Rob Sula wears many hats - paleontologist, teacher and artist (and ESCONI Vice President). I recently caught up with him to talk about his latest art installation at the Lizzadro Museum.
Dianna Lord: How did your project get started?
Rob Sula: In September I was approached by Dorothy Asher, the Director of the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art to help curate their new Bundenbach exhibit. This exhibit is part of Lizzadro's rennovation of "The Rock and Mineral Experience." In addition to co-curating the fossils, I was asked to create a painting representing a Devonian-aged Bundenbach ecosystem.
DL: What is the name of the painting?
RS: The title of the painting is Bundenbach, Germany 400 Million Years Ago.
DL: What was the process for creating this art? Were there challenges specific to the subject matter?
RS: This project presented many challenges. For instance, the fossils found at Bundenbach are unusually well preserved. Like our own Mazon Creek locality here in Illinois, Bundenbach is considered a Loggerstatten: one of those rare fossil localities in which soft parts are preserved.
(Click to enlarge images.)
For me that meant that, to a great degree, I had to keep my "artistic license" in check. I wanted be faithful as I could be to the fossils that I was bringing back to life. This meant that before I even started painting I had to devote many hours to studying, photographing and sketching the original fossils often under magnification in order to get things right. I even based my trilobite's tracks on actual trilobite trackway trace fossils.
This myopic strategy almost led to an unintended and fairly major blunder. After I had finished my preliminary sketches and design of the painting's composition, I began a detailed drawing on the canvas. As I was researching modern brittle stars (for color patterns) I realized, to my dismay, that I had drawn every one of my brittle stars in a ventral position (upside down.) It turns out that every one of the Lizzadro's Bundenbach brittle star fossils (that I had been so assiduously modeling) was prepared showing a ventral orientation. This may be because that orientation (specifically the mouth) is more diagnostic to identification of species or, perhaps, the fossils just cleaved that way.
In any case, as it stood, my drawing depicted a bunch of dead brittle stars! So despite the many hours I had put into it, and more importantly, despite the ease in which a ventral orientation could reference back to the fossil: the drawing needed to be changed. Ultimately I left one brittle star, Bundenbachia, in a ventral position. It is dramatically draped (dead or dying) over a rugose coral in the foreground. The rest of the brittle stars I flipped back to a dorsal and living position.
DL: You choose oil paint for your media. What challenges did this choice present?
RS: By the time the drawing on the canvas was finished I had a little less than a month to complete the painting. This deadline combined with the reality that I often had to paint under magnification presented additional challenges.
Oils take time to dry. Some colors can take over a week to fully dry. Because of the detail, the right edge of my hand had to rest on the canvas for stability. This put me at risk of smearing parts of the painting I had recently completed. This meant I had to plan what sections I was working on every day very carefully. It was like a month-long chess game with the added pressure of a deadline!
DL: How did you choose the colors for the now fossilized animals and plants of 400 million years ago?
RS: Color is, of course a major component to any painting and this one was no different. In my research, I found that modern brittle stars of the same species found in communal settings often exhibited similar but subtly different color patterns. I attempted to reflect this phenomenon in the painting.
Broadly speaking, my color choices were made based on extant versions of brittle stars, feather stars, sponges, etc. I did, however, lean toward some of the more dramatic patterns and colors found in the modern versions of these animals. My overall vision of this painting was that the individual animals would emanate an internal light like a gem stone. I hoped that this would integrate the painting well with the gem and mineral exhibits in "The Rock and Mineral Experience."
DL: Any final thoughts on the work you did for the new Rock and Mineral Experience exhibit?
RS: The exhibit, of course, is not just the painting. The main attractions are the eleven beautifully detailed Bundenbach fossils. All eleven specimens are represented in the painting. All have been brought "back to life" except for the rugose coral which has gone to Horn coral Valhalla and its skeleton is serving as a hold fast for one of the crinoids.
So next time you visit the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art, see if you can find all eleven species inhabiting the painting.
END.
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