Fractal Beauty Beyond Belief

Wakaya – Octorals & Giants, a stunning exhibition featuring Joshua Boger’s photographs from the deep sea and RISD’s electron micrographs, is on view in the Waterman 2nd Floor Gallery from Saturday, September 27 through Friday, October 3.

Simultaneously, the Nature Lab is hosting Beneath the Surface, a complementary exhibition of still, video and scanning electron microscopy images of marine life taken at the Nature Lab.

“We are thrilled to have Joshua Boger’s beautiful work associated with our efforts to help students and faculty explore the biological influences on art and design,” notes Nature Lab Director Neal Overstrom. “The juxtaposition between his nearly human-scale images of corals and the tiny objects shown in our black-and-white micro imagery is part of what makes seeing the two exhibitions together so fascinating.”

Boger, a multitalented multitasker with multiple degrees in chemistry and philosophy, photographed the breathtaking images off the shores of Wakaya Island in Fiji – arguably the most unspoiled place on earth.

Owned and preserved by idealistic entrepreneurs David and Jillian Gilmour, Wakaya is a natural paradise teaming with extraordinary sea life.“I have dived its reefs over 200 times,” Boger says, “spending more than a week in its underwater world – more than, I believe, anyone on earth other than the Fijian dive masters on the island.”

The Wakaya show focuses on the true, unaltered colors and textures from two different sea animals: octocorals (or “soft corals” – see top image, for instance) and giant clams (above).  

Instead of having stony skeletons like most corals, Boger explains, octocorals have gelatinous bodies embedded with spiny calcium carbonate half-moons called "sclerites” that provide rigidity – much like carbon fibers in modern jet wings. 

Giant clams, the largest living bivalve mollusks, can weigh more that 440 lbs and live for 100 years, but are now highly endangered. “Much of the color of the mantles comes from symbiotic dinoflagellate algae that grow inside,” Bolger explains.

Find out more by taking a closer look at both Boger’s photographs and the Nature Lab’s micro images before the shows close on Friday. And come celebrate the beauty of design in nature at the closing reception this Thursday from 6–8 pm.