Coastal Studies Artist-in-Residence Barbara Putnam makes her return to Bowdoin this semester after having spent the majority of the fall abroad, working among artists in the Arctic, studying the fjords in Norway, and attending an exhibition opening in Bucharest.
Putnam’s interest in Arctic environments motivated her decision to come to Bowdoin, where she knew the connection to the Arctic goes back more than a century.
“I am attracted to harsh environments and fragile places, like intertidal zones, wetlands, planes—places within which survival of plants and animals requires some strategy,” said Putnam. “Winter is so short and there is nothing like the light produced by snow reflecting a weak but earnest January sun.”
Drawing connections between different disciplines is key to providing a liberal arts education, and in that spirit, Putnam will draw on her experiences and perspectives in both art and environmental studies to teach Visual Arts 271, Drawing on Science.
Putnam comes to the College with an extensive background in the visual arts and a focused interest on drawing, woodcut prints and visual representations of the environment.
Growing up, she was influenced by her artistic grandparents and her mother and father’s medical careers. Putnam says she has always been aware of the similarities between the ways artists and scientists see the world.
“We’re both searching for truth, we’re observers by nature and habit,” wrote Putnam in an email to the Orient. “I like adding this element of scientific exploration. It changes how you think when you have a little bit of science in your art.”
Putnam’s ability to combine her artistic pursuits with science also stems from a formative artistic residency she did in the late 1990s in Manitoba, where she made art alongside biologists and ecologists who were hard at work analyzing a local duck population.
Her current works are primarily large, abstract woodcut prints on multi-colored fabric. Using grass and seaweed as primary subjects, Putnam creates close-up depictions of scenes found in nature.
“I want them to read as works of art but I also want them to be readable and credible to scientists,” she said.
Despite the Drawing I prerequisite, many students taking Putnam’s class are oceanographers, biologists and environmental scientists.
“With each visual arts class I take, I realize how relevant it is to my studies in science, and I believe science and art really do mesh beautifully,” wrote Kailey Bennett ’14, an earth and oceanographic science and visual arts double major, in an email to the Orient.
Students in the course will receive a breadth of assignments that give them direction while allowing them some leeway in their observations and representations of the coastal landscape. Students will also complete an assignment based on objects in the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.
“My sense is that we’re trending to more interdisciplinary courses because technology is improving; scientists and artists are using some of the same technologies, but using them in different ways,” said Putnam.
“Students are pooling skill sets and knowledge from a variety of subject areas and communicating in a visual language with content that honors the natural world.”