3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
2 ABSTRACTS
Feeling the heat | Got dirt? Get fit | IUN research-
ers find proteins that protect against colitis |
Super-resolution, super vision | Proximity could
be key to healing prayer | Bookmarks
26 MARGINAL POLITICS
by Lesa Petersen
29 PLAYLISTS FOR LIFE
by Nicole Kauffman
31 MUSICAL JOURNEY OF A LIFETIME
6 LOOKING FORWARD: A Q&A WITH
JORGE V. JOSÉ
9 A 7% SOLUTION
by Eric Schoch
32 A CONSUMING STATE OF MIND
by Jeremy Shere
12 MULTIPLE CHOICE
by Leigh Krietsch Boerner
36 UNDER THREAT
by Elisabeth Andrews
16 ANIMAL LEARNING
by Sara Schrock
39 KNOW THY [SEXUAL] SELF
by Karen Garinger
41 RISK’S BENEFITS
20 WHY WE WALK THIS WAY
by Jeremy Shere
22 GOOD VIBRATIONS
24 ‘HUMANITY WHERE NONE EXISTS’
42 UNFRIEND MY HEART
by Lauren J. Bryant
46 BODY LANGUAGE, ROBOT
STYLE
by John Schwarb
49 SECOND LOOK
[FRONT COVER] Manners, Culture and Dress of the Best American Society by Richard A. Wells (Springfield, Mass.: Richardson & Co., 1893); Decorum: A
Practical Treatise on Etiquette and Dress of the Best American Society by Richard A. Wells (Chicago: J.A. Ruth, 1877); True Politeness, or, The Book of Etiquette,
for Ladies (London: Darton and Clark, 1838 – 1845). Courtesy The Lilly Library, IU Bloomington. Photo by Ann Schertz [INSIDE FRONT COVER] Cover detail from
Life and Its Purposes: A Book for Young Ladies by William Thayer Makepeace (Edinburgh: Gall & Inglis; London: Houlston & Wright; 1857 – 1869). Courtesy The
Lilly Library, IU Bloomington. [TOP] Detail from Down With Escapism by Caleb Weintraub, 2006, acrylic on wood, 84" x 96"
5. n A B S T R AC TS
ImagesbyJimPowers,JaneStout,andEricWorkman
Feeling the heat
After a summer of scorching temperatures
across much of the United States, Dan
Johnson’s research is “hot,” so to speak.
“Heat waves are a growing concern, and
current climate models indicate they will
increase in duration and intensity,” says
Johnson, a climate researcher and assistant
professor of geography in the School of
Liberal Arts at Indiana University – Purdue
University Indianapolis.
Heat increases will happen “especially in
the mid-latitudes, of which Indiana and the
Midwest are a part,” he says. “One of the
most likely disasters to strike the Central
Indiana region is an extreme heat event of
considerable duration and strength.”
Johnson and colleagues in the Institute
for Research and Social Issues at IUPUI and
at the Centers for Disease Control are using
a three-year, $419,220 grant from NASA to
study extreme heat vulnerabilities in U.S.
cities.
Johnson says the majority of people don’t
recognize heat as a dangerous threat but in
fact, “heat waves are known to kill hundreds
of people in the United States every year,
and they are the leading cause of weather-
related fatalities.” Heat-related deaths
outstrip the combined effects of hurricanes,
tornadoes, lightning, and flash floods.
With colleagues and students, Johnson is
currently conducting studies on the impact
of heat waves on vulnerable populations
within urban areas, including Phoenix, Phila-
delphia, Dayton, and Indianapolis. Vulner-
able populations include the very young, the
very old, and low-income areas where air
conditioning is sparse.
The researchers are using complex statis-
tical modeling tools and computer visualiza-
tion as well as satellite-based imagery to
identify individual “hot spots” within cities
and develop vulnerability maps based on
past extreme heat events.
If we are ill-prepared for longer, more
intense heat waves, Johnson says, the re-
sults could be “catastrophic.” The research
team’s goal is to develop tools to assist
emergency personnel in responding to heat-
wave incidents. They hope to have an impact
on lowering heat-related mortality and the
associated economic costs of the heat-relat-
ed health effects on at-risk populations.
What affects urban dwellers’ fitness levels
most? Good sidewalks? Adequate outdoor
lighting?
Guess again. It’s the “interior condition” of
their homes. That’s the conclusion reached by
NiCole Keith, associate professor in the Depart-
ment of Physical Education at Indiana Univer-
sity – Purdue University Indianapolis.
“At the end of the day, the interior condition
of their houses seemed to be the only thing af-
fecting their physical activity,” says Keith. “It
was not at all what we expected.”
Keith’s study involved 998 African Ameri-
cans ages 49 – 65 who lived in St. Louis and
participated in the African American Health
longitudinal study, which began in 2000. Afri-
can Americans, notes Keith, are disproportion-
ally affected by risk factors for cardiovascular
disease. Physical activity can reduce the likeli-
hood that people will develop risk factors for
cardiovascular disease and also reduce the ef-
fect of the risk factors when they exist. African
Americans, however, have relatively low rates
of physical activity.
The study found that the inside of subjects’
homes had more to do with higher physical
activity levels than the sidewalks, lighting, and
other elements.
Keith says efforts to increase physical activ-
ity rates among city-dwellers may need to be
taken inside. Much attention has been given to
improving sidewalks and other aspects of the
built environment outside, which Keith agrees
is worthwhile, but if people already are active
inside their homes, researchers should look at
ways to take advantage of that activity.
“If you spend your day dusting, cleaning,
doing laundry, you’re active,” Keith says. “This
will inform interventions. A person won’t take
30 minutes to go for a walk, but they’ll take 30
minutes to clean.”
The study used a combination of self-
assessments and objective assessments to
gauge participants’ perceptions of their neigh-
borhood and residences. Researchers based
in St. Louis rated the interior and exterior of
the dwellings and immediate vicinity, including
such things as cleanliness, furnishings, noise,
air quality, and conditions of the dwelling and
those of nearby buildings.
The seasonally adjusted Yale Physical
Activity Scale was used to assess physical
activity. The scale was adjusted to take into
consideration the self-assessments and objec-
tive assessments along with demographic,
socioeconomic, health conditions, and physical
measures involving subjects.
Keith said the findings were unexpected and
raise more questions: “Are the types of people
who take care of their bodies the same types of
people who take care of their homes?”
Keith presented her findings at the American
College of Sports Medicine annual meeting held
in June, 2010. She was one of more than 30
researchers from Indiana University campuses
who participated in the annual meeting. Co-au-
thors of the study are Daniel Clark, IU Center for
Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute;
and Douglas K. Miller, of the IU Center for Aging
Research, the Regenstrief Institute, and director
of the African American Health Project.
Researchers at the Indiana University School of Medicine at IU North-
west have identified proteins that provide protection to mice suffer-
ing from inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), also known as colitis. An
article by the researchers, Roman Dziarski, professor of microbiology
and immunology, and Dipika Gupta, associate professor of biochemistry
and molecular biology, was featured on the cover of the journal Cell Host
& Microbe in August.
The intestinal immunity proteins found in the mice, referred to as
peptidoglycan recognition proteins (PGRPs), are also found in humans.
These proteins, secreted by mucous membranes and skin, are potent
bactericidal agents and constitute a first line of defense against bacterial
infections.
Studies suggest that inflammatory bowel disease — the chronic in-
flammation of the gastrointestinal tract — affects one in 500 people.
“Many people are affected by colitis and, unfortunately, we don’t
know the cause,” says Dziarski. “To try to help people with this disease,
we first need to know what causes it and how it happens.”
Dziarski and Gupta have conducted more than 15 years of research to
understand colitis and how the PGRPs play a role in protecting the body,
including earlier published research that identified a role for the proteins
in arthritis. In the current study, the researchers removed each of the
four PGRP genes, one at a time, from the mice to understand the func-
tionality of each protein.
“By inactivating each gene, we were able to see what happened to
the mouse if they didn’t have the immunity protein,” Dziarski says. “As
we expected, by inactivating the proteins, the mouse became much more
sensitive to colitis. If the mice are more sensitive to colitis and don’t have
the gene, then this means the gene
protects the host from developing
colitis.”
Dziarski and Gupta found that
the PGRPs influence the normal mi-
crobial flora in the gut. Deficiencies
in individual PGRPs result in signifi-
cant changes in the colon’s normal
bacterial flora. Because bacterial
flora in the gut can also have an
influence on inflammatory diseases
elsewhere in the body’s system
such as in joints or the lungs, the
effects of PGRPS on intestinal flora
could have consequences in other
inflammatory diseases as well.
Gupta notes the colitis symptoms in mice were very similar to what
a human would experience. “We believe these proteins could open up
unexplored medical research,” he says. “Future research on how to
stimulate cells to overproduce these proteins, or ways to use them in the
development of new drugs, may help in the treatment of patients with
many diseases, including HIV/AIDs or those with compromised immune
systems.”
Dziarski and Gupta’s collaborators include IU Northwest researchers
Sukumar Saha, Xuefang Jing, Shin Yong Park, Shiyong Wang, and
Xinna Li.
Anew laser-equipped microscope at Indiana
University Bloomington’s Light Microscopy
Imaging Center makes it possible to examine
biological samples with unprecedented detail
in three dimensions.
The $1.2 million DeltaVision OMX super-
resolution microscope from Applied Precision
(Issaquah, Wash.) was paid for entirely with
funds from the American Recovery and Rein-
vestment Act of 2009, through a National Insti-
tutes of Health program that supports high-end
instrumentation at American centers of higher
education.
“It’s a fantastic and unique acquisition for
our university,” says IU Bloomington cell biolo-
gist Claire Walczak, the imaging center’s execu-
tive director. “This super-resolution microscope
is one of only 16 in the world. It’s part of our
vision to bring state-of-the-art technology to
IU’s life-sciences researchers, to enable them to
address questions they did not have the ability
to ask previously, due to the lack of appropriate
technologies.”
Walczak is a professor of biochemistry and
molecular biology in the Medical Sciences
Program in Bloomington, which is associated
with the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
Walczak also holds an adjunct appointment in
the Department of Biology and is a member of
the biochemistry program. The new microscope
is exceptionally fast in collecting images of
a biological specimen, enabling scientists to
gather crucial data. The device uses laser light
of four different colors to illuminate samples,
while four extremely sensitive digital cameras
capture images every 10 milliseconds at the
speediest setting. The imager can produce as
many as 5,000 full-color images per minute
for its major task of producing high-resolution
images. Known as a “structured illumination”
microscope, the device will help IU scientists
examine how proteins are distributed inside
Super-resolution, super vision
Images of a fixed PTK (marsupial kidney cell line) cell in mitosis, at left, and a fixed
HeLa cell in mitosis, at right, produced by the Light Microsopy Imaging Center’s new
high-end, super-resolution microscope. More than 2,000 images were used to create
the image at left; more than 3,000 images were taken to create the image at right.
IUN researchers find proteins that protect against colitis
Got dirt? Get fit
continued, page 4
www.istockphoto.com
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6. n A B S T R AC TS
What kind of owner are you?
From Michael Vick to the cat lady next door, people differ widely in their behavior to-
ward the pets they own. But why?
Indiana University South Bend assistant professor and cultural sociologist David
Blouin conducted in-depth interviews with Midwestern dog owners to find out. In
research presented at the American Sociological Association meeting in August, Blouin
says he wanted to “make sense of the variations in how dog owners socially construct,
relate to, interact with, and treat their animals.
“Numerous cultural scripts for understanding and relating to animals are acted out
between people and their dogs every day,” he writes in his study. “And each is sociologi-
cally interesting because of what it has to say about how people live and interact with
animals as well as the relationship between culture, attitudes, and action.”
Blouin classifies owner-behavior into three types — humanist, dominionist, and protec-
tionist. Humanist owners think of their dogs as their children, sometimes dressing them
in miniature clothing and accessories. They cherish their pets (but usually their own pets
only) for the entertainment and affection the animals provide. “They’re our kids, and I
treat them like family, protect them like family. Everything I do that I would for a child, I
would do for them,” says one dog owner interviewed by Blouin.
Dominionists, on the other hand, have little attachment to their animals. Instead, they
view them in terms of the uses the pets serve, such as hunting or protection. “When I
was growing up on a farm, animals were utilitarian,” the owner of two farm dogs told
Blouin. “They have a use, you know, you eat cows, you ride horses. So animals or dogs
have their place, and that’s how I relate to them.”
Protectionists form intense emotional bonds with their pets, whom they consider
“best friends.” In the protectionist orientation, animals are not surrogate persons, howev-
er, but have an inherent status and value all their own. Passionate adopters and rescuers
of animals, protectionists think of themselves as their pets’ stewards, not parents.
Blouin argues that our orientations toward dogs, and other pets, are determined
by multiple factors, from family structure to cultural norms. Personal experiences with
animals, particularly during childhood, affect how we relate to our future pets. So do
demographic characteristics such as race, class, gender, and whether there are human
children in the house. “The presence of young children diminishes the status of dogs,”
says Blouin.
Broader cultural influences also distinctly affect how we treat our pets. The dominion-
ist orientation is connected to the Judeo-Christian point of view, which invokes human
dominion over nature. Humanist orientations relate to a sentimental view of pets that
has roots in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when the rise of reason and scientific
views made nature seem less threatening. Protectionist points of view are rooted in the
modern animal rights movement that began in England and the United States in the late
1800s.
While Blouin recognizes that animal owners do not fall neatly into one or the other
group, he argues that it’s important to examine how our treatment of animals is part of
culture and changes over time. “People don’t usually make this stuff up themselves,” Bl-
ouin says. “They learn how animals should be treated.”
What can bird brains tell us about being
social?
A lot, according to neurobiologists at Indiana
University Bloomington who study social behav-
ior systems in the brain.
In a recent report published in the journal Sci-
ence, lead author James Goodson and colleagues
showed that if the actions of the neurochemical
mesotocin are blocked in the brains of zebra
finches, a highly social songbird, the birds shift
their social preferences. They spend significantly
less time with familiar individuals and more time
with unfamiliar individuals. The birds also spend
less time with a large
group of same-sex
birds and more time
with a smaller group.
But, if the birds are
administered meso-
tocin instead of the
blocker, the finches
become more social
and prefer familiar
partners.
Perhaps most
striking is the fact
that none of the
treatments affect
males — only females.
According to Good-
son, who joined the
College of Arts and
Sciences’ Depart-
ment of Biology in 2007, sex differences in birds
provide important clues to the evolutionary his-
tory of oxytocin functions in humans and other
mammals.
“Oxytocin is an evolutionary descendant of
mesotocin and has long been associated with fe-
male reproductive functions such as pair bonding
with males, giving birth, providing maternal care,
and ejecting milk for infants,” says Goodson.
Goodson speculates that oxytocin-like neu-
ropeptides have played special roles in female
affiliation ever since the peptides first evolved.
That was sometime around 450 million years
ago.
But if all vertebrates possess similar neuro-
peptide circuits, why don’t they all live in big
flocks or herds? The second part of the Science
study provided a possible answer to that ques-
tion. The authors speculated that the behavioral
actions of mesotocin may differ across species
depending on the distribution of “receptors” for
Chewing gum stays in your stomach for
seven years. Cold weather makes you sick.
You should never wake a sleepwalker. A dog’s
mouth is cleaner than a human’s.
These and other commonly held beliefs go
under the microscope in Don’t Swallow Your
Gum! Myths, Half-Truths, and Outright Lies
About Your Body and Health, a new book by
physicians Aaron Carroll and Rachel Vreeman,
both professors of pediatrics at the Indiana
University School of Medicine in Indianapolis.
Carroll, who is also director of the IU
Center for Health Policy and Professionalism
Research, and Vreeman have co-authored two
studies on medical myths published in the
British Medical Journal. “We were shocked at
how many people had strong reactions to the
beliefs we debunked in the BMJ studies,” says
Vreeman. “These myths may be things people
have heard since childhood. Some people
have a hard time letting these beliefs go.”
Don’t Swallow Your Gum! Myths, Half-
Truths, and Outright Lies About Your Body and
Health is published by St. Martin’s Press and
is available online (www.dontswallowyour-
gum.com). Here are a few debunked myths
that may surprise you:
You should drink at least eight glasses
of water a day. There is no medical reason
or scientific proof for this directive. “In fact,
scientific studies suggest that you already get
enough liquid from what you’re drinking and
eating on a daily basis.”
If you shave your hair it will grow
back faster, darker, and thicker. “There
are great scientific studies that prove the
hair you shave off does not grow back any
darker or thicker than it ever was. As early
as 1928, a clinical trial demonstrated that
shaving had no effect on hair growth. … An
optical illusion is to blame. When you slice
off the hair with a razor, it leaves a sharp
end. Because these shaved hairs lack the ta-
pered look of unshaven hair, it appears that
the hair itself is thicker.”
Food dropped on the floor is safe
to be picked up again if it’s there less
than five seconds. “Bacteria that can
make you sick can survive on the floor or
other surfaces for a long time, and they can
contaminate other foods that touch them for
only a few seconds.” For example, food sci-
entists have found that when a piece of bo-
logna hits a tile floor, more than 99 percent
of the bacterial cells transferred from the tile
to the sandwich meat after just five seconds.
You lose most of your body heat
through your head. “If this was true, we
could walk around in the cold in just a hat
and no pants. … This myth likely originated
with a military study from 50 years ago when
scientists put subjects in arctic survival suits
(but no hats) and measured their heat loss
in extremely cold temperatures. Since the
only part of their bodies that was exposed
to the cold were their heads, that’s the part
from which they lost the most heat. … A more
recent study from the army research environ-
mental lab confirms that there is nothing spe-
cial about the head and heat loss—any part of
the body that is left uncovered loses heat.”
Eat your spinach to grow strong like
Popeye. “In 1870, Dr. E. von Wolf … acciden-
tally reported that the iron content of spinach
was 10 times higher than the real amount. It
was probably because of these mistaken find-
ings that Popeye’s miracle food in the 1930s
was spinach. … Yes, for a vegetable, spinach
is a relatively good source of iron. … However,
the body has harder time using non-heme
iron, the type of iron found in spinach. …
Spinach is a great vegetable; it just doesn’t
deserve any extra credit for its iron content.”
What your mother always told you Birds of a feather
flock together …
or not
PhotobyIvonaHedin
PhotoscourtesyTheATLASExperimentatCERN,http://www.atlas.ch/
continued, page 4
PhotobyGraemeS.Chapman
More than a dozen scientists in the Indiana University
Bloomington Experimental High Energy Physics pro-
gram are working on the ATLAS experiment taking place
at CERN, the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics with
headquarters in Geneva. IUB’s High Energy group has had a leading
role in building the Transition Radiation Tracker for the ATLAS detec-
tor, which will begin collecting data after the Large Hadron Collider
at CERN starts collding beams this fall. Scientists around the world
believe new discoveries about the fundamental nature of matter may
result from experiments at the LHC. [FAR RIGHT] The completed TRT
barrel is ready for cosmic
tests in its final position in
the ATLAS detector. [LOWER
RIGHT] In this simulation of
a black hole in the ATLAS
detector, the tracks would
be produced if a miniature
black hole was created in
a proton-proton collision.
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7. E
ric Leeper studied economics in high school but never
dreamed he would someday teach the subject. He
aspired to a career in politics and only signed up for
economics because he had a “naive notion” that effective politi-
cal leaders had some understanding of the economy.
Then he enrolled in economics courses at George Mason
University (his Ph.D. is from University of Minnesota) and
decided that if he really wanted to change the world, economics
was the way to go.
“Macroeconomics courses in those days were taught from
a very static Keynesian perspective,” Leeper explains, “and it
made you feel extremely powerful because you could increase
government spending, shift the curve, and only good things
would happen. GDP would go up, employment would rise. I
thought, Wow, this is what I want to do.”
Today, Eric Leeper is a professor of economics in the Col-
lege of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Economics at Indiana
University Bloomington. He is also an external advisor to the
Swedish central bank, consulting with other central banks and
ministries of finance. While he now understands that the world
is not a static Keynesian place, he is also steadfast in his belief
that good economists are as necessary as wise political leaders,
particularly in today’s complicated economic climate.
There’s just one problem. Asked to pinpoint a solution to
the current fiscal crisis, Leeper confesses to being confused.
“We haven’t done the right kind of research to answer the ques-
tion,” he says.
He faults political bias. “Many people come to this kind of
work with very strong prior beliefs and no amount of evidence
can persuade them otherwise, so we haven’t made much head-
way in answering the pertinent questions.”
In other words, if a researcher goes into his or her work
believing that government is evil, “then lo and behold, their
findings always confirm that view,” Leeper says. “At the op-
posite extreme, there’s the view that government is essential to
making a free market economy work, without any compelling
evidence or logic behind the argument.”
So what’s the truth? What should the government be do-
ing? “We don’t know,” Leeper says. “We can torture the data to
get whatever conclusions we want, and we can write theoretical
models, but nobody is getting the answer.” He acknowledges
the irony in his present position. “Even though I was motivated
by an interest in politics, what I’m seeing is that politics cor-
rupts research.”
Economists struggle with another reality of their field,
too—a lack of hard data. “One of the problems in economics
is that we don’t have controlled experiments,” explains Leeper.
“We don’t get to re-run 2008 and 2009 under a different set of
policies. It’s much harder to figure what effects alternative poli-
cies might have had when you cannot control the experiment.”
Still, as an economist, Leeper is sure of some things. Here’s
what he thinks:
Moral hazard is hazardous to our economic health.
The concept of “moral hazard” in economics is defined as “the
lack of any incentive to guard against a risk when you are pro-
tected against it.” A teenager who promises to pay for his cell
phone is less likely to save his allowance if he knows his par-
ents will cover his expenses in a pinch. The same holds for big
banks. “If Citicorp places a bet and it’s profitable, Citicorp reaps
the benefits. But if they lose the bet, we bail them out. Because
they know we’re going to bail them out, it encourages them to
take more risks than they normally would,” Leeper says.
Regulation can help. A lot. “Congress passed legislation
prohibiting agencies from regulating the exotic financial in-
struments that are playing a role in the financial crisis,” Leeper
says. “If the Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had said to Con-
gress, ‘We need to do something about this. You need to give
us regulatory power,’ things would have played out differently.
But Greenspan thought the markets would regulate them-
selves. A lot of times markets do that, but not when the risk is
asymmetric. There is a clear role for the government to step in
and restrict the kinds of risks banks can take on.”
Instead, banks were allowed to repackage mortgages into
complex instruments that were resold. The actual riskiness
of these instruments was difficult to assess and impossible to
price. “Normally, a high-risk asset would sell for less than an
identical low-risk asset to compensate the buyer for taking on
the additional risk,” Leeper says. Because the complex instru-
ments were systematically assessed as less risky than they
actually were, they were sold at too high a price, which then
From bias to bubbles and beyond, economics professor Eric
Leeper discusses why we may never understand today’s eco-
nomic crisis, and what we need to know before it gets worse. Econ 101,and then some by Debra Kent
PhotobyAnnSchertz
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RESEARCH&CREATIVEACTIVITY|SPRING2010
8. D
escribed as spooky, mysterious, and a sort of
mashup of Lord of the Flies, the Book of Rev-
elations, and Walt Disney, Caleb Weintraub’s
paintings are nothing if not arresting. On large colorful
canvases, most of Weintraub’s works feature children and
babies behaving in anything but innocent ways. The shock-
ing contradictions — children with cartoon party-plate
faces wielding automatic weapons, fancily dressed toddlers
viewing adults’ heads mounted on the wall — are meant
to call into question “the shabby construction that makes
up our memory and our morality,” Weintraub says in his
artist’s statement. Depicting a world where social roles and
structures are overturned, Weintraub points to the “excess-
es and complacency that cause us to be vulnerable.”
Weintraub’s paintings are meditations on a future,
stripped of pretense, that use “manipulations of palette,
mark, and expression to make remarkable the unremark-
able and insert humanity where none exists,” according to
the artist.
In a November 2008 interview on DailyServing.com, an
online forum about contemporary visual arts, Weintraub
said, “Some people feel that they have to be tortured or act
tortured to make art worth looking at, but I don’t feel that
way. As far as I’m concerned, to make art all a person has
to do is learn how to think, and then care to respond. The
dilemmas I deal with in my paintings are big dilemmas,
they are everyone’s dilemmas, and they’re ones that paint-
ings won’t solve but awareness might.”
Weintraub is assistant professor of fine arts at Indiana
University Bloomington. He received his BFA in 2000
from Boston University School for the Arts and his MFA
in 2003 from the University of Pennsylvania. His work
has been shown at the Peter Miller Gallery in Chicago; the
Axel Raben Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents in New
York; and the Projects Gallery in Philadelphia.
‘Humanity where none exists’
PhotocourtesyofCalebWeintraub
BRAVE NEW WORLDS
[OPPOSITE PAGE] Situation Room, 2009,
oil and acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
[ABOVE ] In the Thick of It, 2008, acrylic
and oil on canvas, 84" x 144"
[BELOW, LEF T] The Unlikely Resurrection
of General Burnside on Account of His
Estimable Whiskers, 2009, oil and acrylic
on double-primed Prime Archival paper,
85" x 114 1/12"
[BELOW, RIGHT] Down With Escapism,
2006, acrylic on wood, 84" x 96"
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9. ROWLAND RICKETTS
Rowland Ricketts savors the moment when the indigo dye
he uses is in the vat, just beginning to ferment. “Momen-
tarily, I stand between the history of the materials and
processes that helped me get the indigo thus far and the
promise of all the works that the vat is still yet to realize,”
says the assistant professor of textiles in the Henry Radford
Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University Blooming-
ton. The indigo-dyed works pictured here are adaptations
of noren, traditional Japanese partitions. Ricketts says the
noren he creates both separate space and collect its light and
air, reflecting our “transitory experience.”
Ricketts processes his own indigo using centuries-old meth-
ods that include harvesting and drying by hand, methods he
learned in part as an apprentice in Japan. Those lessons still
infuse his textile work. “As a dyer,” Ricketts says, “I strive to
transfigure all the energy of human endeavor expended in
the making of this dye so that its vitality lives on in the dyed
cloth.”
Textures
of nature
PhotobyOsamuJamesNakagawa
PhotobyOsamuJamesNakagawa
PhotobyOsamuJamesNakagawa
PhotobyRowlandRicketts
Noren
Ricketts’s noren, meaning partitions, 60" x 60", are made using indigo dyed
ramie and katazome (stencilled paste resist).
[OPPOSITE PAGE] Rowland Ricketts stands behind an untitled creation.
Ricketts is an assistant professor of textiles at IU Bloomington.
[ABOVE AND LEF T] Untitled noren, 2006
[RIGHT] Untitled noren detail, 2007
INDIANAUNIVERSITY
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10. Crumbling Beauty [Oil on board, 14" x 14"] Tina Newberry, 2009
Tina Newberry is an associate professor of painting in the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University Bloomington. To describe this
painting, she says, “Being part of the Me Generation, I am always on the lookout for my own progress in the world. In this case, the progress is more than
just plain aging; it’s evidently making a run for Benjamin Franklin’s style. I have started a wattle of my own, and my hair is getting dangerously thin. The
title for this piece is from a line in a Tom Waits song about a waitress who has seen better days: ‘Ah she’s a crumbling beauty; nothing wrong with her a hun-
dred dollars wouldn’t fix.’ I think he underestimates the cost of beauty but I like that he’s looking on the bright side.”
S E C O N D LO O K
ImagecourtesyofTinaNewberry
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11. Office of the Vice Provost for Research
Franklin Hall 116-Y
601 E. Kirkwood Ave.
Bloomington, IN 47405
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Bloomington, IN 47401
Visit R&CA on the Web at research.iu.edu/magazine
Where’s George?
During production of this issue of Research & Creative Activity magazine, R&CA
staff received these dollar bills as change when buying lunch. Just after this photo
shoot, we entered the bills’ information at www.wheresgeorge.com, a site created “for fun” that is in-
tended to “allow people to track currency as it circulates around the country and the world.” If you’d like to see
where our Georges have gone, visit Reserach & Creative Activity online (www.research.indiana.edu/magazine), follow
the link, and find out how our money flows!
PhotobyAnnSchertz
