At first glance, art and science might seem like opposite worlds — one driven by imagination and emotion, the other by data and precision — but at their core, both seek to explore and explain the world around us. When these two fields intersect, they spark creativity, deepen understanding and invite new ways of interpreting ideas.
Two years in the making, SxAffold is a new initiative designed to spark meaningful collaboration between scientists and artists. In early June, the program, sponsored by Brotman Baty, launched its inaugural cohort — six artists working across various media — who came together for a fully funded, week-long workshop at Fred Hutch.
“We're not really inventing anything new,” said Rodrigo Guzman-Serrano, a SxAffold organizer and art historian from Cornell University. "We're trying to bring back some of that collaborative process in science by including artists in the research process and the laboratory work."
In addition to creative collaboration, the workshop offered professional development opportunities for Fred Hutch scientific principal investigators, or PIs, including guidance on securing funding and best practices for hosting artists in their labs.
"The main thing I’m really excited about with Sxaffold and other projects that bring together science and art is the idea that we can reconstruct and redefine how scientists and artists might interact," said Sxaffold organizer and Fred Hutch assistant professor Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong, PhD.
This interdisciplinary collaboration may not seem intuitive, but it highlights the mutual value each discipline brings to each other.
"They’re often thought of as completely separate, but in reality, scientists need art to be effective communicators, drawers, designers — effective scientists," said Sinnott-Armstrong. "And artists can benefit from scientists by refining, redefining and restructuring their work. There’s an awesome opportunity to create collaboration and potentially even define new fields that interact between science and art.”
The week kicked off with a Science Communication Mixer open to all Fred Hutch staff and artist applicants. Attendees left sticky notes answering a prompt about the intersection of art and science.
Photos by Connor O'Shaughnessy / Fred Hutch News Service
Participating artists and Fred Hutch researchers shared their work before being paired for the week to explore new ideas, themes and methods as well as develop future collaborative projects that blend art and science.
For Janis Miltenberger, a glassblower based on Lopez Island, Wash., participating in SxAffold was an opportunity to explore the interaction and communication between art and science. “Just talking to the scientists that I bonded with here today, we had so many similarities and very few differences,” she said. “I'm really interested in this [workshop] as a fruitful opportunity to engage with people in the sciences and have it fruit something within me.”
In addition to partnering with a lab for the week, artists toured Fred Hutch’s Shared Resources — a multimillion-dollar infrastructure of advanced facilities, technologies and expertise that most labs couldn’t afford alone. Ranging from cellular imaging to a world-class prevention center, Shared Resources offers investigators in the Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children's Cancer Consortium and at external academic and industry organizations access to leading-edge services tailored to their specific research goals.
As the week came to a close, artists presented their art piece or concept for an art piece in collaboration with their scientific advisor. SxAffold artist Stephanie “Smaack” Maack, who partnered with the Melody Campbell Lab, created an art piece inspired by the hydrophobic and hydrophilic nature of proteins and how they interact with water.
SxAffold artist Stephanie “Smaack” Maack
“After this week, I have a new perspective on how science and art work together,” said Maack. “I used to think about science and art working together in the ways that art makes science more digestible, relatable and accessible. But also, science can take art to a whole new level and vice versa, which I didn't really think about before. We ask all these questions and are thinking about things from a different perspective. The relationship between the two is much more dimensional than I had originally envisioned.”
Rachelle Pierce is a social media specialist at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. With a background in digital marketing and a passion for health communication, she specializes in creating engaging content that educates and informs. Previously, she managed social media for nonprofit organizations and individuals. Reach her at rpierce2@fredhutch.org.
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Are you interested in reprinting or republishing this story? Be our guest! We want to help connect people with the information they need. We just ask that you link back to the original article, preserve the author’s byline and refrain from making edits that alter the original context. Questions? Email us at communications@fredhutch.org
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