Using Science to Create Works of Art

Artist Jill Pelto has drawn inspiration from old mariner’s charts to create her paintings since a research trip that she took in 2015. These trips she took with her father, Mauri Pelto, who is a glaciologist. She noticed the glaciers were losing their mass, though still keeping their beauty, so she decided to capture this imagery with paintings of glaciers and charts to describe their mass or temperature.

The longer you stare at her paintings, the more science you begin to notice. For example, numbers begin to appear every once in a while, or points like on a map. These paintings will look like lovely pieces of art at first before people to begin to notice that they are actual scientific data in charts. Pelto begins the art just a simple line graph that indicates the mass or temperature of whatever she is recording.

Her work as expanded into not only paintings of glaciers, but also forest fires, draughts, and other environmental issues. The art is an effective way to subtly bring one of these issues into society. Even some scientists admit that normal graphs, charts, and data aren’t extremely appealing at times. This can be a difficult task to appeal to people. However, the artistic way in which it is presented gives people that appeal.

Jill Pelto combines art and science to get people interested in unconsciously interested in science through another medium.

Link to: http://www.jillpelto.com/gallery/