June 11, "You Are Getting Very, Very Sleepy Photo: Klari Reis June 17, "Leaving the Nest" Photo: Klari Reis February 7, "Paris Hilton" Photo: Klari Reis March 2, "Underwater Pen Marks" Photo: Klari Reis February 5, "Octopus Kisses" March 25, "My Little Pony Swirl" Photo: Klari Reis April 29, "A Sun In Blue Space" Photo: Klari Reis May 19, "Paltrow In Contagion" Photo: Klari Reis June 6, "Jellyfish With Candy" Photo: Klari Reis July 7, "My Friend Nico" Photo: Klari Reis September 5, "Sprinkled On Marble" Photo: Klari Reis July 14, "Strawberries and Cream" Photo: Klari Reis July 25, "Snowballs Resting on a Vibrant Plateau" Photo: Klari Reis August 29, "Blurred Lines" Photo: Klari Reis July 18, "Vortex Pimples" Photo: Klari Reis July 9, "The Purple People Eater" Photo: Klari Reis

For all the strange things artists have turned into canvasses, Klari Reis manages to stand apart. Since 2009, she's been perfecting the art of painting in petri dishes.

Reis is currently nine months into "The Daily Dish," an on-going series that has her making a new three-inch artwork every single day of 2013. All the images have the same sort of look–blobs, swirls, and whorls of color that could either be a really beautiful thing seen through a microscope or a really beautiful thing seen through the Hubble space telescope. Still, as with those biological and celestial wonders, no two are exactly alike. "Sprinkled on Marble," the painting for September 5, looks like a fantastic array of mold. "Blurred Lines," from August 23, looks like some spilled milk viewed through a kaleidoscope. "Snowballs Resting on a Vibrant Plateau," from July 25, looks, well, like just that.

This isn't Reis's first stab at daily dishing; she created a new petri dish painting for every day of 2009 as well. And at this point, she's figured out many of the quirks of her unique medium. When she first started working with epoxy polymer, the substance in which her paints float, in 2003, "there were a lot of unknowns," she says. "I'd leave a project, and then the next day it would look completely different." These days, she works with three different types of epoxy, all industrial plastics typically used for flooring, but each with its own drying time. Every petri painting has between three and five layers. Temperature and humidity are essential to the final look, so Reis works with multiple heaters in the room to ensure the space stays between 70 and 80 degrees. She often uses a blow torch and a hair dryer to tease out certain effects. "It is hard to put into words," she explains. "My studio becomes very much a science lab."

Typically, Reis exhibits the tiny works in clusters of 30, 60, or 150 paintings. But that doesn't meant she doesn't give her full attention to every petri dish, every day. "I make each piece to be strong enough compositionally to stand on its own."