Lurid Ecologies: Drawing Oysters Reefs with San Francisco Mud

What do you see in these mud-streaked paintings? Oakland-based artist Tanja Geis created them for her new #sciart exhibit, “Lurid Ecologies: Ways of Seeing the Bay.” She used mud from San Francisco Bay to draw reefs of the Olympia oyster, Ostrea lurida. But some viewers see eyes or skulls. There’s even one on the bottom right called “layer cake.” Olympia oysters are the only native oysters on the West Coast of North America, and their populations in San Francisco Bay have plummeted as developers filled in large swaths of the Bay. Through this new exhibit, Geis hopes to shed light on efforts to restore the oysters, and the research biologists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and other California organizations are doing to uncover ways to help bring them back.

In San Francisco this week? This exhibit is open to the public through Saturday, Aug. 19! You’ll find it at the Embark Gallery in Fort Mason’s Center for Arts & Culture. Read more about the exhibit Meet the Artist: Q&A with Tanja Geis

#SciArt as a way to communicate complex science like conservation

Art is a wonderful and powerful medium to raise awareness, express one’s thoughts or create dialog. Over the past decade some science field stations and laboratories have incorporated arts and humanities into their programs, seeing it as an opportunity to communicate an agency’s mission, the scientific process, science discoveries and complex scientific concepts or areas of study.

We have a new outdoor science art (sciart) exhibit entitled “Reflections of Ecosystems” that tackles some of the tough questions associate with the latest framing of conservation. “People and nature” presents many challenges to scientists whose research contributes to conservation policy and management. Learn about these challenges and our sciart exhibit at s.si.edu/sciart