Mark Prier

Artwork

American beech cDNA Contigs, 2021

These prints are photographic grids of extremely small portions of cDNA taken from American beech (Fagus grandifolia). These grids represent two different cDNA contigs used to sequence the tree’s genome (a contig is a small portion of DNA).

In these two works, the photo grids are read left to right, line by line, like this page’s text. I use photographs of Ontario’s largest American beech tree to represent the four bases found in DNA: Adenine (the tree’s trunk), Cytosine (its bark), Guanine (one of its branches), and Thymine (its leaves). At a glance, each print gives you an impression of a single cDNA contig for American beech.

Materials: archival ink on paper, mounted to Komatex.

A photographic grid of images that looks mostly green with some dominant rectangles of grey. The images are of an immense grey tree trunk, a close-up of grey bark with cracks and scars from age, a grey tree branch with a blurry forest in the background, and four bright green leaves on a twig against a background of brown leaf litter on the forest floor. A detail shot of a photographic grid of images seen at an angle; the grid looks mostly green with some dominant rectangles of grey. The images are of an immense grey tree trunk, a close-up of grey bark with cracks and scars from age, a grey tree branch with a blurry forest in the background, and four bright green leaves on a twig against a background of brown leaf litter on the forest floor.
A photographic grid of images that looks mostly reddish-grey-brown with some dominant rectangles of green. The images are of an immense grey tree trunk, a close-up of grey bark with cracks and scars from age, a grey tree branch with a blurry forest in the background, and four bright green leaves on a twig against a background of brown leaf litter on the forest floor. A detail shot of a photographic grid of images seen at an angle; the grid looks mostly reddish-grey-brown with some dominant rectangles of green. The images are of an immense grey tree trunk, a close-up of grey bark with cracks and scars from age, a grey tree branch with a blurry forest in the background, and four bright green leaves on a twig against a background of brown leaf litter on the forest floor. A close-up detail shot of a photographic grid of images that looks mostly reddish-grey-brown with some dominant rectangles of green. The images are of an immense grey tree trunk, a close-up of grey bark with cracks and scars from age, a grey tree branch with a blurry forest in the background, and four bright green leaves on a twig against a background of brown leaf litter on the forest floor.