Sometimes the connections we make between disparate things are less than obvious. For Debra Edgerton, an artist and assistant professor in the School of Art at Northern Arizona University, the connection between algae and society seemed innate when she looked at the microorganisms through a microscope.
Edgerton has a new collection of work, called "Life Extended: Biology as a Metaphor", and it’s on display now at the Museum of Northern Arizona. The idea to look more closely at algae came from a previous exhibition looking at water in the Southwest.
For it, she traveled to Fossil Creek with her mentor on the project, NAU biology professor Jane Marks, and learned about algae and microorganisms in the water there. At the same time, her husband runs a lab at NAU specializing in algae. So, they collected samples from the creek and brought them back to her husband’s lab to look at under a microscope. And what she found, turned into art.
Edgerton joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
DEBRA EDGERTON: He pretty much set up the slides and then I'd sit next to him and we'd look through and when I saw images that I liked, then I'd stop him and we'd shoot images and downloaded them and then I would have like a folder full of images of algae and microorganisms and diatoms.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, so the images themselves, like you can see that in them, but they're more abstract than that. Like how did you approach painting them? Like, did you want them to look like what they were, or were you trying to make them something a little bit outside of that?
EDGERTON: Well, part of that had to do with the microscope that we were using and the computer that was set up. The images aren't as clear, but I get a better range of color. So, I start with images that are already a little bit vague, and then interpret that in terms of how I want to use color.
GILGER: Yeah. This is not the first time you've done work about water and, and you said though this this exhibition, this particular body of work is about the life within the water, which I think is such a beautiful way of putting this because you're looking at, you're looking at it literally through a microscope.
EDGERTON: Yeah, that's correct. You know, when I first started doing work related to water, I was looking at the idea of power of water, back in 2005, which was Hurricane Katrina. I was really fascinated by the idea of what water could do and man trying to corral water and, you know, what happens when nature takes over.
And then in 2011, I had an internship in Osaka, Japan, and right before the internship, the tsunami happened, the Fukushima disaster happened, and I had the choice of either going or deferring and so I, I wanted to go. I wanted to see what was happening in that area. What happens when water, you know, hits land and what kind of devastation happened. So I was doing a, a whole body of work in terms of the idea of the power of water, but when I started the first iteration of, of “Life Extended,” I decided that I wanted to look at it from the perspective of what was in water.
And we had been visiting, you know, areas of the reservation at the time also and and the Indigenous people always talk about water as life. And so I thought, hm, I should be looking at what is in water and what can be maintained and what that could do in terms of life form.
GILGER: That's really interesting. So, OK, so you're taking this a step farther here, right? Like you're not just painting these microscopic slides of, of algae, you're also trying to connect the dots between what you saw with these microorganisms like relating to each other on these slides and making connections to how people do that between races and identities. Talk a little bit about that. Connect the dots for us. Where did you see those connections?
EDGERTON: Well, as I mentioned before, I had collected, you know, a folder full of images of algae and diatom, and I was really looking at the algae itself, but part of the bodies of work that I, I also do are that they relate to cultural identity, my own identity because I’m half African American and half Japanese American, so I'm always looking at this idea of the dissimilar and then what we can look at to pull things together. So, so I had a, I have a body of work that relates to both my cultures, and then I was doing this other body of work that related to water.
So as I was going through images under the microscope, I found this one singular image of a Cymbella diatom. And diatoms are single-cell algae. So I was looking at this particular image and it reminds, you know, it was like my aha moment. It reminded me of looking at those old diagrams of the overview of slave ships, you know, this shape and configuration of it.
And it was like the first time I was able to look at this and see this connection of, I could connect my own identity with this idea of life in water. So Jane gave me a book on ecology. And she talked about this idea of relationships, you know, in freshwater ecosystems. They have different ways of interactions. So there were like four different definitions. And when I was looking at those definitions, I thought, well, this seems like you could use this in terms of relationships between humans.
GILGER: So you're looking at these things that seem opposing, right? Kind of like the, the diatom and the algae, but they come together. Like it's making those connections between things that, that you might assume didn't have anything to do with one another.
EDGERTON: Exactly. And I really wanted to start with something that seemed like we were working together, so I took the definition of mutualism, which is where both species benefit, and I looked for a point in history that I thought that there could be this partnership where both sides would benefit from working together. And that's how I got to the Emancipation Proclamation.
GILGER: Let me ask you lastly about, I guess, the takeaway you want people to to get from this when they see it. Like art shows are always subjective, art is meant to be, I think in some ways subjective. But when you, when people come to this and, and they read the explanations, they see the art, what do you hope they, they learn, they process?
EDGERTON: You know, all of the imagery is related to algae and diatoms under the microscope, so I hope that they look at the imagery, look at some of the comments that, it will be up on the text walls. And see that we're not really that different from microorganisms, you know, the, the organisms are doing it in an organic way in terms of survival.
You know, they innately understand what they need to be paired with to get the results that they need for survival. So I'm hoping that they'll look at these microscopic images and then be able to translate it to their own lives, even though I'm talking specifically about a point in time that relates to my own history.
I'm hoping that anybody who comes in can look at their history and their interactions whether it's on a global scale or on a personal level and see that these interactions can either work positively or negatively depending on your perspective, depending on your perspective. I do hope that they can, you know, that they can slowly start seeing that bridge that I see.
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