Yesterday my brother forwarded me an article from Makezine as he often does and it was the incredible glasswork of Luke Jerram — Michael wins the prize for coolest forward of 9/9/09 as Luke’s pieces from his glass microbiology sculpture series are beyond beautiful.
The above, smallpox, is hand blown and, according to Luke, these works are meant to help the viewer consider “how the artificial colouring of scientific imagery affects our understanding of phenomenon.”
Ecoli above. I think Michael was attracted to the glasswork but I’m sure on further reading on Luke was thrilled to know how he explores cognition, perception, the senses and more.
All of these works are gorgrous but I’m not sue how big they are — some appear to be in foyers of buildings so quite large but I think they’d be great smaller too as regardless they’re still bigger than their biological models.
Luke himself works out of Bristol, UK and in an interesting twist, he went to St. Lawrence University here in New York in the 90s.
I keep thinking of how hard it must be to cool these so that they remain crystal clear — not crazking through that tricky process.
I love this large one — it would be a great purchase for a pharmaceutical company!