Art and science meet in Dixon Graphics window

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CHAMPAIGN — The abstract shapes over which multi-colored frogs appear to float in the window of Dixon Graphics’ printing center on Neil Street actually aren’t abstract at all.

They’re carefully reproduced from the patterns on the backs of real poison dart frogs, artist Julia Pollack said.

“They have these incredible spot patterns and they can identify each other,” Pollack said.

She’s the Creative Program Manager for the University of Illinois Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology where she takes lead on the Art of Science program.

For this piece, she worked with Assistant Professor Eva Fischer, who studies poison frogs as the head of Fischer Lab.

Pollack talks with scientists to understand what they’re studying, creates artwork based on their research and then returns to them to make sure she’s communicating it well.

Usually, the process starts with researchers creating an interesting image using instruments at the Institute for Genomic Biology.

“Incredible images come out, and then they get used for scientific purposes, and they get published in fancy, wonderful scientific journals,” Pollack said. “But I find it kind of sad and the others do too. Sometimes the images are incredible and they’re sort of walled in these academic publications.”

That’s where the idea for the Art of Science program came from 14 years ago. Pollack is the third artist to hold her position.

Installations of the art created in the program might be placed around town, around campus or in the annual spring exhibit, which will be in May.

This poison dart frog piece ended up at Dixon Graphics because owner Lance Dixon reached out.

He had known about Art of Science for years because his company has printed various brochures and posters for the exhibit.

“I always thought it was really cool. I like things that have this interconnectivity,” Dixon said. “When most people think of science, they don’t think of art and vice versa. When you have a display that combines these two things I’m just personally interested in, I think it’s a really neat thing.”

Dixon rotates featured artists in the window a few times a year; it’s his way of shining a light on area artists, many of whom work with the print shop.

He said the company would even offer a stipend to a small local artist, at least to offset expenses, to feature their art for a few months.

Pollack designed the poison dart frog piece specifically for the window, creating multiple layers that hang at different distances for a bit of a 3-D effect.

Combining art with other subjects has been a theme of her work for a long time.

As she completed both her master’s degrees in digital humanity and library and information science, she was able to convince professors to allow her to create a multimedia art show, rather than just write, for her thesis projects.

Now she’s interpreting other people’s research rather than her own.

“Instead of it being sort of specifically about me, it’s kind of about this conversation that I’ve had, what I can gather from a field and how to transform that into yet another conversation with someone who’s maybe never had experience with that field,” Pollack said.

With her background in library science, Pollack said this has been ideal.

She never wanted to be tied down to one subject for the rest of her career, so getting to learn from and interface with scientists working on many different projects has allowed her to do academia her way.

“What’s always got me interested is sort of being able to step around in all different kinds of questions, play with all different kinds of ideas and sort of think about how they make things relate to each other,” Pollack said.

“Thankfully, I think there’s a real shift in academic questions that’s identifying that cross-disciplinary research is important.”