When I was in college in the 1980's, I studied chemical engineering, with a biochemistry concentration. I worked during my senior year at Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor, MI. I was a technician in the pilot plant, where we grew cultures of streptomyces and actinomyces, or soil bacteria. These bacteria produce antibiotics and chemotherapy agents. It's a numbers game. If you grow enough of them, you eventually discover a strain with medicinal properties. By now, just about every accessible soil has been cultured and tested. But back then, we were still hopeful in our efforts to discover the next major class of antibiotics or cancer treatments.
We used state of the art equipment to measure and control basic things like temperature, pH, agitation rate and length of fermentation while we grew these bacterial cultures. So when I saw these Foxboro controllers from a Ford Motor Company steam engine, a flood of memories came to me. This was the beginning of the engineering phase of my life. (I always knew there would be an art phase, but I was 100% committed to engineering in the 1980's and 1990's.) I was at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. I moved away from MI to pursue my career in 1983, and haven't lived there since. But standing there looking at these gauges, I had to think. Did I do it? Did I measure up? I loved all of my experiences, but who decides what to measure and control? Who decides what is a good measure?
The painting is oil on panel, attached with velcro, and it can easily be removed if the collector would prefer to take it to their own framer and frame it traditionally. This piece is 10-1/4" x 8-3/4" x 2-5/8" framed.
When I was in college in the 1980's, I studied chemical engineering, with a biochemistry concentration. I worked during my senior year at Warner Lambert/Parke-Davis in Ann Arbor, MI. I was a technician in the pilot plant, where we grew cultures of streptomyces and actinomyces, or soil bacteria. These bacteria produce antibiotics and chemotherapy agents. It's a numbers game. If you grow enough of them, you eventually discover a strain with medicinal properties. By now, just about every accessible soil has been cultured and tested. But back then, we were still hopeful in our efforts to discover the next major class of antibiotics or cancer treatments.
We used state of the art equipment to measure and control basic things like temperature, pH, agitation rate and length of fermentation while we grew these bacterial cultures. So when I saw these Foxboro controllers from a Ford Motor Company steam engine, a flood of memories came to me. This was the beginning of the engineering phase of my life. (I always knew there would be an art phase, but I was 100% committed to engineering in the 1980's and 1990's.) I was at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, MI. I moved away from MI to pursue my career in 1983, and haven't lived there since. But standing there looking at these gauges, I had to think. Did I do it? Did I measure up? I loved all of my experiences, but who decides what to measure and control? Who decides what is a good measure?
The painting is oil on panel, attached with velcro, and it can easily be removed if the collector would prefer to take it to their own framer and frame it traditionally. This piece is 10-1/4" x 8-3/4" x 2-5/8" framed.