Edna Lawrence Nature Lab

Check out these details of a beautifully illustrated herbarium that Charles Hyun Seok Jang (BArch 25) created for the class "Plants: Botany and Ecology"!

In this class students were required to to collect plants and identify them to the species level, then press and mount them in triptychs using traditional techniques. "They are then asked to look beyond the plants as individual specimens, and convey a concept or function that connects all three plants to the ecology of the site or to other organisms that make up the environment in which the plants exist," explains Hope Leeson, one of the instructors of the class. She adds that Charles's work was "not only exemplary for the class, but also builds on what he gained from the 'Interconnectedness of Natural Sciences' last spring. All three of his triptychs strongly convey connections between plants and the potential relationships they share with other organisms."

You can view the complete triptychs in the "Gallery" section of the Nature Lab website: https://naturelab.risd.edu/gallery/

Happy 126th Birthday to Edna Lawrence! Join us tomorrow, from 12:30 to 1:30, in the main collection room to celebrate the Nature Lab's beloved founder. There will be cake, snacks, and specimens from Edna's personal collection on display! See you there!

On Saturday the Nature Lab hosted a workshop at at the wildlife rehabilitation and education center Congress of the Birds! Director Sheida Soleimani began the program by telling students about her work caring for wild birds, many of which come to the center with injuries caused directly or indirectly by humans and the built environment. She then discussed design solutions (like window decals and UV-treated glass) that can mitigate the harm done to our feathered friends, as well as other important changes we can make, such as using a form of rodent control that sterilizes the rodents instead of poisoning them so that they will not go on to poison hawks and owls if they are eaten.

Students also had the opportunity to meet (and draw!) the birds currently in the center's care, including the ravens Zia and Zola, crows, chickens, ducks, guinea fowl, an owl, a falcon, a nuthatch, a wren, a pigeon, two doves, and a very curious blue jay!

Thank you so much for having us, Congress of the Birds! Visit www.congressofthebirds.org if you're interested in learning more or getting involved 🦉🐦🦅🦆🦃🐣 🩷

The legacy of Edna W. Lawrence’s nature drawing classes and the specimen collection she started in 1937 lives on at the Lab 🥰

💀🎃👻 Monstera Mash! ☠️😻🪴

Over the summer, Nature Lab Graduate Assistants Tanmayee Moré (MLA Landscape Architecture 25) and Elise Williams (MFA Sculpture 25) experimented with using a polarizing filter on the macropod setup in our Advanced Imaging Lab. The resulting images of light filtering through dried vitamin and amino acid crystals
are magnificent!

It's training day at the Nature Lab! Elise Williams (MFA Sculpture 25) is training new graduate assistants Mary Connell (MFA Painting 25) and Lauren Russo (MLA Landscape Architecture 27) on our Macropod Pro 3D. What better way to learn about new equipment than by photographing magnified images of fungi!? We can't think of one!

How can we design compost caddies that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are functional? This past Saturday several RISD students participated in a Compost Caddy Design Charrette led by compost expert Dan Martens of Novamont and RISD senior critic Laura Briggs with the goal of answering that question.

The workshop began with a lecture by Dan Martens on the history of composting and compost caddies. Afterwards students sketched, iterated, presented, critiqued, and modeled their compost caddy design solutions! We hope to be seeing many of their brilliant designs in the years to come. Thank you to all the students, Laura Briggs, and Dan Martens for a fabulous design charrette!

💙🩵🐟🦀🐠Collection Trip 2024!🦐🪼🐡💙🩵

Each September some of our staff and student employees head to the beach, where they collect new marine life for our tanks and release the specimens that have spent the last year living and growing with us in the Biodesign Makerspace. This year's haul was made up of eighteen different species of fish, crustaceans, and other invertebrates, including a baltic isopod and a stalked sea sq**rt! 💦

Not everything that is caught comes to live with us, but the specimens that are brought back to the Lab are cared for in our two 250-gallon saltwater tanks, where students can observe these local species up close as part of the educational resources that the Nature Lab provides.

Photos: Ava Handley

The Nature Lab is hiring! This is a one-year term position that supports and guides activity related to RISD’s innovation in material development in partnership with Hyundai Motor Group. The Materials Scientist will support the development and analysis of new and existing bio-based materials using green chemistry with an emphasis on circularity and sustainability, as well as assist faculty, departments, and students with projects and provide essential support to ongoing HMG|RISD studio and workshop activities that foster art|design inquiry and innovation based on biology and living systems. Spread the word, and apply here today! https://risd.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/RISD/job/Providence/Hyundai-Materials-Scientist_R-01444-1

Nature Lab Graduate Assistant Tanmayee Moré (MFA Landscape Architecture 25) took a glass course last spring exploring light and optics. For her project she was inspired by the form of sea sponges, and worked with glass professor Karin Forslund to develop a project which truly married the creative and scientific processes.

Tanmayee says she became curious to "explore the optical and structural properties of the Venus Flower basket, which is a glass sea sponge of extraordinary qualities. Using the scanning electron microscope, I was able to observe how the sponge is made of glass frames enveloped in glass films. I felt inspired to bring this form language into my experiments." She adds that her "amazing professor Karin Forslund called it 'finding the fibonacci of the glass'—looking to see what the glass wants to do at the scale and operations of the hotshop."

On a technical level, Tanmayee and Karin had to develop a way to make glass "frames" by dropping hot glass into water that solidified as springs. "Then, Karin blew glass bubbles as 'films' into nests made of springs," Tanmayee explains. "These springs melted into cellular structures across the bubble as it expanded with heat. To our surprise, these objects also doubled up as projection devices, and ended up making 3D-esque projections that resembled the images from the scanning electron microscope!"

At 6:30 pm on Monday, September 30th, join us for "The Aesthetics of a Clean Energy Future," a zoom lecture by Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry of Land Art Generator, with a Q+A moderated by Laura Briggs! Explore the historic ties between art, design, and energy, and examples of renewable energy infrastructures that coexist with public places and biodiverse ecologies.

Link to attend: https://risd.zoom.us/j/96261330803

Nature Lab staff recently visited the Brown University greenhouse, where a Konjac plant is in bloom! The Konjac flower can be up to three feet long, and while in bloom produces a smell similar to rotting animal flesh, which attracts the carrion flies that pollinate the plant. Through the use of thermal imaging equipment, we also learned that the Konjac's main reproductive stalk was a toasty 101 degrees!

Are you a RISD student or faculty member interested in seeing specimens like this in a whole new way this semester? Visit our Microscopy Lab, where you can find a variety of equipment for all your imaging needs! You can also check out a number of devices for field research, including specialized cameras, audio equipment, and GPS trackers.

To sign up for individual training or to book time on any piece of equipment, please use the Nature Lab Technology Training + Use Form via the link in our bio. See y'all in the lab!

Do you know what animal species these specimens are?
1. HINT: You may have yarn spun from my wool!
2: HINT: I'm resourceful! If water is scarce I use dew to stay hydrated.
3. HINT: I gracefully stalk my prey in shallow waters.
4. HINT: I'm an excellent climber.

These are just four out of nearly 100,000 flora & fauna specimens that are currently housed in the Nature Lab's Natural History Collection! It's a library that's been growing since Edna Lawrence first founded the lab in 1937.

One of our Lab Assistants brought a little buddy to work! This four-horned sphinx caterpillar caught a ride to the Nature Lab, where we took it down to the Microscopy Lab to photograph it using the pads on its prolegs to grip human skin.

These barbed pads, called “crochets,” allow the caterpillar to anchor itself to a solid surface while it uses its muscles to propel itself forward. Humans don’t need to do this because we have skeletons to help contract our muscles, but getting around is a little more tricky if you’re a caterpillar!

After the photo session we took our model to the RISD Regenerative Earth Collective garden, where it was released at the base of its favorite kind of tree—an elm, the source of its other common name, the “elm sphinx.”

The Nature Lab is pleased to announce the digitization of our herbarium collection! In order to make the fragile specimens in our herbarium more accessible, we are scanning and uploading high-resolution images of each plant to our Flickr page, where they are available worldwide to view or download for free. These images are licensed in the public domain to encourage their use in artistic and scientific projects—and we would be thrilled if you shared anything you made with us!

"As I slowly comb through the herbarium collection, I find myself reminded of the many caring hands required to preserve the history of our natural world," says Elise Williams (MFA '25 Sculpture), a Nature Lab Graduate Assistant who has been helping with the digitization project. "Many of the plant specimens I have had the joy of photographing are close to a century old. They have traveled through various collections and libraries that have cared for them until finally arriving at the Rhode Island School of Design, and it has been a gift to continue to care for this herbarium as I work to make the collection accessible to artists and designers now and in the future."

Visit the Nature Lab's herbarium online here! https://www.flickr.com/photos/risdnaturelab/albums/72177720315752429

And special thanks to the Brown University Herbarium for providing equipment to assist with this digitization project.

Can you guess what we captured with our scanning electron microscope this week? These spiky mystery objects had hitched a ride on a winged creature in the RISD Regenerative Earth Collective garden, seen here magnified between 1,000-8,000x. We'll reveal the answer on Monday!

RISD's student-led Regenerative Earth Collective has been busy in their garden all summer, and the beds are full of exciting growth! On Tuesday, garden managers Ankita, David, and Maggie spent the drizzly morning harvesting indigo plants to be made into vats of natural indigo dye. Other finds in the garden right now include juicy tomatoes, dyer's chamomile, flax, squash, and many more native Rhode Island plants!