The walls of the Pearson Chemistry Building, the home of the Department of Chemistry, are decorated with research posters and recent journal publications—sources of great pride, if not visual interest. But something much more eye-catching arrived this spring, when SMFA at Tufts students unveiled a slew of artworks they had created for the building, all of them with a chemistry theme.

For example, Izzy Ward, A26, used fiber arts that are traditionally considered “women’s work,” including crochet and embroidery, to make a sculpture inspired by women scientists. Among the discoveries she recreated are a model of penicillin built by Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin and Rosalind Franklin’s groundbreaking photograph of DNA.

Another artwork, by Jane Priester, A25, is reminiscent of the colorful wire and bead toys commonly found in pediatricians’ waiting rooms. Yet here, the beads represent amino acids, and the squiggly wires are the bonds that form them into peptides and proteins. The result is “an interactive and somewhat nostalgic sculpture,” Priester explained.

Ward, Priester, and the eight other artists who contributed works were students in Interdisciplinary Practices: Science, Art + Cultivating Knowledge, an SMFA at Tufts course taught last semester by Professor of the Practice Patte Loper.

In past years, Loper said, the course has sometimes been a more theoretical look at what science and art have in common. But it became much more hands-on this spring when Yu-Shan Lin, chair of the Department of Chemistry, asked Loper if her students could help liven up the hallways of the century-old Pearson building. 

Loper’s students met with chemistry department faculty and watched their recorded lectures “so that they had a good sense of what the research was, what was happening in the school,” Loper said. Then they worked hard to create unique installations that were scientifically accurate, within budget, up to building codes, and could be finished by the end of the school year. “It was a lot to do for a one-semester class,” Loper said. 

Professor Lin praised the works as capturing “the spirit of curiosity, experimentation, and discovery that’s so central to the fields of chemistry and the visual arts.”

“This exhibition is a reminder that we’re all exploring, we’re all asking questions, we’re all making connections and creating new things,” she said. 

One could learn a lot about the chemistry of painting by perusing the bottles of pigments and adhesives collected by Rylan Nguyen, A26, A26 (BFA), and Xavier Czarnecki, A26 (BFA).  Their installation explores the chemical and historical properties of materials used in tempera/oil painting. For example, they explain how the molecular structure of a blue pigment used by the ancient Maya has allowed it to retain its brilliance on Mesoamerican murals and ceramics for centuries. 

Just down the hall, the science gets a little sillier. Aria Ma, A26, A26 (BFA), centered her artwork on visual puns laser-cut onto acrylic circles, each an homage to a specific chem course. The etching of two pieces of pie linked together—a pi bond—is a meme aimed at students of Organic Chemistry I. 

You’ll need to take upper-level classes to get some of the other jokes, Ma said, “giving more intimacy to the chemistry folks who spend a lot of their college career here in this building.”

Tim Brunker, a lecturer in organic chemistry who helped Ma choose her memes, welcomes the new look. Aside from beautifying the building, he said, the artworks are a reminder that art and chemistry both require thinking outside the box. 

“People think chemistry is slogging through equations or following recipes,” he said, “but there’s actually a lot of creative thought.”