Roger Hangarter

This exhibition featured artifacts from Indiana’s prehistory alongside visual art documenting biodiversity in Indiana. The exhibit was conceived and curated by Betsy Stirratt, Director of the Grunwald Gallery and Distinguished Professor Roger P. Hangarter at Indiana University. Artworks by Indiana artists, or artists with connections to Indiana, were selected in collaboration with Mark Ruschman, senior curator of art and culture for the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. Items from collections of the Indiana Geological and Water Survey and the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites were selected with the assistance of Damon Lowe, senior curator of science and technology for the Indiana State Museum an Historic Sites. Inclusion of the artifacts with contemporary art works provided an out-of-the-ordinary learning experience for visitors, to promote a deeper understanding of our environment. as a way to help increase literacy about ecological developments, the impact of climate change on everyday life, and a chance to value and appreciate the places we live in.

Due to the Covid pandemic, a virtual 3-D walkthrough of the exhibit was created.

The exhibit was installed at the Grunwald Gallery of Art from August–November, 2020 and then traveled to the Indiana State Museum from February–August, 2021.

A pdf of the essay I wrote for the exhibit catalog, entitled Biodiversity is Essential is available by clicking here.

This group exhibit was installed in SPACE 151, Levy Art + Architecture, San Francisco, California from January 13 – February 25, 2018. The exhibit was curated by Shirley Watts, an artist and designer who creates gardens all over the San Francisco Bay Area. Shirley is also curator of Natural Discourse, a series of symposia, publications and site-specific art installations that explore the connections between art, science and the humanities within the framework of botanical gardens and natural history museums.

My contribution consisted of a series of photographs of leaves that were used as a type photographic paper. Photographs of local biodiversity were developed into leaves of various native plants to create unique images of local biodiversity in the types of native leaves that provide the photosynthetic energy that fuels the life of the imaged organisms. The leaf photograms are captured using the same pigments that drive the photosynthetic process.

The process involves covering a leaf with a black & white positive transparency printed from a photograph and then placing the masked leaf in sunlight. The leaf pigments degrade faster were the leaf receives more light compared to areas that were more darkly masked. The leaf photograms can last for years if well dried and stored in the dark but fade if kept in the light. Due to their ephemeral nature, I capture photographs of the leaf photograms and store the original leaves in the dark.

Other artists in the exhibit included: Sharon Beals, Kevin Cooley, Shane DuBay, Mia Feuer, Carl Fuldner, James Griffith, Jenny Kendler, Allison Kudla, Philip Andrew Lewis, Denise Newman, Sasha Petrenko, Gail Wight & Nami Yamamoto

PONDerings is an art/science collaboration about pond life that resulted from my collaboration with Margaret Dolinsky, a virtual reality artist from the Eskanazi School of Art, Architecture and Design.

Dolinsky’s drawings from her reaction to pond life were transferred into the leaves of aquatic plants through light-dependent chemical processes associated with photosynthesis. As a result, our collaborative work communicates a synergistic expression that reveals fundamental artistic and scientific elements of nature.

PONDerings was part of the (Re)Imagining Science exhibition in the Grunwald Gallery of Art. The exhibition was curated by Betsy Stirratt and included a variety of collaborative Art/Science projects created by fifteen teams of artists and scientists that illustrate scientific principles projects. The collaborations featured the work of researchers in the visual and sound arts, design, sciences, and social sciences, with ambitious works that include large scale sculptural objects, photographs, installations, video works, interactive environments, microscopy images, and sound works.

The Living Canvas: Painting with Chloroplasts was the product of a collaboration between myself and virtual reality artist Margaret Dolinsky. We used light to control the position of chloroplasts in cells of live leaves, a fundamental process used by all green plants to maximize photosynthesis. When portions of a leaf are exposed to high light intensities, chloroplasts migrate to the sides of cells. When the light intensity is low, chloroplasts accumulate on the upper and lower cell surfaces. This process imparts varying shades of green hues to the leaf. By using hand-drawn imagery and light to coerce chloroplast movements, leaves can become living easels with the resultant imagery embedded within the live leaf structure. The imagery in the leaves is ephemeral so photographs of the leaves are captured to create the final permanent art pieces.

The Living Canvas: Painting with Chloroplasts was part of a group exhibition entitled Imag(in)ing Science. Curated by Betsy Stirratt, the exhibition included six collaborative projects by artists and scientists from Indiana University. The exhibit represented an exploration of the collaborative process, the creative nature of the visual arts, and its similarities and differences to scientific exploration. The exhibit was installed in the Grunwald Gallery of Art from August 30 to October 11.

Unless you are a gardener, farmer, or plant scientist, the milestones of a plant’s life may pass without notice – a phenomena known as “plant blindness.” Many of us think of and treat plants as inanimate objects. But plants are alive. They grow, react to changes in their environment, reproduce, respond to disease and injury, and eventually decline into old age and death.  

Seemingly stationary plants simply don’t capture our attention. But plants do move…be it ever so slowly. Using time-lapse imaging to speed up the timescale of plants into our own frame of reference to a pace that resonates with our own, sLowlife offered an intimate journey into the world of plants.

Between 2005 and 2015 the sLowlife traveling exhibit was installated at the following venues: The US Botanic Garden, Washington DC (Oct 26, 2005 to March 26, 2006); Museum of the Earth, Ithaca, NY (Dec 23, 2006 – April 1, 2007); Chicago Botanic Garden (June 23-Oct 21, 2007); Chemical Heritage Foundation Clifford C. Hach Gallery, Philadelphia, PA (Feb 2009-Jan 2010); Montshire Science Museum, Norwich, VT (Sept-Nov, 2012); The North Carolina Arboretum, Ashville, NC (Jan 25-May 10, 2015). [Combined, the exhibit has been seen by over 3 million visitors.]