2nd May 2014

 

Pollen grains as you’ve never seen them before

 

Pollen grains cannot be seen without the use of a powerful microscope. Yet their shape, form and variety is one of the wonders of nature. Using her training and skill as a sculptor, Devon based artist Jo Golesworthy enables their beauty to be appreciated by creating giant sized versions in architectural material.

 

The OVAS meeting at the Institute on May 2nd was enthralled by Jo’s talk and demonstration, explaining how she creates these wonderful objects given the unpromising starting point of two dimensional images from electron microscopes. Her unique approach to sculpture was developed during her time as a student at the Brighton Polytechnic in the 1980’s, particularly the visits to Portland where she was able to work with the big blocks of limestone to be found there. She now works in a variety of materials, typically rendering the surface in a limestone dust mortar to reproduce the textures and indentations of the tiny originals. Her talk was rounded off with a practical demonstration of how she creates the detailed reliefs of pollen grain surfaces.

 

In thanking Jo at the end of the meeting, Pauline Hatfield, ex chair of OVAS, spoke for the whole society in expressing her admiration for the originality of the concept, producing such surprising and, while not abstract, then certainly other-worldly results.