Flaitz digs into her panels, creating “fissures” or deep crevices that hint at further worlds beyond, then builds up her surfaces with various compounds, salts, resins and glazes to bring to life geological landscapes that man has created but until her work could not truly inhabit. “For all the benefits of digital technology,” says Flaitz, “the machines man creates literally shut him off from direct experience, reducing everything to the virtual world of light under glass. Within my lifetime, humanity has become beholden to a man-made world we cannot touch or feel. But once we get down to the molecular level, we find that the tidy clean chips and boards that run and rule our days are really organic minerals subject to the stresses of natural geophysics, and the illusion of perfection quickly breaks down, replaced by a natural beauty that is profound, chaotic and much more interesting.”
While the final pieces themselves look like they occurred naturally, the work required to make them seem so is anything but a simple process. Single panels can take weeks or even months to layer enough to create the desired effect, and the combination of sometimes volatile materials often requires the artist to be as much chemist as painter or sculptor.
Flaitz has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently in Cologne, Germany. She holds a Masters in Fine Arts from the University of Wales in Cardiff, Great Britain and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from the prestigious College of Ceramics at Alfred University in New York. She and her family live in Newburgh, New York.

This article is an excerpt from the exhibition program.

Cris Orfescu was born in Romania and has a strong science background common for so many from the former Eastern Bloc. But he is also a self taught artist and that part of him has blossomed since he immigrated to Los Angeles. He blends science and art in what he calls NanoArt. Orfescu provides high-resolution electron scans of nanosculptures he creates and structures occurring naturally, and encourages artists to alter the images and create even more new NanoArt.

I am the author of an upcoming book, The New Polymath, which features nanotechnology. A polymath is Greek for a Renaissance person like Leonardo Da Vinci or Ben Franklin, good at many disciplines. The New Polymath, in my book, is an enterprise which amalgamates 3,5,10 strands of infotech, biotech, nanotech, cleantech, healthtech to create innovative new solutions. I am a former Gartner analyst and write an innovation blog which catalogs over 40 categories of technology from mobile computing to genetics. I had been aware of Orfescu’s NanoArt festivals and thought it would be appreciative to include his work in the section on nanotech.

I have another chapter which imagines all the hundreds of innovators profiled in the book brought together at a conference in Italy. And, as in the movie Field of Dreams, 10 Polymaths from history show up at the conference, and Michelangelo shows interest in nanoart.

Indeed the book ends as follows:

In another realm, Michelangelo looked down and saw the Piazza della Signoria grow more crowded with tourists, and he turned his attention back to reinterpreting David in nanoart. Then he sighed that six centuries later he still had to worry about new masterpieces Leonardo might create in this new art form.

My book comes out in June from John Wiley and Co. You can preorder now at Amazon. Also, you can see on-going excerpts on the Facebook page and the LinkedIn group for the book.

Invigorating as NanoArt is, I think you will enjoy reading about other innovators in corporate labs and also in places you may not expect much innovation – in the farms of Ireland, the streets of Estonia, the hills of Macedonia and the backroads of Rwanda.

"NanoFlower", nanosculpture by Cris Orfescu

The NanoArtK12 (TM) program has been launched by NanoArt21 in collaboration with The Nanotechnology Group. The purpose of this worldwide program is to support the education of the new generations of artists and scientists and to promote the art-science-technology intersections and NanoArt for a better youth development. Please read about NanoArt here.

Before you start your NanoArt project, we suggest you download the Nanoscience Interactive Learning Module for NanoArtK12TM Program prepared by Judith LightFeather, founder of The Nanotechnology Group. You will find plenty of nano-related information by following the links. Also, you could click on these links to read about Nanotechnology and NanoArt. And if you would like to have more fun while you are learning about nanotechnology click on these links to play the games NanoQuest and NanoPool. You must have Adobe Shockwave installed on your computer to be able to play the games. You can install it for free if you click here.