Visiting Artist Rebecca Kamen is curious about creativity in sculpture and neuroscience

Philadelphia-based artist, interdisciplinary advocate, and Professor Emerita of Art at Northern Virginia Community College Rebecca Kamen dives into the aesthetics of scientific phenomena and methodologies through paper and sculpture. From three-dimensional depictions of viruses to visualizing the mind exercising a creative process, she is inspired to bridge disciplines — as evidenced by her current artist residency in the University of Pennsylvania’s Computational Neuroscience Initiative and the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

This week, the Lamar Dodd School of Art welcomes Kamen for the school’s first Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture of 2023, “Curiosity and the Creative Process as Self Care” on March 1 at 6 PM in room S150. The artist talk, which is free and open to the public, will center crisis as a site of unexpected discovery in science and creativity in art. Kamen will reference a variety of her recent projects linking art and neuroscience, including a 2023 exhibition, Dyslexic Dictionary at Arion Press Gallery in San Francisco, wherein nine artists with dyslexia engage alternative experiences of language and learning.

“Butterflies of the Soul tells the story of the development of modern neuroscience, inspired by the research of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience.” -Rebecca Kamen, 2023

Kamen is not new to the UGA campus. The sculptor participated in the University of Georgia’s first Torrance Festival of Ideas in 2021 and led a talk last April at Ideas for Creative Exploration titled “Making the Invisible, Visible: The Art of Reimagining Scientific Discovery.” For her third engagement with UGA, she will spend several days at the Lamar Dodd School of Art visiting graduate studios, guest lecturing a hybrid paper and sculpture course alongside Associate Professor of Sculpture Martijn van Wagtendonk and Book Arts Senior Lecturer Eileen Wallace, and conducting a round table discussion with the Idea LAB student organization on how artists and scientists work together.

In an interview with the artist published in the December 2015 issue of SciArt in America, Kamen described her work as follows —

“Much of my sculpture explores an interest in nature as a mapping system of energy. I am informed and inspired by both micro and macro views of the universe as well as other scientific visualization models such as fluid mechanics and fluorescence microscopy.”

Floating in and out of research spaces in the sciences, Kamen has developed an international reputation by disrupting a stubborn dichotomy of art vs. science. The artist emphasizes a natural harmony of scientific discovery and visual storytelling by illuminating parallels in investigation and inquiry in the intimate worlds often concealed from the public eye of labs and art studios.

Sparking Curiosity, 2021. Courtesy of Danielle S. Bassett, PhD; David M. Lydon-Staley, PhD; Dale Zhou, PhD, University of Pennsylvania and Perry Zurn, PhD, American University.

“Sparking Curiosity depicts the network dynamics of Rebecca Kamen’s art process. This network was created from transcribed interviews, where each circle represents a word describing an idea that shaped her artistic journey; and each line indicates how similar those words are to each other. The colors represent communities of ideas that are more alike.’

-REVEAL: The Art of Reimagining Scientific Discovery, Works by Rebecca Kamen. Exhibition catalogue published by the Alper Initiative for Washington Art, 2021.

About the Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series

The Visiting Artist and Scholar Lecture Series has brought over 80 distinguished guests to the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia since 2002. Visiting Artists and Scholars spend three days on campus interacting with students and faculty, the culmination of which is a public lecture on the subject of the artist’s or scholar’s work.

“Curiosity and the Creative Process as Self Care”

The pandemic has been a transformational experience in terms of self-reflection. It has provided time and space to explore my capacity to be curious, to see crisis as potential opportunity for discovery, and to express these insights and discoveries through my art practice.

Coronavirus has inspired a new perspective for the development of art, and continues to serve as a catalyst for seeking insight and a positive outcome from a difficult circumstance. It has awakened a cycle of healing and discovery that has manifested in recent artwork.

This presentation will explore how crisis, curiosity and the creative process not only generates unexpected opportunities for discovery, but also informs artwork which fosters new connections between art and science. The presentation will also discuss how dyslexia, brain surgery and the pandemic continue to provide insight and inspiration in my work as an artist.

Artist bio

Rebecca Kamen, sculptor and lecturer on the intersections of art and science, seeks ‘the truth’ through observation. Her artwork is informed by wide-ranging research into cosmology, history, philosophy, and by connecting common threads that flow across various scientific fields to capture and re-imagine what the scientists see.

She has investigated scientific rare books and manuscripts at the libraries of the American Philosophical Society, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the Cajal Institute in Madrid, utilizing these significant scientific collections as a catalyst in the creation of her work.

Kamen has researched on collaborative projects at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University, the Kavli Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Rochester Institute of Technology, and at the National Institutes of Health. Selected as a Salzburg Global Seminar fellow in 2015, she was invited to Austria to present her work as part of a seminar titled: The Neuroscience of Art: What are the Sources of Creativity and Innovation.

Kamen has exhibited and lectured both nationally and internationally including China, Hong Kong, Korea, Austria, Chile, Egypt, Spain, Australia and Singapore. She has been the recipient of a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship, a Pollack Krasner Foundation Fellowship, two Strauss Fellowships, and a Travel Grant from the Chemical Heritage Foundation. As artist in residence in the neuroscience program at National Institutes of Health, Kamen has interpreted and transformed neuroscience research into sculptural form. Her artwork is represented in many private and public collections.

As professor emeritus of art at Northern Virginia Community College, Professor Kamen continues to investigate how the arts and creativity can enhance innovation and our understanding of science. An outcome of Kamen’s research has included the development of an art component for George Mason University’s Aspiring Scientist Summer Internship Program (ASSIP), encouraging science interns to use the arts as an innovative way of interpreting their research.

Rebecca served as a Nifty Fifty (times 4) speaker for the 2014-2015 season. These speakers are selected for their unique ability to inspire the next generation of students to pursue careers in the STEM fields.

Currently, Professor Kamen is serving as artist in residence in The Computational Neuroscience Initiative and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania.