News & Exhibitions

‘X-Ray Visions’ - an upcoming solo show

Laura Ferguson — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:37:40 +0000

X-ray Visions: Drawings and Prints from an Artist Residency at the NYU School of Medicine

coming in June to the MSB Gallery - at the NYU School of Medicine, near the Ehrman Medical Library, 550 First Avenue at 31st Street, New York NY

June 11 - August 13, 2012

Opening reception Thursday, June 14th, 5-7 pm

Click here for a preview of works to be shown

Coming in November: an exhibit of drawings by the students in my 'Art & Anatomy' drawing seminar, in the same gallery - more info to come.

'Seeing Ourselves' in the Huffington Post

Laura Ferguson — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 21:21:24 +0000

"The exhibition "Seeing Ourselves: The Science and Art of Diagnostic Medical Imaging" shows that art and science are two means of making images…" says the Huffington Post – and my work is included in their slide show.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/16/seeing-ourselves_n_1332228.html#s765194

Seeing Ouselves, an art exhibition based on neuroimaging

Laura Ferguson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:01:38 +0000

I’m excited about the new show I’m in. Please save the date and join me at the opening on Saturday evening, March 10th, at MuseCPMI in NYC – or come see the show between March 10 - April 14.

http://www.musecpmi.org/currentexhibition.html

The work I’m showing is from a new series of drawings made from medical images: pursuing my fascination with the spine and skeleton, and newly inspired by the brain. I've tried to evoke the shadowy and mysterious quality of an x-ray enhanced with three-dimensionality, the sense of many layers, and the relationship of inside to out.

This new work flows directly from the access I’ve had as artist in residence at the NYU School of Medicine: drawing from anatomical and neuroanatomical specimens, and working in the 3D Imaging Lab with radiology images made for my artistic purposes. These cutting-edge imaging technologies – 3D spiral CT scan for the body and 7-Tesla MRI for the brain – are tools developed for the world of medicine, but in the hands of an artist they can create a different vision of the inner body: anatomically accurate but also reflective of our personal experience of the bodies we inhabit.

Click here for a preview of my new work

(By the way, my image above, that was chosen to announce the show, is one of very few that's not of myself!)

"Inside the Body: Medical Imaging and the Visual Arts" - an article by Silvia Di Marco

Laura Ferguson — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:13:00 +0000

During the past few years I’ve been immersed in learning how to use 3D medical imaging technology and transform it into art. Now it’s great to discover other artists who have been exploring the same territory – from very different perspectives and with different results. Just as ‘Seeing Ourselves’ is set to open – an exhibit that views medical imaging as a form of photography – comes a fascinating article by Silvia Di Marco, exploring this new field from an art historical point of view. "Inside the Body: Medical Imaging and the Visual Arts" (published in the online journal PsicoArt, in Italian and English) includes an extensive and insightful discussion of my work and my use of medical images.

http://psicoart.cib.unibo.it/article/view/2530 (choose English-language version from menu on upper right)

a symposium on the arts in medical education

Laura Ferguson — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 18:28:28 +0000

I'm looking forward to this symposium, at the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, near Philadelphia, on March 26th - I'll be one of the panelists.

my student's drawing featured in the WSJ

Laura Ferguson — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:43:59 +0000

A wonderful drawing made by one of the students in my Art & Anatomy seminar at the NYU School of Medicine was featured in an article in the Wall Street Journal. The article’s focus is on the ‘medical humanities’ and the value of the arts in the training of more humanistic and empathetic doctors.

a link to the WSJ online edition:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704680604576110240337491446.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_3

(page one of the “Personal Journal” section)

a talk at the Naftali Center in Chelsea

Laura Ferguson — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 23:40:25 +0000

open to the public

a new website!

Laura Ferguson — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 23:00:00 +0000

my biggest news (as you already know, if you've been to my website before) is that I have finally updated and redesigned the site to reflect all the new projects I've gotten into in the past few years. you'll find lots of new artwork, new writing about what i’ve been doing, my adventures in the medical world, examples of the medical imaging technologies I'm working with, and more.

the best part is that it's so easy to add and make changes and keep the site up to date, and I really hope and plan to do that now - and to use the possibilities of the web to present work in new ways (like the 'animation gifs' i just learned how to make, where you can see a drawing come into being from the floating colors underlayers). (and, i have to learn to be more informal here in this News section - no more going through 70 drafts of every sentence, but just let it flow, in my everyday voice. that's surprisingly hard to do - but hopefully i'll get the hang of it.)

this is a work in progress, and - as i feel with all my work - it has to be a dialogue, a communication that goes in both directions. so I'd love to get your comments and feedback – thanks!

seeing my brain

Laura Ferguson — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 21:31:04 +0000

Until a few months ago, I had never tried to draw the brain, and in fact most of my figurative drawings rarely even include the face or the head. when we look at images of people, we tend to look to their faces to provide the expressiveness, and i wanted people to focus on the body instead. and when it came to the brain, the gap just seemed too wide between what it looks like and what it really is. I hadn't been inspired by its imagery the way i instantly was when i first saw a human skeleton, or the intricate interweavings of tendons and muscles, or the branching webs of blood vessels or neural networks. at the same time i've been fascinated and deeply interested in consciousness and the workings of the brain. and then in early April, i received an email, with an image attachment, that immediately changed my mind.

the email was from Dr. Caitlin Hardy, a physician doing radiology research with cutting-edge 7-Tesla MRI technology at the Center for Biomedical Imaging (part of the NYU Medical Center/School of Medicine). she wrote that she had been “struck by the beauty of the living body and the brain when viewed at such high resolution.” she had been inspired to develop an art exhibition that would pair these MRI images with artists' interpretations of them, and she invited me to be part of the project. If i wanted to, I would get to have my own brain scanned – another chapter in my ongoing artistic investigation of my own body.

there's a lot more to the story of how i got from there to here, but on September 13th i had the MRI, and now i have pictures of my own brain! I've already started to work with them and create new 'drawings' and i'm experimenting with combining them with my floating colors imagery, to suggest states of consciousness or mental dreamscapes.

i'll post some of the new pieces soon - and let you know once the exhibition has been scheduled (probably in 2011, in a gallery in NYC). meanwhile, here are two of the 'slice' images from the MRI scan - amazing!

making art in medical school

Laura Ferguson — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 23:18:00 +0000

Last night was this semester's first session of my 'Art & Anatomy' drawing seminar: drawing sessions for med students in the Anatomy Lab, where we draw from bones and from the cadavers that the students are (or soon will be) dissecting. It's 'life drawing' with a twist – and part of what I've been doing since I became Artist in Residence in the Master Scholars Medical Humanism Program at the NYU School of Medicine, in 2008. This is the 3rd year of 'Art & Anatomy" and I really love doing it. I think of it as a drawing opportunity for the students, rather than a class, and of my role as a facilitator rather than a teacher. I'll write more about it soon (and you can see some of my own Anatomy Lab drawings here, especially in the Hand Dance series.

I make a point of telling the students that it's the process of drawing that's important, and not to worry too much about producing masterpieces but just get into the process itself. But along the way, they have produced some wonderful work, and it will be great to show it off in an exhibition we're planning for later this year.