Following his untimely death in a cycling accident at the age of 59, Vernon Pratt’s entire body of work—including “Three, Four, Five” and numerous other paintings, drawings and sculptures—was transferred to a series of unconditioned warehouses, where they remained...
“Past, Present, Future” represents the variola virus (smallpox), the SARS-CoV-2 virus (the coronavirus that causes COVID-19), and an unknown future viral mutation. False colors are often added to images of viruses to help viewers visualize their structure and...
Saba Taj created this work for the Calla Campaign art exhibition titled "(In)visible Organ," which was held in the spring of 2019 at Duke University. The interactive, multimedia exhibit drew together a diverse group of artists whose works reflected on women’s bodies...
Sponsored by the Duke Engineering Graduate Student Council, the Envisioning the Invisible photo and image competition challenges members of the Duke Engineering community to create visually striking representations of the unseen world around us. These images offer...
While a student at Michigan State University, Gunther received the gift of a weaving loom. Gunther had begun college as an engineering student before switching to the College of Arts and Letters to pursue the study of philosophy; working with the loom, he learned that...
John Hiigli passionately believed in art as an educational tool. As a young artist living in New York City in the late 1970s, his duplex studio space doubled as a French-English preschool, where children modeled clay and painted alongside him as he worked on his own...
Responding to pervasive media images of violence against Black people, Mikael Owunna BME ’12 sought to recast the Black body as eternal in his photo series “Infinite Essence.” Each of the titles in the series is grounded in a specific African myth. To achieve the...
In the 1980s, Victor Salmones (1937-1984) was among the most famous sculptors working in Mexico, and Nello L. Teer III and his wife Janet were introduced to his work at exhibitions in Acapulco and Mexico City, where they traveled frequently from their home in...
"Forming Clouds” alludes to the history of modern information exchange, from early punched tape telegraphy to the 1s and 0s of computer code—and nods to the engineers who work to advance and secure cloud computing. The endless transitions between atmospheric...
Upon winning the Nemmers Prize for her work in theoretical signal processing, Ingrid Daubechies, the James B. Duke Professor of Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering, knew exactly what to do with the prize money: she commissioned artwork from...
Optical artist Anthony Poon was at the vanguard of Singapore's modernist art movement. He experimented with unusually shaped canvases and highly systematic approaches to color in his quest to portray non-traditional subjects like frequency waves. Untitled, 1980...
Time Magazine featured one of Hendricks's photorealistic paintings of the moon for its Aug. 9, 1971 cover. Though Hendricks would soon abandon that early style in favor of abstract expressionism, it's clear from the title of this painting that the heavens remained a...
Raleigh-based artist Julie Anne Greenberg is fascinated by storm systems, and by humankind’s attempts to name, personify and predict them. “There is an attempt to identify, categorize, and understand each system, and we still find ourselves powerless against these...
Works in Progress Mixed media Location: Wilkinson Building Level 0 "Works in Progress" showcases the creative processes within the Pratt community. From chalkboard scribbles to CAD files to architectural renderings, these images give us a peek into the design and/or...
Durham-based sculptor Joe Coates learned welding at age 15 from the aircraft mechanics at Topeka Municipal Airport, where his father was the manager. He used that skill to earn money, buying wrecked cars and repairing them for resale. Soon, he was creating metal...