"Art and Science: Learning with Plants" is a new, interdisciplinary GE theme course where students investigate plants and their relationships with humans. They learn both scientific methods (microscopy, experiment design, data analysis) and artistic methods (speculation, creative synthesis) to document their discoveries as scientific reports and artwork. Each semester culminates an an Art and Science showcase.
This semester students presented a costumed parade in honor of Earth Day and a closing installation entitled "The Trichome Forest", and you can see images of their work in the slideshow above. Interested in taking part? The Autumne 2026 offering of MolGen 3011 still has open seats, and fulfills the 4 credit requirement for the GEN Theme: Lived Environments.
Here's what this semester's artists had to say about their discoveries:
Trichome Forest (artist's statement)
Trichomes are tiny – usually microscopic – hairs on the surface of leaves. Some are sharp as teeth and some send perfumes on the breeze.
From nettles that sting us and scents that draw us in, from the rosemary and mint, raspberries, kiwis, and peaches you have in your kitchen, to the cotton fibers in your t-shirt and the cannabis you smell on the street, we all interact with trichomes every day.
Some trichomes earn their name of “evil lollipops” because of their effect on horn-wormed caterpillars, like Frankie. He is on a search for food, and finds tasty, microscopic trichomes offered by the leaves. Once Frankie begins to eat the trichomes of the tobacco plant, they make him smell delicious to his predators, like lizards. This chemical defense is a way the plant protects itself from being consumed by bugs, and it is an effective strategy.
Meet the trichomes of the forest! They are fragrant, they are beautiful, they attract and they defend, and they allow plants to speak to the rest of us, not by sound but by volatile chemicals that reach you floating on the wind.
Collaborators: Hannah Barkley, Deborah Bowen, Fiona Duncan, William Fink, Mary Gerber, Norman Groves, Rex Harvey-Thurston, Elise Henning, Whitney Johnson, Emma Kline, Emily Martinez Herrera, Abby McCarthy, Iris Meier, Aurora O’Phelan, Julian Perry, Macie Redman, Mykenna Roy, Sev Severance, Drew Warnick, and Amy Youngs.
