Artist brings out beauty beneath the slimy globs

San Francisco artist Josie Iselin was working as a docent at a reef when she happened to take a piece of seaweed and hold it up to the sky.

“Seaweed is so unceremonious when it’s draping over a rock,” she explained to an audience at a recent Roger Williams University talk. “But, once you hold it up to the sky, there’s just this fantastic color and fantastic form.”

Iselin shares the surprising beauty of the underwater plants, whether lacey and flowing or bulbous and tendril in shape, in her latest book, An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed.

In Iselin’s hands, a scanner and photography software, along with an insightful and passionate curiosity, seaweed transcends its dark and slimy reputation and invites fascination and deep study.

Dr. Brian Wysor, RWU Associate Professor, Biology, brought Iselin to campus with support from Rhode Island NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR), RI Science & Technology Advisory Council (STAC), and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“It’s absolutely a delight for someone who studies seaweed and has to defend it as career choice, to have a book like this,” Dr. Wysor told students, faculty and visitors gathered for the mid-day event at the campus library.

An Ocean Garden, which Dr. Wysor is using in his phycology class this semester, is not art as representation of science, but rather a melding of the two disciplines, an inextricable fusion of discovery and creativity on both fronts.

For scientists, the book opens the eye to new ways of communicating research findings to a general audience. From an artistic perspective, the seaweed portraits unveil nature at its most brilliant.

Iselin invites greater appreciation and a sense of wonderment as she presents the seaweed specimens in their colorful glory and scientific rendering. She conveys a thorough delight in the varied shapes and hues, and reveals intriguing details. Her attention to form and function — of the seaweed, the typeset and graphic design — makes for a seamless flow through the pages.

“Seaweed must be resourceful with whatever sunlight reaches through the water,” she said, a sense of awe flooding her tone. “The range of colors is astounding!”

Stopping to consider a slide of Delessaria decipiens, she observed, “The color is what comes to mind — an incredible array of red, pink, dark purple.”

In another slide, showing Agarum clathratum, Iselin explained how the species degenerates and regenerates at the same time, sloughing off to survive in the intertidal zone, but also regenerating.

And yet another species, Pyropia, delicate and fluid in shape, led to collaborating with a dance faculty member at Middlebury College and a performance there that incorporated a display of the images in Iselin’s book.

Although Iselin began her journey as a visual artist, her work clearly draws from the science as she uncovers what lies beneath the surface.

And throughout the process, carefully draping seaweed samples on the scanner glass and documenting the varied life shapes, she said, “It’s like the whole world is opening up. It really is discovery.”

Story and photos by Amy Dunkle