Malika Kumar
Street Science
Street Science was a way for me to share with people how much I love human physiology, and to spark in them the tones of curiosity and delight, discovery and fascination that are deeply imbued in this field. TSR, however, was a way for me to learn about myself, the way I work, what I think is important and what I never before paid enough attention to, and what I need to do to accomplish what I want to. TSR was a hugely eye-opening experience for me and gave me more insight about communicating science through art than I could ever possibly discuss in a reflection. I’m writing here about a few of the most important things that stood out to me throughout the year of TSR, but there is so much more to my experience – the details of how my art morphed from one medium to another and finally took shape, how the process of workshopping gave me so much more insight about how different people have completely different ways of thinking and how I can’t possibly cover all angles with just my own thought, and how I ultimately make decisions about what I like and what I want.
One of the powerful things I encountered through the TSR process was how hard (and ultimately unfruitful) it was to try and maintain my original perspective on my work. Throughout the creative process, I found myself having great ideas and moments of clarity, and my instinct has always been to trust my gut. I am someone who is skeptical and questioning, but I find that when I know, I just know. It happens to me when I’m clothes shopping; I’ll spend hours at stores, looking at things and trying them on, but I never buy anything unless I put it on and know right away that I like it. And the same way, if I put it on and immediately like it, I just buy it without thinking any further – since I know that doesn’t come along very often. Essentially, what I’m clumsily trying to say is that I tend to trust my gut, and once I have a gut decision I try to think no further. Of course, as I discovered this year through TSR, that doesn’t always work for larger, long-term projects and often doesn’t fit in perfectly with the creative process.
The aim of my project was to turn science (and particularly human physiology) into digestable conversation topics for the layman, and this required me to think long and hard about how my work and ideas would transmit across the communication space to the viewer. I couldn’t just blindly proceed with my creative revelations or be ultimately satisfied with my moments of clarity and inspiration. I guess I’ve just never had such a large and involved creative experience, or one I was so invested in, or one that was meant to reach a wide audience, but brief moments of creative clarity are far from enough. What I relied on before as my ultimate or terminal creative decisions became barely brainstorming points for Street Science. Every great idea I generated would inevitably be subjected to thorough critique. And while this process greatly strengthened, waterproofed, and elevated my project, it chipped away at my sense of certainty and my gut-feel confidence about my work and ideas.
Good lessons definitely came out of it, though. I’ve really experienced how creativity and art is a science, and a process that requires lots of drafting and honing. It’s like writing, or doing a presentation; I have just never experienced art in this way before. For the first time, I was creating art with a purpose, where the purpose did not demand priority over the art form.
Many times throughout the year, I would find myself hit with a great idea. Some little facet of human physiology I found interesting, some funny creative way of describing it. A great example of this was the ear, at the beginning of the year. When I first drafted my proposal, I wanted one of my art pieces to focus on how the ear breaks down and processes sound since it is a remarkably mechanical and clever way to separate sounds and classify them based on their components. I had many clever ideas of how to depict the system. But once it got down to the nitty-gritty details, I would get stumped over and over again because I couldn’t carry my ideas all the way through. The drawings would get too complicated, since there is a lot of information to convey accurately, and the creative cleverness would get snuffed out by the artwork being too pedantic. Thus I had to reconsider my ideas over and over again, and drafted the poster so many times before I ultimately decided that it wasn’t a topic I was ready to tackle yet.
Of course that wasn’t a bad thing at all, though it was plenty frustrating and at times made me feel hopeless. It was humbling, in a sense, because it made me understand that this sort of work isn’t a one-draft winner. In the way that PWR 2 teaches students that they can’t rely on inherent charisma and content to make an excellent presentation, TSR taught me that having an artistic and creative bent is not enough to create powerful artistic pieces – the best artists draft over and over again because they refine their work.
One of the most unexpected things for me was how the TSR exhibition changed my perspective and mood about my entire project. I think that leading up to the install day, I was frustrated and bored with my project. I was so moved by Mallory’s and David’s projects, and I felt like theirs seemed like much more substantial pieces than mine. Mallory’s podcast was personal, gripping and moving, and beautifully finished. It was long and nuanced and really seemed like something professional. David’s also was an incredibly huge effort that compiled so many angles and perspectives, and was a really comprehensive product. I was growing more and more emotionless about my project because it seemed thin and simple compared to the stellar examples from my section. As time grew closer to the install date, I regretted not having met with my mentors more, not having had my project finished earlier so I could have refined more and more, and the perfectionist in me was upset that my pieces weren’t perfect. It seemed like my work wasn’t substantial enough and would clearly stand out as such at the TSR gallery.
However, I was hugely surprised at how things came together for the gallery, how my project seemed to fit in with the entire exhibition, and how much people liked my work. Seeing your work in JPEG form on the computer screen and seeing it printed life size on glossy posterboard generate two completely different sensations. It makes such a difference, and one that I hadn’t accounted for in my “final” evaluation of my own work. Getting my posters back from the printers gave me a surge of pride and admiration for my own work and how my pieces turned out. It renewed my excitement and TSR self-worth a little bit. And, when I brought my finished pieces to Wallenberg to hang, they looked so much more professional and complete than my digital copies had seemed.
The parts of my posters that I had painted on paper, then scanned, were crisp and clear and vibrant. I think having seen them so much on my own computer screen had de-sensitized me to their vivacity, especially because I had manipulated the images and cropped them and rotated them and viewed them at a 50% zoom out. But having them there in front of me, neat and glossy and full of high-definition color and detail made my work seem like it was demanding attention on it’s own. The printing job gave my work a life it hadn’t had before. I think that’s a huge take-away for me from TSR. I had worked so much on my posters, had stared at them for so long, had questioned and second-guessed each decision and line placement and angle and color that I didn’t have that gut-feel satisfaction to know I was done, my work was good, and I was happy with it. Sending them in to the printers forced me to let go and take a break, clear my head, and take a step back so when I finally saw my art for the first time I had a completely different reaction to it. I finally had that gut-feel sense that it was right.
The TSR exhibition was experience-changing in many ways. Not only did I have a renewed sense of pride in my work after printing and mounting Street Science in the gallery, but dressing up and presenting my work at the exhibition made me really believe that my work was impressive and could hold it’s own.
Watching people experience my art though did help me determine that for my specific purpose, the TSR exhibition evening was not the most ideal way for people to interact with my work. For the purposes of showcasing what our class accomplished, it was perfect – and for allowing our friends and family to see our work, also perfect. But I think the gallery setting with my art up next to other pieces, or other types of work with different purposes that foster different interactions, took away from the depth to which I think people would otherwise explore my work.
I’m glad that I got to workshop curation and am very satisfied with the decision to display my posters separately throughout the gallery, because this forced people to move through the gallery and consider each one separately. I actually do think that the separation of the works caused people to spend more time at each piece, because people seemed to view each poster as having more individuality and needed to spend more time figuring out what was going on and what were all the secrets they could find. If they had all been displayed together, I think people would have treated them as more of a set and not paid as much attention to each individual piece. While this might have helped people grasp the concept of what I was going for with the entire Street Science series, and maybe might have made my work seem more substantial and impressive, I think having my posters scattered around Wallenberg allowed people to experience them in the more ideal installation setting: separately, as public art.
I also think that the text I attached to my pieces should have contributed a lot to how well people understood my posters, but feedback I got throughout the evening suggested that the gallery setting discouraged people from reading the attached text. People didn’t like getting too close and blocking other people from viewing the art, and people also didn’t want to bother with the reading if I was standing around there – they just wanted me to explain! I think for that reason, it was helpful that there were three posters in three locations, and that I was floating around talking to lots of people. Because there were so many art pieces to see, and so many project descriptions to read, I think people tended more to want a quick look and to get the main juice out of the pieces early on. My art isn’t well suited to that atmosphere, but given the positive reactions I do think people would take the time if they came across my pieces in a non-art setting.
The best part of the experience for me was the reactions people had to my work at the exhibition. When I embarked on the TSR journey back in September, my main purpose really was to make human physiology seem accessible to people, and to phrase science in a way that encouraged people in their abilities to interact with it. I wrote early on that I saw my work as “the kind of poster you’d find in the back of a biology classroom – not the neon eye-catching ones you’d notice on the first day, but the subtle interesting one you’d find in the fourth month as your were staring in boredom around the classroom”. I think, despite all my worrying and feelings of hopelessness throughout the year, that my artwork really did accomplish just that.
One of my ex-residents said to me, “The cool thing about these posters is that they take something that people don’t know about or can’t understand, but something that they directly relate to, and make it something that they can have a conversation about.” I really felt a golden warmth at that, for I don’t think I could have asked for a more validating reaction. My entire family came out, including my 6 year old and 11 year old cousins, and both of them were able to find giggling delight at the clever humorous parts of my work. Alex’s mom, who is a high school biology teacher in Sacramento, asked if she could have copies of my posters to put up in her classroom! And my friends have shared my work with their parents, who have since asked me if they can share them with their students. I am so honored and touched and just can’t believe that my project is receiving so much validation in the education space. It was a dream that I didn’t even think could be a possibility.
The success of this project has made me sure that I want to teach in the future. There was something so thrilling for me in sharing in people’s excitement and discovery that I can’t imagine a life without that. I loved how each person had a different favorite out of my 3 posters, and I loved seeing and learning how different people connected to different styles of conveying the message. And along with that, I was amazed that I was able to bring that to people in a successful way.
I owe a huge thank you to TSR for teaching me so much this year. I feel like a more powerful artistic creator, and I feel like I have worth in the creative education space. I feel capable and inspiring, and on fire to do more.