Gallery: The art of science
DVM students create colorful imagery by growing bacteria cultures in Petri dishes
DVM students create colorful imagery by growing bacteria cultures in Petri dishes
Agar art created by College of Veterinary Medicine DVM students.
Stroke by stroke, College of Veterinary Medicine DVM students use cotton swabs to craft miniature pieces of art. At first, the images are undiscernible from the canvas but as days pass, they begin to develop like a photo on film and reveal colorful animals, landscapes, and cartoon characters.
The medium is different than typical painting. The colors are produced by microorganism cultures carefully applied to agar in Petri dishes. As the microbe colonies grow, they produce colors that are visible without microscopes. Different types of bacteria produce varied colors—some naturally and some through genetically modified means.
CVM associate professor Dawn Foster-Hartnett offers students the opportunity to try agar art in her undergraduate microbiology classes. This year, Dr. Erin Burton, senior associate dean for academic and student affairs, recently enlisted Foster-Hartnett’s help to bring the art form to DVM students in her diagnostic laboratory course as a well-being activity.
“I thought it was a neat way to get them to tap into their artistic side and have a little fun,” Burton says. “The really cool thing about this agar art is that they kind of go into it blind, so it's sort of a leap of faith when it comes to how they turn out.”
To create the images, students are given a palette of colors and corresponding bacteria to choose from. Once they have a design in mind, they carefully stencil it onto the agar and then apply the right microbes in the right spots.
“They have to be really meticulous and really careful about making sure that they don't let the colors bleed into each other,” Burton says. “Some bacterial colonies will out-compete the other ones and that can impact the design, too.”
Students had the opportunity to enter their pieces in a class art contest. Voting is over but the entries can be viewed here. The plague doctor image created by DVM student Sarah Copeland received first place.