Unexpected art: Campus exhibits share space with sciences

“At first glance, Laura Olear’s paintings look simply like colorful abstract art. This one looks vaguely like raspberries, rendered larger-than-life in dark red and bluish-green. That one could be the inside of a walnut. Another looks like a beehive.

But a closer look at a description hanging next to a ghoulish mask reveals it to be a massively inflated rendering of Mononucleosis. Those raspberries are actually Herpes. The walnuts are HIV. The beehive is a virus related to E. Coli.

Olear is not a scientist, just an “interested bystander,” she said. A Chicago-based artist, Olear started by painting body parts – teeth, a liver, an optical nerve. Her minor hypochondria made her curious about viruses, and soon she began searching for screen shots from microscopes.”  [ MORE madison.com]