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'An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed' - with artist Josie Iselin

Custom House Maritime Museum
New London, CT

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Please join Josie Iselin as she reads from her book, 'An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed'. Josie will present her stunning imagery of ocean botanica and explain her unique process of using her flatbed scanner to capture the seaweed's underwater essence.

Josie will continue with the fascinating biology of seaweed to explain its important place in our near-shore ocean environment.

Please join us for a joyful comingling of art and science! Books will be available for signing.

The Secret Life of Seaweed
JOSIE ISELIN

In 2009, when out on the Duxbury Reef, I held an innocuous scrap of seaweed up to the sky and was wowed by a brilliant magenta and a powerful shape. Later that same year I brought a jumble of wrack home from a windswept beach to my kitchen counter and as I dropped each specimen into a tub of saltwater, its form and color and translucent sensuality awakened. Pale pinks mingled with bright greens and yellow oranges. Rounded fronds, bumpy textures, and slender tendrils unraveled. I fell in love on the spot. I experimented with placing seaweed specimens directly onto my scanner, both wet and dry, and discovered that I could capture the transparency and intensity of color as well as the dynamic forms of these often overlooked but essential residents of our intertidal shores. The resulting portraits bring the traditional pressed seaweed specimeninvaluable to scientists and beloved by collectorsinto a contemporary format. The book of this material, An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed includes jargon-free text combining the science of seaweed with personal observations; it creates a lyrical nexus where art and the natural world converge. I continue to investigate the physiology and biology of marine algae as well as the history of its study, constantly aware of the seaweeds' importance to the health of our oceans, all the while captivated by their gesture and brilliance.

BIO
Josie Iselin is a photographer, writer, and book designer with seven books to her credit, including 'Beach Stones, Heart Stones, and Beach: A Book of Treasure'. Her seventh book, 'An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed' (Abrams), was released in March, 2014. She holds a B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard and an M.F.A from San Francisco State University. Josie lives and works in San Francisco and her work is on view at www.josieiselin.com.

Location

Custom House Maritime Museum
150 Bank Street
New London, CT 06320
United States

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