Where art and science converge

RISD is less selective, accepting students from all disciplines and, like the field as a whole, is more evenly split between people with science degrees and those trained in the arts. Both programs were started in the mid '80s.

After completing her certificate last year, Ms. Vigallon traveled to south-western Sri Lanka. There she worked on a field guide to the Sinharaja rain forest. She calls it a "solve-the-mystery" project, because, in addition to writing and illustrating the guide, she's had to identify creatures not before formally described.

The guide is meant for people visiting Sri Lanka, predicted to join Costa Rica as a top destination for ecotourists, Vigallon says. That was before a tsunami tore through the region two weeks ago. Vigallon left in early December. Though the area she documented was untouched and her work is nearly complete, she wonders when her guide will be published.

There's long been a desire to capture and preserve the natural world in all its ephemeral beauty. Science illustrators point to prehistoric cave drawings as the genesis of their craft.

And while the birds painted by John James Audubon, who is the subject of two recent biographies, may be the best known examples of science illustration, just about any rendering of the natural world can fall under that larger rubric - from the glass flowers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Mass., which date back to the 19th century and were created to help train botanists, to digital media.

In 2001, Montana State University in Bozeman opened the country's first film school devoted to science filmmaking.

Some of the most innovative works that flirt with the line between art and science are by a man who digitally scans moths and prints the images onto oversize pieces of decorative oriental paper.

Joseph Scheer, who teaches printmaking at Alfred University in New York, stumbled into the realm of science while experimenting with a new high-resolution scanner.

When first approached to display his art in a natural history museum, Mr. Scheer balked, fearing his fine-art career would be ruined if he were "labeled a nature person." Most recently, his moths have hung in Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

Caudle of Santa Cruz identifies observation as the trait that links artists and scientists. But Scheer thinks it's something else: "I like scientists because they can be just as obsessive as artists," he said at a recent RISD symposium on the art of the natural history book. A scientist friend - a man after his own heart - has devoted his entire career to studying just one type of insect: the slug moth.

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