I’ve had my own laboratory for about 12 years now. Sounds like a lot of years when I think about it, but I generally don’t have much time to think about it. We started off in a very small space – where we learned how to cram a lot of equipment and supplies and people together – and now we’
re in a larger space with a nice view of the lowcountry coastal marshes and we’re still cramm
ing everything and everyone in just the same. We’re a small lab though – in terms of the number of people. I’d like to say the lab has changed along the way – of course the faces have changed and equipment has been replaced and added to and I’m 12 years older than I was – but I’m not so sure those changes are what I’m talking about. I think what we really do is still the same: to take what has been written by others and our own observations and distill them into something to think about, to possibly test, or even take in a new direction. It’s a slow process, sometimes just a dream – and we have to remember (just like with dreams) that if we don’t write our thoughts down right away, that they might just disappear for awhile, maybe even forever. So I guess you could say we have fleeting visions about science, some that prove to be pretty good, and some that might make you wonder “what were they thinking?”. We can only work hard and hope that there are more of the former (remembered visions) than the latter (lost ones).
Recently I’ve been taking a painting class by the aeronautical engineer-turned-artist Matt Overend, and several classes ago Matt asked us to choose a painting and copy it. Since then, I’ve become obsessed
with a Pierre Bonnard painting titled “The Garden” and have been trying to copy it using watercolors. I couldn’t find this painting online (I didn’t really look all that long), but I did find a reproduction. Anyway, after obsessing about this painting 
for weeks I realized that what I was obsessed with was the garden itself, that deep down I thought my very own garden looked the same way. If you squint, I think you can see the similarities…right?
Anyway, while obsessing about this painting and being swamped in the lab at the same time with a sea of microorganisms collected from coral reefs just off the southern coast 
of Puerto Rico (La Parguera), I realized that I squint when I look at my lab too. I’m not sure what painting it looks like when I do that, but I know it helps me to blur the lines between the day-to-day failures and the frustrations and the small discoveries and the enjoyment that I get out of the place and it’s transient inhabitants. So I guess Tales from the Microbial Laboratory is the start of chronicling what I (“we”) see and hear and think about when pondering the laboratory and the world that surrounds it through slits in my ("our") eyes.
Very curious...
Posted by: Rob | 25 March 2006 at 09:45 PM