Art Event 1

I went to Todd Forsgren’s talk and it ended up being very interesting to me personally. Todd is an artist with a background in biology and, majoring in biology myself, I found his talk very interesting. Todd went to Bowdoin College to major in biology and ended up receiving a bachelor’s degree in biology. He focused his studies on the ecological areas in biology and while doing research in the field discovered his love of photography. He found it much more interesting than biology, although he still retained many biological aspects of biology in his art and was still interested in learning more about biology. He received his visual art bachelor’s degree from the same college and went on to earn his post-baccalaureate degree from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He has taught at many different colleges, including St. Mary’s, and is on many different academic boards throughout the country.

Todd’s art focuses on ecological aspects of biology and perceptions of landscape. He wants to create a type of art where natural history and art history are combined into one piece. One of his subjects in photography is ornithological pieces. In these pieces he used birds and portrayed them as being caught in web-like structures. These web-like structures were types of nets created by scientists that could not harm the birds and were meant to be able to capture the birds for studies. Todd would take pictures of the birds in certain positions that one wouldn’t normally see a bird in naturally. After taking photography in Australia for a while he decided to try and visit a more industrial place and went on to do more projects in places like Boston. He found it interesting that, even though they were surrounded by buildings, there were still some natural aspects in the city when he found many types of natural gardens.

I found many of Forsgren’s pieces very fascinating. The fact that almost all of his work involved the natural aspects of the world was amazing to me because you don’t see too many artists focus so much of their time and attention on natural things. I found his ornithological pieces very interesting because of the way he captures the birds. His photos almost make it seem as though the birds are drawn because of their precarious positions in the net and the unnatural positions they are in. Because of the lack of surrounding area in these pieces, it allows you to put all of your focus on the bird which is what I believe he wanted. You can see the texture of the individual feathers and the stimulating colors of certain birds. I enjoyed Todd’s work very much because I was able to relate to it so well. It stimulated my interest in biology even more and made me think more about the natural beauty of our world and the fact that some of us don’t even realize what’s there at our disposal.