An interview with Helen about drawing!

Cameron: Helen! It is I, the high school state debate champion of 2009, here to have another vicious argument with you. Although there are many things about that sentence that are not true, and even grammatically incorrect. Helen: Oooooh this is exciting. And slightly scary.

Drawing What I See

Last year I started drawing again after about a 16-year break. I say “again” like I ever really drew in the first place—really, I took a few classes, produced a few things that bore some resemblance to the thing they’d been based on, and quit. Then, one day toward the tail of last winter, I […]

Voyage of Discovery: Art and the Arctic

Right now at the headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, here in Washington, D.C, is an art show about climate change in the Arctic. Three local artists worked together on the show, called Voyage of Discovery. I know, art about climate change in the Arctic. It sounds depressing at best and […]

The Art of the Insect

Earlier this week I was tickled by a study about dancing insects. European honey bees perform a rump-shaking ‘waggle dance’ in order to tell their hivemates where they’ve found food. The new research showed that when the bees don’t get any sleep, their dance moves become spasmatic and repellent; they clear the floor like a […]

Christie’s and the Roman Helmet

Last May, a man armed with a metal detector stumbled on something almost magical in a farmer’s field in the Eden Valley of northwestern England. Buried under the earth were 74 metal fragments, some large, some small, but all clearly part of a Roman helmet. And not just any Roman helmet. When the conservators at […]