The Eyes of an Artist Through the Eyes of an ROV

RCA : The Eyes of an Artist Through the Eyes of an ROV: VISIONS’21 Catherine Gill

Only the most fortunate of artists get to participate in such a unique and exciting experience, that of creating artwork aboard a research vessel. As a student member of the science party aboard the R/V Thompson during this year’s University of Washington (UW) VISIONS’21 cruise, I was able not only to learn ocean science alongside research scientists and engineers, but to paint and sketch for Legs 3 & 4 of the 37-day cruise. My own artist eyes, those of an outdoor painter of land-based Northwest landscape, were introduced to a striking array of new shapes, colors, and textures. As an Oceanography student at the UW, I learned how to work with research scientists, to work in the labs conducting analysis of samples collected from the

to be part of this new community. The ROV Jason, with its many cameras, served as my new set of remote eyes on the seafloor and introduced me to a new type of landscape: that of the deep ocean, hydrothermal vents, deep sea biology, lava flows - shapes and colors that I have never even dreamed of. I spent my shipboard time participating in two daily four-hour shifts in the control van that monitors all the ROVs cameras and activities. I became acquainted with the engineering necessary to get the ROV off the ship and lowered down to the seafloor to depths in excess of 2500 meters. I was awed by how many engineers and crew were needed to do this, at all hours of the day and night, and all weather. Jason was not just my new eyes, but also a transport, and a scientific tool. The ocean floor astounded me with its color and texture and mystery. Aside from the data, and the actual shapes of what was before my eyes, there was an atmosphere of such silence and tranquility in this deep-down environment. What I felt was as important as what I saw. A feeling of reverence, respect, and awe for this beautiful, unique, and complex world - this feeling was always what I came away with, and what steered all the marks that I made as I sketched and painted. What is the role of all this unknown, extreme, and ancient world so far down from my human world? And how much of our world community has yet to know of it, be excited and awed by it, and contemplate how it relates to our planet and other worlds? I am now excited and inspired by this new expanded version of landscape, that of the deep sea, as well as by