My participation in the Cool Globe project began with a long-standing desire to use my art as a vehicle to give back to my community. Little did I know, at the outset, how perfectly my artwork would dovetail with this environmental project.

As I began researching solutions to global warming, I came across nanotechnology. I was amazed by the parallels between my creative process and what the literature called “the next Industrial Revolution.” This phrase invoked a 20th century artist who had always inspired and fascinated me, Fernand Léger. His work rose straight out of the Industrial Revolution. It was clear that I had found the right direction for my Cool Globe.

In my artwork, I move between two worlds. I scan a variety of painted surfaces and every-day objects from the macro, analog world, before manipulating these in the micro, digital world of the computer. Afterward, I print my work on canvas or paper.   Nanotechnology also moves between the macro and micro worlds by transferring the assembly production of ‘real world’ factories to a microscopic, molecular-sized universe. And, surprisingly, nanotechnology uses a form of printing: ultra violet lithography and nano imprint lithography can, for example, “print” efficient and durable solar cells.

But the axis parallel between my work and nanotechnology is how we both use replication and generation to achieve a final object. I often refer to my work as “generative art in an Age of Replication” because, like nanotechnology, I take a ‘bite’ out of the DNA of my materials and generate multiple replications to create works of art. Nanotechnology uses molecular machine systems to replicate and build multiple products; and in the process saves energy, reduces waste, eliminates toxic residues, and dramatically lowers production costs.

My first challenge was identifying images that integrated art, technology, and the “next Industrial Revolution.” My version of Léger’s 1924 painting, Femme Au Bouquet, signaled Mother Earth, knowledge, and nature. Water molecules, equations, and landscapes connected environment with technology, and the Légeresque Woman with Microscope completed the cycles of art, science, and our natural world.

Next came the technical application of a flat surface to a sphere. I practiced covering a yoga ball with a smaller version of the canvas, experimenting with different glues and sealants. I glued the center of the canvas around the perimeter of the ball and then cut vertically up and down, molding the canvas to the curved surface. When the cutting caused some images to move, I returned to the design and tweaked it to mimic these dynamic, ongoing changes. I began moving back and forth, between design and application.

In the final two weeks, I spent over 137 hours applying and sealing a 197” x 34” of painted and printed canvas to the final, 5’ diameter globe—truly, from my stepladder, a micro view of our planet earth and a macro view of the molecular-sized wonder of nanotechnology, with the artistic vision and creative process of digital and analog worlds holding us all together.