James Haywood Rolling Jr., chair and associate professor of art education at Syracuse University, set the stage for Julia Marshall’s presentation Tuesday night by referencing Aristotle.

‘Those who know, do. Those who understand, teach,’ he said.

With those standards, Marshall is a doer and a teacher. And as the lights slowly dimmed, Marshall, with her sleek gray bob, lit the room with her colorful presentation.

Marshall showed different pieces of artwork Tuesday night at Shemin Auditorium in Shaffer Art Building to highlight the connections between science, education and art to attendees, including art professors and art majors.

‘Cognitive psychology is about how we know things based on how we categorize things,’ Marshall said.

She clicked on a PowerPoint slide and artist Mark Dion’s’Cabinet of Curiosities’ photograph appeared. It was a three-column cabinet of all the things in one’s mind, Dion said. There was an old, brownish rusting skeleton in the center of the painting, a mix of pop culture figures — such as Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh — along the side, a fragile textbook and other random objects.

She said Dion is an inspiration to her because of the way he mixes reality and fantasy. The cabinet was Dion’s mind, the categorization of dreams and actualities.

‘He crosses these boundaries between art and science all the time,’ Marshall said.

Marshall then cited the importance art could provide to one person’s life. She said if she had not gone off to become an artist, her life would not have been as enriched and conducive.

‘Art is purposeful,’ she said. ‘You have to ask: Are we trying to find something out about ourselves?’

Marshall’s foundation lay in science and social science — investigation, hypotheses and strategies, as well as scientific illustrations.Images of her skeletal spines, cell walls, organs, maps, illustrations and cartoon erasers (she said she’s a cartoonist at heart) appeared on the projector as she described how artwork can express different assets of a person.

Much of her presentation was a compilation of others’ works as well as projects by her students at Berkley High School.

‘I’d much rather talk about other people,’ Marshall said. ‘I’m not very good at talking about myself.’ 

The projector showed one of her projects with her students. She worked with three groups of students in the International Baccalaureate program that helps and encourages international students to take ownership of their own work and research.

Marshall and a colleague created a string of assignments that taught the students about the important relationship between science and art. The students pretended to be anthropologists as they walked around Berkley, Calif., observed their surroundings and collected artifacts of what inspires them and catches their interests. Some artifacts included a Purell bottle, dirt and cigarette buds.

‘I think they collected more cigarettes than I’ve ever seen in my life,’ Marshall said.

Marshall would then put them into groups of two and ask them to visit a place in town and create something — a painting or sculpture — of what they found. She also said she liked to concentrate on the human body and the art of acupuncture. For example, she bought a large plastic ear from a garage sale that reminded her of a bad and painful acupuncture session.

‘I have an odd sensibility,’ Marshall said.

In the Q-and-A session after the presentation, an SU professor asked Marshall if she sees herself more as an educator or an artist. She replied that there is no separation of the two: She is both a teacher and an artist.

Isabelle Solvang, a junior art education major, said she has to think about juggling art and teaching, as she hopes to be an artist and art educator one day.

‘I do art for myself. At this point, I have no interest in showing it,’ Solvang said. ‘I want to teach for the world, for my profession and for my career, but I can’t live without making art.’

Regina Doran, a junior painting and illustration major, said she loved that Marshall brought up the idea of science in art because she has a strong interest in science illustration, as well.

‘My work right now, who the hell knows what it is,’ Doran said. ‘I like the idea of what she said that there is a kernel of what your work will become, always in your work.’

khor@syr.edu

Published on November 30, 2010 at 12:00 pm