In the midst of trawling visuals on the web, I was swept away within “gesturely expressive” cellular images drawn in implied space. One day back in 2012, I was looking up neuroscience terminology to supplement an article I was reading on the claustrum, I stumbled across Cajal’s scientific drawings. It is how I know and understand the world. Dawn Hunter, Surreal portrait of Cajal, pen, marker and ink on paper, 5.5” x 13” from my handmade sketchbook, 2015 Encountering Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s scientific drawings of the nervous system for the first time was one such extraordinary experience for me. While ignorance is not bliss, on rare occasions, it can be a blessing-allowing new, unexpected experience of phenomena to rival the first time one bit into a luscious strawberry or walked across hot sand.
The obstacle of mediated experience served as a reminder to value those encounters when I experience the extraordinary, nonaligned, for myself. It may sound like I am complaining, but I am not. The forecast sound bites focused the quality of celestial delivery, and by doing so reduced the universe to a branded experience. Sitting on the front steps of my home in South Carolina, steeped in the avalanche of media coverage, I experienced the path of totality only with my mind my brain perfectly primed with expectations. 2017 solar eclipse was that experience for many. The union of the mind’s curiosity, the heart’s passion, and the body’s senses sing a chorus that reminds us of the wonder of our own existence. The wholly integrated experience of phenomena is powerful. Only it is far easier to read a drawing than a map in front of a drawing it is the five senses that make a surveyor.”
#Dawn of discovery no sound in skype series#
Her series is comprised of creative works and formal investigations of Cajal’s scientific drawings that are currently on display at the John Porter Neuroscience Research Center at the National Institute of Health, Bethesda, MD.Įvery great drawing-even if it is of a hand or the back of a torso, forms perceived thousands of times before-is like the map of a newly discovered island. Her new body of work is a suite of biographical drawings and paintings about Santiago Ramón y Cajal, the father of modern neuroscience. Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Dawn Hunter, Associate Professor, School of Visual Art and Design, University of South Carolina and Fulbright España Senior Research Fellow at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid, Spain.