Before there was seaweed artwork everywhere, Josie Iselin was developing a technique in the 1990s to use a flatbed scanner as a camera, capturing highly detailed images of objects from nature. After developing a niche as a seaweed artist, she became a science communicator, writing multiple books – some, like The Curious World of Seaweed, illustrated with her own stunning images – about science.
Iselin, who lives in San Francisco, interacts with seaweeds mostly as a beachcomber (and also swimming and snorkeling). She grew up sailing and swimming in New York before relocating to California, where she earned her MFA in photography at San Francisco State. She speaks about her work at two upcoming events, including the seventh annual California Seaweed Festival, in Monterey.
Weekly: When you started out using the scanner as a camera, was it a wild thing to do?
Iselin: A few people were using it, almost as an extension of Xerox art. As a photographer, I learned to use it to make really beautiful scans, almost portraits of things in the natural world.
I did a docent training in Bolinas in 2008, and that’s when I first noticed: No one was talking about the marine algae, yet that was most of what was there on the rocks.
Everyone wants to learn about nudibranchs or starfish or octopus, but it became clear to me that this was a really underrecognized, but foundational, organism.
I started using a transparency adapter to push light through. I could capture this translucency, and real beauty of the seaweeds, that I am still completely, passionately blown away by.
You are trained as an artist, but you’ve written scientific books. Have you ever studied science?
I have no academic scientific training. I have come, through artmaking, to be very invested in and pretty expert in marine algae. Getting deep in the pixels of marine algae, I was trying to let these organisms speak for themselves. I realized I needed to know their story.
Do plants on land get most of the attention?
The land-based, terrestrial world gets represented so much more than the oceans. I call it the lid of the tide. It’s easy to hike into the forest, so it’s easy to study the forest. You have birds in your backyard, we have squirrels on the street.
There is a certain power to not being a scientist; I haven’t been trained in a certain vocabulary or mindset.
But you do some science communication work, like Above/Below, a series of web-based books (and now a printed book) focused on the kelp forest, that you developed with designer Marianna Leuschel.
We met and immediately it became Above/Below, bringing art and science together, using our design chops to bring the kelp forest to a broader community. Over 54,000 people have been to our site, bullkelp.info.
Is there a case to be made that the kelp forest is not just important, but beautiful – and is that a good enough reason to protect it?
Absolutely. We feel passionate that the art side of the equation is as powerful as the science.
It sounds like you spend a lot of time now in scientific circles, attending Phycological Society of America conferences.
It’s an interesting thing when you get into a conference of scientists. You show them a book of beautiful imagery; they send it to their mother and say, “This is why I do what I do. It’s so spectacular.” Then you hear, “It has a complicated history and lifecycle, and the reproductive patches called sori… ” This [interdisciplinary collaboration] is a really powerful way to work.
You also sell notecards and shower curtains of your seaweed prints. I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen fine art shower curtains.
I was in the shower at one point thinking about seaweed. Then I was at the printer when they happened to be making a one-off spinnaker. You need the right fabric to do it, and it’s local – sewn and printed right here.
For $200, for art that lasts for years – I think it’s a great deal. It’s just a really fun way to connect with my audience. They make me happy and they make other people happy, and it gets me to the post office and I like my post office workers very much.
JOSIE ISELIN presents at the California Seaweed Festival in a panel discussion at 12:30pm Saturday, Oct. 24. She speaks about her books at 3pm Sunday, Oct. 25 at the First Theatre, Scott and Pacific streets, Monterey. Free. josieiselin.com.