“Painting with Bacteria Lab prep”

 

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Sustainability is a big topic and one of the main focus in today’s fashion world. With all the synthetic fabric waste and harmful dye, the environment surrounds us has been significantly affected. I strongly think that growing bacteria and use it as an artistic media to do paintings, drawings, dye fabric, etc could be widespread in the future. Personally, I have a passion for making sustainable clothing as a future fashion designer, and I am excited to try this relatively new material/medium myself and to see how difficult it would be. 

One of the articles online has this following picture that I thought it was really amazing and beautiful. By doing bacteria dye, one might not get as bright as the commercial textile dye, but I do think that bacteria dye has its own tone.

And again, I definitely agree that bacteria might offer alternative dyeing methods that are less toxic. The same reading mentioned that the fast fashion market creates tremendous negative effects on our environment such as ‘high energy and water use, significant greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution.’ In contrary, bacteria grown from algae, yeast, animal cells or fungi can be broken down into nontoxic substances and can easily throw away and not affect the environment as much. I am very much inspired by this potential because as Theanine Schiros, assistant professor in the math and science department at F.I.T. said that many of the organisms involved can be grown to fit molds—producing the precise amount of textile needed to create an article of clothing without generating excess material to discard. I can truly see this coming in the future art world. 

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Artists statement:

I think of these four bacteria drawings as four different living environment, and using one material—bacteria—I want to bring the connection to the four. This work explores different relationships between different organisms and places. The first one I drew bacterias, and it serves its role as a beginning. To me, bacteria is something that people don’t want to touch, and they try to avoid as much as they can. Through the first one, I want to express how bacteria is not that scary and also may contribute positively to our living environment. The next three are dandelion, sea jelly, and eyes of a human. Through these three, I want to emphasize how these three different but also the same living environment were affected significantly and thus remind people the beauty of these organisms and try our best to make it last longer.