Art

Item Description

ARTIST:         Diane Fiedler
TITLE:           Global Brotherhood: Glioblastoma 1
MEDIUM:      Watercolor, 16” x 20”, unframed

This original artwork was created for Art on Science: 26 études an international portfolio featuring pictures by artists and words by scientists. This written commentary is by Vladimir Ivkovic of the Neuroimaging Department at Harvard University:
 
I work on understanding and reducing occupational health risks to firefighters, first responders, and other extreme performers such as astronauts. My research focuses on developing wearable technology to assess medical conditions caused by extreme environments or activities—such as firefighting and spaceflight—as well as the countermeasures for their mitigation. The ultimate goal is translating this knowledge into clinical tools for predicting, preventing, and treating major occupational health hazards—such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and cancer—which our firefighters and first responders suffer from at much higher rates than the general population.

As one of the most sinister results of repeated exposures to carcinogens released by fires—so vividly depicted by the flaming chairs and chemicals—cancer takes more firefighters’ lives than fires themselves. The repeated stress of life-and-death situations and decisions that firefighters experience every day, result in their being five times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than the general public they protect. Diane’s poignant art holistically depicts the dire perils of firefighting, the hope of salvation that firefighters epitomize, and the struggle with the suffering imparted on them by the very vocation that defines and consumes them.

Both processes are quests for meaning through discovery of context—much like the fractal nature of the universe that surrounds us. While the forms and tools are different, the artistic and scientific methods yield analogous experiences—art, by generating concepts that seek to be attributed meaning through discovering the context from which they were created or originated; and science, by discovering phenomena whose meaning, if any, may only come through the continued process of discovering the universal context from which they emerge.

Item Special Note

Free domestic shipping.

All artworks are 16” x 20”, unframed and will be shipped with a printed copy of the scientist’s text.

For further information about the portfolio, please visit our Art on Science: 26 études website: http://AS26project.com