scientists make what they think are mistakes, they actually will make a groundbreaking discovery.

And then in art, I mean, I think it's most interesting when you're kind of working on a painting and then you kind of get to this point midway through where you might perceive that things are kind of going downhill, but it's that dialog, that kind of overcoming those little challenges.

So this is a collaboration with Dr. Harkness, who's part of Dr. Barbara Sorg's lab at WSU, where they study perineuronal nets.

And so they take images that look like this, using the confocal microscope.

And then I transformed it into this installation where you could have this full room where you could walk, you know, within this cerebral wilderness.

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Giving people sort of a different way to see the biology of memory.

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We were put together by a group called Northwest Noggin, which does arts-integrated neuroscience outreach.

Hey!

Hey, Kindra.

Welcome.

All right.

Are you set up?

Here we are, yeah.

All right, what do we have?

So these are rats that were either sleep-deprived or not.

And we don't which are which yet.

I'm Dr. John Harkness, and I'm a postdoctoral researcher at Washington State University in Vancouver.

So let's use that guy.

[ whirring ] CRICK: And this is where they're clustered... - Yeah, yeah.

- A bit more.

Here's another good pair here.

This is probably one of the gap junctions that these neurons will form.

The thought is maybe if the nets aren't there, then you have the... oxidative stress?

Yeah, we think that they're related.

HARKNESS: Perineuronal nets are really interesting.

One of the reasons that we think they're important is they seem to be associated with the formation of a memory or the closure of some of our neuroplasticity.

Right, that was actually what got me excited, was that you said, oh, okay, they're associated with mature neurons on the close of the learning windows.

And I thought, ah, this is something that people haven't looked at before.

That's not a bad image either.

No, that's beautiful, yeah.

I really like the way that the blue and gold are working together.

We could take a photograph of this.

- And then we wait.

- And then we wait.

[ laughs ] Working with Kindra has been fantastic.

Being able to give reference to what we're looking at in the lab I think is a really important process.

CRICK: Because my work is research-based, I just started researching more about memory, which then led to the chalkboard series.

Part of the group show at the Ford Gallery of Pacific Northwest artists who are inspired by science.

WOMAN: It's so good to see you!

You know, you have certain connections which are made, and they come together, and, you know, that is your memory.

We had people who were scientists and also who were sort of more used to the gallery scene.

And so to see those folks mingle as well was really cool.

They really sort of get this moment of confronting it as a chalkboard and feeling that there's this impermanence to it.

And I really like that, because what I'm trying to get across is that memory is impermanent.

Artists are perception hackers.

It is kind of fun to learn about how people perceive and then see if you can translate that in your artwork.

I want people to somehow experience the awe and also dive into the unknown.

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MAN: I've always thought of myself as a sculptor.

I found glass as an appropriate material for the sculpture I wanted to make.

And then I became a good craftsman out of necessity in order to make the pieces work.

Working with glass gives me a way to draw in space.

I feel like adding the light at the end is like adding another drawing to the glass.

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It's a whole nother element.

ERIC SLADE: Eric Franklin's skulls and skeletons are on display at galleries and museums in Los Angeles and New York.

And the more than 80 hours it takes to create a glass skull, it all starts here.

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I start each piece with a series of glass tubes.

Once the glass is hot, it moves around a lot like honey.

I have to constantly be spinning the pieces around.

You could say I'm either fighting gravity or working with gravity to keep the glass where I want it.

To attach one tube to another, Eric first melts a hole in the center.

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And then I blow out a bubble on one end of a tube and I actually break that bubble, creating a funnel shape on the end.

And then I get both that hole and that funnel hot at the same time and press them together.

I have to work the heat all the way around that seal.

It's one thing to get the two tubes to connect together, but to get them to be really... a seamless one piece of glass is important down the road when I'm actually trying to get them to light up.

If I don't have a good seal, tiny little holes that you can't even see with your eye could allow the gas to escape.

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I've always focused on bones.

Bones are sort of our architecture.

I kind of edit the human body down to those kind of basic lines that create our bodies.

This part will be sort of the frame of the face.

This piece is the bridge of the nose that will continue up onto the forehead.

And these two pieces will outline the nasal cavity.

One thing I've always been fascinated by about glass is how it is both strong and fragile at the same time, much like a human body.

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I discovered rock climbing when I was really young and just found it to be this amazing activity just because it engages your entire body.

It demands a lot of focus.

You have to either completely do it or not at all.

There's really no middle ground.

Through rock climbing, I've kind of learned how our bodies function and how they work.

I try and translate some of those ideas to my artwork.

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Right now I'm just slowly warming all the glass up at the same time.

And I'm going to go in and add some details, but I kind of want to get this whole thing nice and warm before I can do that.

And I need to keep the temperature above a certain point so that it doesn't crack.

It always gets stressful right at the end.

The potential for something to crack is likely, and if it does crack, it always cracks somewhere where it's really difficult to fix.

I've just added a little bit of glass... to the tip of the nose here.

I wanted it to stick out a little bit further from the face.

So where I added the thick glass, that allows me to blow a little air in... and bring that a little bit further forward.

Yeah, I think this is good.

I think it's time to fill it with gas.

Eric carefully places his new skull into the kiln.

If the skull cools too fast, it'll crack.

Next, he attaches a glass tube to one end of the skull; on the other end, a powerful vacuum.

We need a really clean environment inside in order for the gas to stay lit over time.

If there's any impurities left in there, it'll eventually contaminate the gas, and the light will go out.

[ bubbling ] The vacuum system I currently use I found at a NASA surplus.

The actual apparatus was used to troubleshoot spacesuits.

I have a gauge that tells me the level of vacuum, so once I get below a certain point, I know that it's clean enough to put the gas in.

I commonly mix neon with a little bit of mercury vapor.

It gets those amazing reds and blues.

Finally, it's the big moment.

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I'm always surprised and fascinated by what I see when I first light them up.

Sometimes it's predictable and sometimes it's just completely something new.

I'm interested in the way that communication happens within our body.

For Eric Franklin, the human body is the inspiration.

Red-hot glass and glowing gases are the medium.

I've always thought of the skulls as a study of life.

Anyone could look at my work and have some association with their body and just consider themselves and the people they know.

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[ indistinct conversations ] WOMAN: That looks amazing.

Are you kidding me?

JULE GILFILLAN: So you take 30,000 people from 70 countries and hundreds of artists, and you bring them together to celebrate a once-in-a-lifetime astronomical event -- what do you get?

The Oregon Eclipse Festival.

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[ crowd cheering ] [ music ends ] We'll bring you the full story on this amazing international festival and the Oregon artists that are involved in it a little later this season.

In the meantime, discover the artists in your own community by visiting our website, opb.org/artbeat.

From Big Summit Prairie, thank you so much for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

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There you go.

Support for Oregon Art Beat is provided by... and the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.