Dr. Niall Hamilton

Jackson Pollock dripped paint on canvas.  Picasso, Braque, Duchamp and the other cubists broke the world into little rectangular planes. Andy Warhol set up a few soup cans. Niall Hamilton has his own style of art. A Petri dish of agar is his canvas, spores are his paint, and a sterile loop is his brush.

I first saw Niall’s work at microbialart.com. Then I saw it posted at the website of Seed magazine. I immediately thought, now here is a guy that I would like to know more about.

"Butterfly", Cladosporium herbarum, Fusarium sp., and Rhodotorula sp.

Niall Hamilton (it’s pronounced just like “Neal”) currently practices medicine, having recently completed medical school. He works in internal medicine, and it’s keeping him fairly busy. Hopefully not too busy to occasionally dabble with a flamed loop.

How exactly does one get started in making images from living matter? Niall explains his start this way, “I wanted to create a unique greeting card that reflected my passion for my work and my passion for science. The design worked and looked pretty good, so I continued trying to create interesting images.”

Aspergillus zen garden

This kind of art is unusual and interesting, especially since the exact form of the final work cannot be completely controlled. It might be a bit risky too–especially for someone who doesn’t know much about microorganisms or how to properly handle fungi.

Is making microbial art something anyone can do? Dr. Hamilton is clear on this.  “To be honest, I would say no. There are many potentially pathogenic microbes out there and also with the creation of the microbial pieces, there should be proper provision for their safe disposal (i.e. autoclave). I think it would be unsafe for untrained individuals, especially outside of the laboratory setting, to pursue this type of microbial art.”

Turtles

Several of the common environmental microbes can cause disease, some fairly serious illnesses.  “You’ll note the majority of the other microbial artists are trained microbiologists or biochemists, ” he adds.

Dr. Hamilton uses his own fungi on his plates. “I isolate them myself,” he explains, “I worked as an industrial and environmental microbiologist, so the species I use are all environmental isolates, but as mentioned above, many of these can pose health hazards. All my art was done within a fully-equipped microbiology laboratory.”

Apple Tree

Hamilton uses both fungi and bacteria in his creations, and each no doubt has its own advantages and disadvantages. “I have to say I’m rather envious of other artists’ work with bioluminescent bacteria or slime molds,” he offers, adding, “both of which I think are very visually impressive.  But, I haven’t had the opportunity to work with them (simply because I haven’t isolated them). Bacteria I like for the fast growth and clean edges, but they generally are a lot more limited in range of color and texture than the fungi.”

Dr. Hamilton is pretty busy with his hospital work these days. Here’s hoping he finds the time to continue making fungally-derived works of art, and find new ways to use microfungi to create evocative images. An agar plate is a simple thing, yet look at what a creative mind can do with one. Note: All works depicted in this post are copyright Niall Hamilton and are used with his permission.

Aspergillus (literally!)