Rose City Comic Con: Featured Artist Sienna Morris

If you’ve read my articles on Rose City Comic Con, it’s no doubt that you know my favorite part of the convention is meeting and talking with all the authors and artists. Of all the people I spoke with over the weekend, my favorite was artist Sienna Morris.

Sienna Morris created the drawing technique “Numberism” in the summer of 2008; a term which she coined when she could find no other name for it. She has also worked as a painter and graphics designer, currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon, and can be found every Saturday and Sunday at the Portland Saturday Market. – From fleetingstates.com

I love art having to do with science, space, and music. I also happen to love math and numbers. I mean, I do math equations in my head at night to help me fall asleep. So when I saw Sienna’s table at RCCC, I was instantly drawn in. Honestly, I could stand there and listen to Sienna explain each of her pieces and what the numbers meant all day long. The only reason I didn’t was because I didn’t want to take sales away from her by hogging her table space. Currently Sienna is doing research on a neurology series and this news is incredibly exciting for me considering how fascinating our brains are.

Below I’ve posted some of my favorite pieces of hers, and descriptions of what the numbers mean. All images and descriptions were borrowed from fleetingstates.com

This is the original scratch board etching,”Prime Directive”.

I drew this in ascending, non repeating prime numbers, from 2 up to 13099.

The background pattern of stars is in the configuration of an Ulam Spiral.

The color is achieved via ink wash after I have scratched the numbers off. I work under a magnifying glass.

This piece took me roughly two weeks to draw. This piece has been sprayed with a matte uv coating.

The last photo listed is not the best in the world, but shows what the actual signature looks like.

This limited edition giclee canvas print is hand painted by Sienna Morris with phosphorescent paint so that at night or under UV light, you can see the fireflies glowing.

The fireflies abdomens are drawn with a chemical formula for their Bioluminescence, C13 H12 N2 O3 S2. The light coming off the fireflies and bouncing off the jar is drawn with the speed of light, 299792458 meters per second.

The girl is drawn with the numbers of the clock, 1 – 12, to signify time in a fleeting moment.

The Sombrero Galaxy was originally a scratchboard etching, that was hand painted with floursecent paint to glow under UV Light. The original is sold, however, giclee canvas prints and glowing Limited Editions are available. Choose your size below.

Each piece comes with a description of the numbers used in the piece. Limited Editions come with a Certificate of Authenticity and a magnifying glass.

Sombrero is drawn with it’s coordinates, distance in light years, and the mass of it’s super massive black hole.

This Anatomical Human Heart Numberism drawing is drawn with the mathematical framework of a healthy human heart. With this data, pooled from generations of research, we can bring a sick heart back to health and keep a healthy heart beating a longer lifetime.

We cannot help but attach so much of ourselves to this little organ, linking it intimately to passion, curiosity and the determination to live and achieve. We attribute complex, emotional attachments to an organ that excels in self-sufficiency and precise regulation. Nothing else would do as our symbol for love, as it compliments passion with pattern.

There are hidden words and numbers not listed here, that you can find over time the longer you look at the piece.

This piece is drawn with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, Schrödinger’s Cat is a thought experiment devised in 1935 in response to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which addressed the inability to accurately predict where and how quickly a particle would be moving.

In Schrödinger’s thought experiment, you place a cat in a steel box which contains a Geiger counter which holds a very small amount of radioactive substance, so small that perhaps in the course of the hour, one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none. If it happens, the counter tube discharges, setting off a relay that releases a hammer and smashes the small vile of poison that kills the cat. Until an observer opens to box, to see the state of the cat, the cat is both alive and dead. This is called superposition. It is not until the box is opened that the cat becomes a collapsed state: either dead or alive.

Be sure to go to her site and check out her store. All her work is amazing and worth owning! I wanted to feature every one of Sienna’s pieces as they all amaze me. I also suggest following her on facebook as she posts a lot of great stuff!

Check out this video of Sienna working, it’s mesmerizing to say the least!