Life in a drop of water

A display of sculptures by Sarah Parker-Eaton and Louise Hibbert was inspired by plankton.

For the past 18 months, jeweller Sarah Parker-Eaton, woodworker Louise Hibbert have been working together on a series of hand-sized sculptures and boxes inspired by the microscopic world of plankton. The works are mostly fashioned from sycamore, with decorative details in silver, resin and acrylic ink.

The two artists have been collaborating with biological oceanographer David Thomas of the University of Wales, Bangor, who shares their enthusiasm for plankton. All three acknowledge their debt to the nineteenth-century German zoologist Ernst Haeckel — in particular for the outstanding images in his book Kunstformen der Natur. Haeckel was both an accomplished artist scientist and whose somewhat stylized representations of planktonic organisms informed part of the Art Nouveau movement. René Binet's design for the elaborate main entrance of the 1900 World Exposition in Paris, for example, made direct reference to Haeckel's drawings of radiolarians.

Thomas provided the two artists with the opportunity to explore under the microscope the shapes, forms and sublime movements of different types of living plankton, including diatoms and dinoflagellates, as well as radiolarians. Parker-Eaton says that this opened up for her “a miraculous underwater world. We never realized that a drop of water could contain such a variety of life.”

Planktonic organisms have myriad forms. They can be multicoloured spheres or cubes, with sturdy spines or fine, elongated needles that deter predators. Some form delicate spiralling chains, whereas others, such as dinoflagellates, have whip-like flagella to help them move in the water. The artists try to reflect this richness in their work. In one sculpture, for example, they represent armour-plated dinoflagellates as tactile spheres made from ancient bog oak covered in heavy silver plates.

The vivid colour that Hibbert and Parker-Eaton use in their work highlights the extraordinary ability to refract light of planktonic organisms such as diatoms and radiolarians, whose cell walls are constructed from silicate. “The walls are basically glass,” says Thomas. “And they are etched with intricate patterns, which under the microscope refract light, like crystal, into a kaleidoscope of colour.” Thomas believes that a scientist who fails to see the aesthetics in his or her science, or the artist who fails to perceive (often without realizing it) the mathematical form in their subject, “will always fall short in their respective interpretations of nature's design”.