Minute creatures inspire T-shirts
In an unusual merging of art and science, an arts student has designed a series of T-shirts based on minute plankton.
Swiss born Yael Deer, a Bachelor of Arts and Media student at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology is taking part in a French-based Plankton Art project, an international campaign to highlight their crucial part in the health of oceans.
Deer worked with scientists from the Cawthron Institute in Nelson who are involved in plankton research and become fascinated by the tiny creatures. Using hundreds of photographs she designed five images of plankton to be printed onto T-shirts, as part of an international plankton conference for scientists scheduled in Auckland in July.
Photographs and other artworks of some of the hundreds of families of plankton will be exhibited to mark the Plankton Planet project started in France and involving scientists in New Zealand and the United States.
The aim is to promote awareness of the critical state of plankton in the world’s oceans and their importance not only in the food chain but as oxygen producers.
The project has made Deer a convert to the Plankton Planet movement.
‘‘They are amazing creatures, so tiny yet they produce fifty percent of our oxygen and absorb a huge amount of the world’s carbon dioxide,’’ Deer says.
Plankton are so tiny they can only be seen through a microscope. Deer has chosen to make them large scale, drawn using thin black liner pencils. She hopes her artistic contributions will help promote awareness of the vital importance of plankton.