The colourful work Axonal connections was very popular with viewers at the Tuesday Talk. Based on an MRI image by Randal Moldrich at Queensland Brain Institute, it is a visual representation in French knots of the lobes created by the computer, mapping activity in a mouse's brain. This embroidery is worked on black silk shantung in stranded embroidery cotton, using French knots and padded satin stitch. I used varying numbers of strands of thread and wraps around the needle to create French knots to represent the different-sized lobes in the original image, where larger lobes mean stronger connections.
Making the French knots is a repetitive process – the work took about 40 hours to complete, even though it is only about 12cm x 6cm – and allowed lots of time for meditation. And, of course, listening to the Skeptic Zone podcast, this week featuring an interview with Adam and me.
Fascinating work and story.
ReplyDelete