Students use microscopes to find their muse

An OSU oil painting class will host their "In and Out of Focus" exhibit Friday

By Sarah Morris Stillwater NewsPress

STILLWATER, Okla. — Elizabeth Sheihing took a closer at sugar to tell two sides of “You Are What You Eat” through an oil painting project at Oklahoma State University.

The senior is one of 10 OSU students that will see their hard work pay off Friday through an “In and Out of Focus” exhibit at OSU’s Microscopy Laboratory.

For the exhibit, Sheihing said her painting reflects her latest interest in the way people eat.

Assistant Art Professor Liz Roth said the exhibit will show off a nine-week project that her students undertook to create paintings that balanced two images, one of a object and a second view of a close up of the object.

The project required students to learn how to work with what they have, such as the OSU community. The students learned to use science to their advantage by finding a sample to put under the microscope.

“It really lets the students get more invested with the work,” Roth said. “They picked the sample, they scanned the image, they painted.”

To create the close up, the class received help from the OSU Microscopy Laboratory. Established in 1977, the lab is the central microscope lab for the OSU campus , other universities and companies, such as Nomadics.

“I think it is a great testament of the education at OSU that the different departments can interact to help students learn. Not many students have that,” Sheihing said.

To take a closer peek, Charlotte Ownby, director of the lab, said the students used her lab’s scanning electron microscope to magnify the object being painted, such as sugar. The microscope can magnify objects anywhere from 10-times to 1 million times.

“It was really cool to get to use the microscope. Not to often do you get to use a $2 million piece of equipment,” Sheihing, a senior psychology major of Edmond said. “It was pretty cool.”

Ownby said it was the first time another university department has used her lab for a joint classroom project.

“Its a kind of thing we enjoy doing because it helps show students especially undergraduate students what we look like,” Ownby said. “As scientists, it was really interesting to see what someone from a different background would do with the images.”

After receiving samples from the students, the lab prepared the samples for the students to study under the microscope.

Jennifer Whitfield of Guthrie said she used the lab to study bark from a Bradford Pear tree in her front yard. The study helped her create “Intertwining Life.”

“It was a really fun project and it was my first oil painting class so that was new plus introducing this to it. I liked it because I like making more abstract art so it was really easy seeing it my way and making it bright and easy,” the junior studio art major said.

Whitfield said the project is her first artwork to display.

“It’s exciting. It makes me feel I am actually going somewhere,” Whitfield said.

Both Whitfield and Sheihing said family and friends would be in attendance to view their artwork Friday. The exhibit will be from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday.