The Universe Within Us

By Tina York

The Universe Within Us is a book of 54 original paintings by Tina York, based on scanning electron micrographs (photographs taken through a scanning electron microscope -- images enlarged up to 70,000 times) of all systems of the human body. It relates the microcosm that is us, to the macrocosm of the universe.
This is also a book of realism and abstraction -- of fact and fantasy. It relates many anatomical structures and physiological processes to the universe outside of us. Although abstraction is often difficult to understand, here it is clearly presented. In various degrees each painting shows its realistic roots and its departure into fantasy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tina York
• Release date: Jan 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311545619

Tina York

Tina began her professional life at age six, concertising in Eastern Europe as violinist child prodigy. Not content with the inherent limitations the performing arts afford, she wanted more, and one day found herself fascinated with color, design, and especially, fine arts painting. She became a full time student in an art apprenticeship similar to those of the time of Ghirlandaio (Michelangelo's teacher) ...that lasted eight intensive years, during which she exhibited widely, won several prizes and sold phenomenally.But this, too, was not enough for her insatiable hunger to know more. She went to college, pre-med, completed the required four years of studies in just two and a half, graduated with honors, and continued her formal education in medical school. After three years there and five additional years of private studies in astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and philosophy, she had at last attained the knowledge that would give her the opportunity to do the work she felt compelled to do. Since then she has written two books, painted 41 important commissions, exhibited here and in different countries, was published here and abroad, won more prizes and completed several intellectually demanding series of paintings.Working in her own styles, which she calls macro realism and abstract symbolism, she gives her imagination free reign. Employing such techniques as double canvas, multilevel construction, sculptured line, etc., her mostly three-dimensional, vibrant, dynamic and dramatic paintings deal with a variety of subject matter and can be found in many important collections throughout the world.

Book preview

The Universe Within Us

Copyright © 2015 Tina York

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from Tina York.

All paintings © 2015 by Tina York

All micrographs reproduced with permission from Richard G Kessel / Randy H Kardon (The University of Iowa): Tissues and Organs: a text-atlas of scanning electron microscopy – published by W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979.

All drawings, illustrations and schematics reproduced with permission from

L.C. Junqueira and J. Carneiro : Basic Histology – published by Lange Medical Publications, 1975.

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The Universe Within Us is a book of original paintings based on scanning electron micrographs (photographs taken through a scanning electron microscope -- images enlarged up to 70,000 times) of all systems of the human body. It relates the microcosm that is us, to the macrocosm of the universe.

This is also a book of realism and abstraction -- of fact and fantasy. It relates many anatomical structures and physiological processes to the universe outside of us. Although abstraction is often difficult to understand, here it is clearly presented. In various degrees each painting shows its realistic roots and its departure into fantasy.

Researched exhaustively, the complex material is presented in a concise and straightforward manner.

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Every micrograph in this book inspired a corresponding painting, and in each instance, all micrographs and paintings are connected and identified in the following manner:

The first micrograph, "STRATIFIED SQUAMOUS EPITHELIUM" (1A) is followed and represented by the painting, "SENEXUS" (1B)

The second micrograph, SIMPLE COLUMNAR EPITHELIUM (2A) is followed and represented by the painting, MONOLITHIC SENTINELS -- V2/6002 (2B) etc.

PREFACE

My field is planetary exploration, and what comes first to most people’s minds when I say that is images of other worlds. They see the swirling Great Red Spot of Jupiter, which looks, in a colleague’s words, like an abstract painting by God. Jupiter’s satellite, Io, with varied and beautiful hues made from sulfur continuously erupting from the moon’s interior; the beautiful rings of Saturn -- not just six nearly circular rings shown in textbooks, but tens of thousands of rings, some twisted and some kinked; the bleak, nearly solid face of Io’s sister satellite, Europa; or the bizarre, broken landscape of Uranus’ moon Miranda.

We have now explored every planet known to the ancients (Mercury through Saturn), and indeed, voyaged beyond to Uranus and Neptune. Our robot explorers are on their way out of our solar system. In addition, we discovered more than two score new worlds. What will the new century bring? Landings on other worlds -- perhaps humans settling beyond Earth. Clearly, the future of humanity as a multi-planet species will be determined within the next hundred years and our visions will grow ever broader and ever deeper as we look wider and farther into the universe.

James Burke noted in his remarkable television series Connections: Why are we taught that we gain insight into the experience of beauty only through art, when this is but a limited and secondhand representation of the infinitely deeper experience to be gained by direct observation of the world around us? For such observation to become significant it must be made in the light of knowledge. The sense of wonder and excitement to be derived from watching the way an insect’s wing functions or an amoeba divides or a fetus is formed comes in its greatest intensity only to those who have been given the opportunity to find out how these things happen. Burke’s emphasis on connections teaches us to appreciate the connection between the detail of the very small and the process of the very large. Burke seems to reject the other connection: art and reality, but Tina York’s brilliance of macroscopic illustration and her photographs of the microscopic world take Burke’s connection one step farther to show the interplay between the image of art and the detail of reality.

Tina York’s work is a remarkable and exciting contribution to the understanding of connections between the large and the small. She has a unique vantage point: as a student of medical science, who understands the many images from the microscopic world, and as an artist able to visualize new worlds and new vistas. But it is not just that she can see both, which is remarkable. It is that she can connect them: the microscopic imagery to the macroscopic vision. In Tina York’s work the roots are clearly in reality, but rather than to render the reality incongruous, she builds on it for future vision.

I have been particularly fascinated with Tina’s work because of my professional devotion to seeing alien worlds and connecting them with my own. In my profession I have been continually surprised and delighted by the cross-cultural connections by the world of fiction and fact, art and photography, imagination and logic, analysis and synthesis. Whether it is the great deans of science fiction who inspired the scientists to come up with their exciting stories, it really doesn’t matter. The process is what matters, and it brings out the best in us, as individuals and as a species. Tina York’s contribution in this area is similar, because she mixes that creativity with the attention to detail and to fact. From Stonehenge to visions of an organic ocean on Titan; from the optimism of the first landing on Mars to the pessimism of atomic war on Earth; from thoughts about the circulation of water on Earth to thoughts about the future of the universe -- this is an enormous range of artistic expression. Add to that the electron microscopic pictures of different areas of the body and the range becomes even broader.

As you look at the paintings juxtaposed with the photographs in this book, you may find your mind intensely concentrating on the detail of what you are looking at—both to understand the connections between them and to understand the details in the individual images. At the same time your mind may wander to all of the other connections introduced by the imagery.

Louis D. Friedman

Co-Founder/Executive Director Emeritus The Planetary Society Planetary Society

Co-leader of the Asteroid Redirect Mission program for the Keck Institute for Space Studies at Caltech.

Introduction

I remember so well how it happened. I had come to medical school because I wanted -- with all the passion and desire of someone who had found her true calling at last -- to become a physician, a surgeon, probably a thoracic surgeon, or better yet, a general experimental surgeon.

I dreamed of future organ transplants: heart, lungs, liver ... to make a human being whole again. For most of my life I had been at war with the inevitability of death, and by transplanting organs that would not, could not, wear out, I could achieve immortality. Oh, I wanted that! How I wanted that!!! My drive to achieve this was so compelling that I was accepted immediately at the first and only medical school to which I applied. I suppose my enthusiasm during that fateful admission interview was thoroughly convincing: that I would remake this world -- no less.

And so, here I was, from early morning until after midnight studying medicine, together with my class of 178 medical students. Nothing else existed. Anatomy lectures and laboratory. Histology lectures and laboratory. Biochemistry and Physiology, and Neurology, each with laboratory, and Psychology, in the first year. And in the second year Microbiology, Pharmacology and Pathology with their laboratories -- all these wonderful, wonderful subjects ... . It was a fascinating experience. And there came a time when I couldn't wait to use all this accumulating knowledge on the patients we were already diagnosing. I desperately loved my future profession.

Something was happening during all those hours in lecture hall and laboratory that completely captured my attention and imagination. As I was studying histology and pathology slides, exposed more and more to diagrams, computer printouts of all sorts, photographs, and especially scanning electron micrographs, I became overwhelmed by what I saw: here, in our humble human body, exist not only tissue, blood and bone, no, in us exist also the most beautiful, magnificent landscapes, landscapes which are reminiscent of our planet Earth and other planets of our solar system and beyond.

In our body I began to see Saturn and Jupiter, gaseous, gigantic, radiant, with their many rings and moons; small red solid Mars and clouded Venus; distant icy planet Pluto; asteroids Vesta and Astraea and Hidalgo and Feodosia; comets, meteorites, eclipses, zodiacal light; and, deep in space, galaxies and nebulae ... . Close-ups of all of these, and more. And of course I also saw dawn and dusk on Earth and day and night; clouds, fog, rain, snow, ice -- the quiet and cold of winter, and the warmth and laughter of summer -- sunshine, grass, trees and flowers, water, rocks and blue sky ... I saw it all in us, it is all here in us, in an infinite array of shapes. --------

As I was listening to lectures my imagination began to form images of landscapes far away and yet so near. Something inside me compelled me to see color and shapes so different in meaning from those observed. I still sought immortality for our human species, but ideologically, I began to see it in a different way. It occurred to me how much we resemble that which exists again and again outside of us, how similar we are to other natural things -- how much we are part of a whole and total universe. I wondered if perhaps immortality exists already within each and everyone of us?

Perhaps it was my genetic blueprint, or my early environment, or the intense eight-year-art-apprenticeship I had behind me by then, that persuaded me to deviate from my chosen path to become a surgeon. I don't know. I only know that I had to paint it all.

This is what I have done here: I took from scanning electron micrographs and other base materials