Natural History Becomes Art at Aidekman

Where can you go to see a stuffed polar bear, a pair of rusting eyeglasses, and a photograph of a mummified head all in one place?

Venture no further than the newest collection on display at the Aidekman Arts Center, located down the street from the campus center. Titled Two Rooms, the exhibit features the work of artist Rosamond Purcell, who first made a name for herself as a photographer working for various natural history museums. It is clear upon entering the exhibit, however, that Purcell considers herself a scientist as much as an artist, and the pieces on display here communicate her love for the natural world as well as the eye for detail that helped her to make a successful career out of photographing scientific curiosities.

The two rooms which provide the title of the display are sculptural installations, first assembled in Purcell's studio and later recreated in various museum exhibits. The first chamber is a duplication of a scientific collection owned by Olaus Worm, a seventeenth-century academic who was versed in everything from medicine and history to philosophy and theology. The pieces in his assemblage were preserved for all time in a black-and-white engraving, and Purcell has gone to tremendous lengths to find mates for them in the here and now. Her life-size recreation is nearly identical to the room shown in the engraving, and it is a fascinating experience to be able to look back and forth from the 1655 picture and the modern display.

Worm's collection, as it is reproduced here, is as fascinating today as it must have been in antiquity. Labeled boxes of shells are stacked on the shelves, a rack of arrows lines the wall, while a collection of elk and deer horns hang next to the stuffed head of a gazelle. Preserved lizards, rays, and armadillos are mounted on the walls; fish and birds hang down from the ceiling; a tiny model of a human skeleton, no bigger than a foot tall, is displayed prominently in the back. The assortment of pieces on display are clearly scientific in nature, but there is little doubt to their artistic worth, as they attract the eye and capture the mind as well as any great painting or more typical sculpture.

On the opposite side of the gallery is the second room of the Two Rooms, a reassembled version of Purcell's own studio, which in many ways mirrors its seventeenth century counterpart. Here, the pieces lining the walls are not medieval scientific curiosities but rather what under normal circumstances would have been junk, waste found mostly in the area of a junkyard up in Owls Head, Maine and then recycled here by the artist.

The walls are lined with metal and painted in cool colors, purples and greens and rusty reds that seem to create a soothing environment. Shelves of ratty books rest back against them, and also on display are trays of historical archaeological finds from the junkyard itself. There are cases upon cases of once-discarded treasures, ranging from a mirror frame and a rusted lock to a mummified cat and mouse and what appears to be the skull of a two-headed canine. In the corner a lone, broken bowling pin rests on a shelf, and on the opposite side of the room is a chair made out of wood and a gigantic, ancient vertebrate.

The similarities between the dual exhibits are striking, even upon first glance. Both Worm and Purcell were collectors, fascinated by the world around them, and both brought their love for science and their need to understand nature into a distinctively physical form. The two rooms communicate their passion in the most obvious manner possible. The displays also make it clear that even though the world has changed, that we have grown as a society and gained a greater understanding of the world around us, the scientific curiosities of Worm's day still exist and can be found, albeit in a slightly altered form. Flying fish have given way to a decaying rubber horse head, but to one who knows just where to look, nature can be just as fascinating in this day and age as it was four hundred years ago.

And Purcell seems to understand that as well as anyone. The most fascinating aspect of her work is the way she manages to blend art and science until the one becomes indistinguishable from the other. The archaeological finds and modern day curiosities of her own studio have been displayed in such a way that they can be called nothing but a work of art, even as the masterpiece that is Worm's collection is clearly, at its heart, a scientific catalogue.

Also on display is a collection of Purcell's better known photography work. From here, one gets the sense that the artist is a collector of all sorts of intangible curiosities, refusing to be restricted to the physical type on display in her studio, as each photograph is accompanied by a short story either involving the circumstances in which it was taken or the background of the pictured object. Purcell relates with equal enthusiasm her adventures traveling around the world to track down an ivory model of an eye as she does the tale of a hunter who managed to collect six rare butterflies, only to meet his unfortunate end at the hands of cannibals, and the background on her work here makes each piece all the more fascinating.

One might leave the exhibit wondering if Purcell's work is better suited to an art gallery or a natural history museum, but in either case, it is clear that her eye for detail is what makes her so valuable both as an artist and a naturalist. More than anything, Purcell is able to appreciate the smaller things about the world around us, which gives her the ability to take a rotting copy of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum and use her camera lens to turn it into a work of art. Her skills allow her to blur the distinction between art and science, which helps those who happen across her work to appreciate the world around them a little bit more.

"Two Rooms" is on display at the Aidekman Arts Center, located across from the campus center on Talbot Avenue. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 8 p.m.