The Bio-Art Mixer is an initiative I started in fall 2017 in collaboration with Heidi Hehnly, Ph.D. Assistant Professor at SUNY Upstate Medical University and the Canary Lab at VPA.   The Bio-Art Mixer is a lecture and socializing event where art and life sciences meet, where faculty and graduate students are invited to share their research, to get ideas for their new projects, or to simply view their own work from the perspective of a different discipline. Every meeting we have two to four short presentations and after that time for informal conversations.

Our ambition is to make the Bio-Art Mixer a foundation for future exhibitions, demonstrations, and new collaborative projects involving art and the life sciences, to inspire interdisciplinary research across the universities in the region, and to engage local communities. The event became popular very quickly and the audience increased. The first two mixers involved faculty and graduate students from local universities. For the 2018’s fall semester, we plan to invite presenters from multiple universities in New York State, including Paul Vanouse (University at Buffalo, NY) Suzanne Anker (School of Visual Arts, NY), Kathy High (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY) and others.

Eventually, we will produce a bio-art exhibition, which will feature works by artists mostly from New York State (an excellent resource for that work), by that inducing development of local research and events open to the larger Central New York State community.