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Criminal justice sophomore Shelby Yoder, left, and art history junior Gray Garza look at art showcased during the REPTILIA exhibit Sept. 10 at the UTA Fine Art Collections gallery. Yoder and Garza said they were interested in the art and thought that it was cool.<\/p>\n
Photo by Treyson Abe<\/a><\/p>\n On the evening of Sept. 10, students, faculty and staff gathered at the UTA Fine Art\u00a0 Collections gallery for the opening ceremony of the REPTILIA exhibition, a project combining research and interdisciplinary art.<\/p>\n Some went to see their professor\u2019s work. Others heard about the event and were surprised with jarred specimens and a colorful display of lizards in nature.<\/p>\n What they saw was a collaboration between Luke Frishkoff, associate professor of biology, and Osra West, an artist and documentarian.<\/p>\n The project uses different forms of art, such as paintings, photos and wet specimens, to bridge the gap between scientific work and the general public.<\/p>\n The exhibit also includes the cultural history of the Caribbean through vibrant beaded sashes from the Yoruba peoples.<\/p>\n Frishkoff\u2019s research focuses on repetition in evolution using anoles, which are tree-dwelling lizards related to iguanas, according to Britannica. The Caribbean islands and anoles give him the opportunity to learn about what is and isn\u2019t repeatable in evolution.<\/p>\n Frishkoff and his team spent two months each on three islands. The project uses data collected from the most recent field tests but also uses a decade of past data to inform the research.<\/p>\n \u201cWe studied what species are where, studied how many species are in a given location, what types of species are there and basically tried to understand whether they\u2019re doing the same thing together on each of the islands or different things,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Frishkoff said he and his team tried to visit a variety of climate zones on each island to understand how anole lizards have adapted to their environments.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the cool things about doing the study to figure out who\u2019s where on these islands across all these different climates is that it lends us some degree of predictive power about what\u2019s going to happen if climates change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The REPTILIA exhibition is his first professional collaboration with West.<\/p>\n Frishkoff and West have known each other since elementary school, he said. While Frishkoff grew more interested in science, West continued to develop his artistic skills. When he got the idea to combine science with visual aspects, West was the first name that came to mind, Frishkoff said.<\/p>\n Frishkoff said it was interesting to see what West paid attention to in the field. West, as an artist, would often notice details that Frishkoff, as a scientist, did not.<\/p>\n Frishkoff said he views science and art as two sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re both trying to understand the natural world, though from using very different approaches, and so being able to translate one of those approaches to the other is really fascinating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Cheryl Mitchell, associate professor of practice for the Art and Art History Department and collections specialist for the UTA Fine Art Collections, partnered with\u00a0West and Frishkoff for the project, and together they decided what would be shown in the exhibit.<\/p>\n In the curation process, Mitchell said, she focused on bringing the story of the research to life by using colors, forms and the grouping of items to create a flow similar to that of a musical composition.<\/p>\n Museum studies students and art technicians also helped come up with and build exhibit designs and unload the art.<\/p>\n Reptiles are displayed in a jar during the REPTILIA exhibit Sept. 10 at the UTA Fine Art Collections gallery. The lizards were collected from different regions in Puerto Rico as part of a research project about evolution.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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