Strathmore Fine Art Display (Photos)

Visit the Gudelksy Gallery Suite at the Strathmore Mansion from Saturday, Feb. 16 – Saturday, April 13 to see this unique exhibition of fine art entitled “PULSE: Art and Medicine A not-so-clinical study of medicine as inspiration for art, creative processes and art forms.” The exhibition features the works of radiologists Dr. Kai-hung Fung and Dr. Satre Stuelke, as well as Virgil Wong, Luke Jerram, Bruce Peebles, Jessica Beels, Renee Lachman and Laura Ferguson with medical illustrations through a partnership with the Department of Art As Applied to Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. For more information, call (301) 581-5100 or visit www.strathmore.org.

Corporeal Landscape, by educator, scientist and entrepreneur Virgil Wong (NY, NY), is a provocative look at the human body as an artifact left behind by the individual—and not his or her totality. Created with human ash, ink and pencil on paper, the piece relates back to Wong’s training as a figurative artist, skills he developed dissecting and drawing cadavers at the University of Rome Medical School. For Corporeal Landscape, Wong xeroxed and manipulated hundreds of his anatomical drawings and combined them into a single collage. For Alchemy, Wong first carved a wood-cut depicting two intertwined dragons facing the sun and the moon. He then made a pencil and ink drawing by-hand of an anatomical figure from Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica. The wood-cut and the drawing evolved with digital composition, resulting in a mixed-media artwork printed on metal. Wong’s Missing Persons combines Chinese calligraphy from a Han Dynasty scroll with a drawing based on a radiographic image of a child.

Best known in the exhibition is Luke Jerram (Bristol, UK), recognized internationally for his sculpture, installation and live arts projects. He has been creating microbial glass sculptures, each one about 1,000,000 times larger than the virus it represents, since 2004. Made to contemplate the global impact of each disease, the artworks were created as alternative representations of viruses—which are actually colorless and are often misrepresented in educational and scientific texts. Designed in consultation with virologists from the University of Bristol, Jerram’s colorless glassworks consider how artificial coloring of scientific microbiological imagery affects understanding of these phenomena, while also creating tension between the artworks’ beauty and what they represent.

Artist Jessica Beels (Washington, D.C.) explores biomorphic shapes with art inspired by such conditions as osteoporosis, HIV and blood clots. She uses handmade overbeaten flax paper shrunk over wire armatures, sometimes adding abaca, mulberry bark or seaweed fibers for texture, to investigate cellular structure, creating custom installations for Pulse that will be suspended from the ceiling, mounted to the walls and arranged on the gallery floor.

The Mansion at Strathmore is located at 10701 Rockville Pike, North Bethesda, MD 20852-3224. Parking for events and exhibitions in the Mansion at Strathmore is free in the Mansion lot on a space available basis. Enter the Mansion lot at 10701 Rockville Pike.

Gallery Hours, admission is free
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m.
Wednesday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.
Saturday, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.