The Symbiosis of Art and Science

As a Resilience Corps Fellow at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, Community Science Fellow Evan Paris reflects on bridging science and art to strengthen coastal climate adaptation. Drawing from a midnight flooding expedition in downtown Portland, he explores how data collection and creative expression can work together to help communities navigate both the physical and psychological tides of climate change.

As an early career scientist, I was taught how to iron out all emotion and humanity from my

research. Use the passive voice in your methods section, I was told, avoid terms that carry

subjective valence like “incredible” and “interesting,” do not personify cells and molecules. In

science, objectivity is sacred, and humanity is as contaminating as a fingerprint on a petri dish.

The scientific method does not allow for qualitative musing, but nature follows more laws than just math and science; it follows laws of beauty, art, and design too. As Dr. Robin Wall

Kimmerer points out in her novel Braiding Sweetgrass, asters and goldenrods often grow

alongside each other, creating vibrant meadows of purple and gold [1]. But when Dr. Kimmerer asked her college botany professor why the two plants looked so beautiful together, he dismissed the question. Beauty, he said, is subjective and therefore unscientific. So, Kimmerer turned to art for an explanation, positing that since purple and yellow are complementary on the color wheel, meadows with both colors attract hungry pollinators as irresistibly as neon fast food signs lure midnight highway travelers. And in fact, this color combination is widely conserved in meadows around the world; when purple flowers grow alongside yellow flowers, both species receive enhanced pollination [2]. The meadow embodies what the syllabus omits: beauty is a form of intelligence, too.

I can see why it’s important to remove subjectivity from science. Science is the foundation for

tools, technologies, and medicines; inaccurate science could cost lives. However, I believe there is room to broaden the methods of scientific inquiry that we consider valid. And for now, while western science remains largely devoid of emotion, other disciplines must carry the slack and step up alongside science on its path to meaningful implementation. Like asters and goldenrods, science and art can expand their impact when grown in the same field.

During my time as a Resilience Fellow at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI), I’ve

sought to harness the power of this duo to foster climate adaptation.

One night this May, as the moon rose and brought with it the tide, a group gathered at GMRI’s laboratory in downtown Portland for a night of reckoning. Sea level rise often leaves behind landscapes of scars, ones you can see carved into coastlines, and ones that you can’t see, but feel inside. Adaptation means addressing both. At midnight on May 27th, I led a group of tide trekkers down Commercial Street as the sea spilled over onto parking lots and piers. We let the emotion of the flooding wash over us and used science and art to channel feeling into action. That night, we collected flood data from two different sites on Portland’s waterfront and installed and photographed artwork from six local artists alongside the floodwaters.

The evening felt like one of those fairytales where secretive sprites emerge at night to perform an eccentric, clandestine ceremony, then disappear by morning without a trace. For us, our ceremony was more earnest than impish; the art we arranged along the sea sung wistful melodies of longing for restored environmental balance. Sculptures of varying shapes and sizes transformed the waterfront into a gallery of miniature worlds, inviting us to step from painting to painting.

"Nothing has Changed" by Judy Greene-Janse, photographed by Tom Bell

In one piece, we watched a scene of people performing mundane household tasks like cooking and sweeping become increasingly submerged as the tide rose higher. In her artist statement for the piece, Judy Greene-Janse writes:

“We all live with the certain knowledge of impending disasters. We listen to the news, we

exercise common sense, try to use our tools of experience and knowledge to discern fact from fiction, and it is impossible not to be aware, at some level, that the environment that we have always taken for granted is no longer granted to us, nor to our descendants. But yet, we carry on. The rising tides engulf and forces of destruction engulf us and soak us and we carry on - Everything has changed, and nothing has changed.”

Then we stepped into a scene of soaring seaweed sprouting from the water, each strand

glowing faintly from streetlight. The macroalgae swayed overhead whispering the question,

what else might be drawn from the depths as climate change blurs the line between land and

sea? To create the colossal kelp, artist Ian Ellis forged a bioplastic concoction, its blend of

organic and inorganic materials echoing the entanglement between humans and the natural

world.

Weaving throughout the evening’s portraits was a pair of fluorescent float rope creatures,

brought to life by the graceful fluidity of dancers Hannah Haines and Kelsie Steil. Their lyrically irregular movements shrouded in tangled tendrils evoked the alien nature of undersea life, almost like they were agitated ocean spirits awoken to issue warning. They closed the night with a dance performance that captured the rising sea’s tendency to leave us sometimes frantic, sometimes frozen.

While midnight provided an appropriately ghostly backdrop for the evening, we chose the

timing because there was no other option.

Back in 2020, GMRI launched the Coastal Flooding Community Science Project, a project that uses community-submitted observations to track the water levels and weather conditions that lead to local flooding. Data collected during the times of year when tides are highest is especially valuable, as they offer a glimpse of what future flooding may look like under rising seas. These extreme tides occur several times each year, when a confluence of astronomical cycles maximizes the pull of gravity on the oceans, sending seawater pooling through the streets of many coastal communities.

However, throughout the entirety of the spring flood season this year, all the highest tides

occurred in the nighttime, a substantial blockade for data collection. Furthermore, it meant

much if not all the flooding would go unseen, creeping up the coastline while cities slept. And one thing about human psychology is that typically for people to care about something, they must witness it first-hand. That’s what motivated me to put together a midnight flood

expedition. I wanted to shed light on these shadowy climate hazards, to use art to spark both

wonder and urgency, and to gather flood data while inspiring others to do the same. The

observations we submitted will bolster the city’s emergency preparedness and inform future

climate decisions.

Art has much to offer to the science community, it can communicate what data alone often

can’t.

For an issue with as much emotional weight and complicated data as climate change, graphs and research papers sometimes leave readers feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and frozen. Art has the power to melt, boiling climate change down to snapshots that strike a chord, still eliciting emotion but in a way that draws people to dance. Both methods of communication are powerful, and both resonate with some audiences more than others, but together they tell a complete story.

I recently learned of the term ‘solastalgia,’ coined by philosopher Glenn Albrecht in 2003.

Different from nostalgia, melancholy derived from distance from home, solastalgia refers to

melancholy experienced while living at home, and witnessing changes to your environment

first-hand. One feels solastalgia when buildings are constructed on what was once a meadow, or when a pond dries, leaving behind reeds whispering restlessly to the wind.

Solastalgia is a natural part of living in the world because change is constant. It will become

something that we will face more and more, as climate change shuffles environmental

conditions across the map like a deck of cards. And that’s not to mention the extreme grief

brought about by natural disasters. The climate space has made great strides in innovating

adaptation infrastructure in recent years, but there hasn’t been an accompanying construction of emotional processing infrastructure. To address this global challenge we need action, but we need help processing the reaction, too.

Like bees harvesting nectar from marigolds or birds cleaning crocodile teeth, so too behave

science and art, whose mutual symbiosis can help us both act and react to the climate crisis.

Their power will proliferate, if only we plant them in the same meadow.

Collage by Evan Paris featuring artwork photographed and science communicated during the Midnight Flood Crawl on May 27, 2025.

Science and Art Collage.

Download • 23.34MB

Click to download the full-resolution collage.

Sources

[1] Kimmerer, R.W. 2013. Rep. “Asters and Goldenrod” chapter in Braiding Sweetgrass:

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions

[2] Hegland, S.J. 2014. Rep. Floral Neighbourhood Effects on Pollination Success in Red

Clover, Functional Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12223.

About Evan

Evan is a first-generation Dominican who grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts. At the start of his career, Evan aimed to transform his eco-anxiety into action through science, graduating from Vassar College with a degree in biochemistry, then working as a post-baccalaureate researcher in a plant microbiology lab at Stanford University. While passionate about science, Evan found that lab work lacked the direct community impact he sought, leading him to pursue a career in conservation. With experience teaching science lessons at museums and spearheading sustainability projects with the National Parks of Boston, he now aims to integrate art, science, and education to empower communities in mitigating and adapting to the climate crisis, and is thrilled to be doing so this year with the Resilience Corps. Outside of work, you can find Evan climbing trees, hugging trees, making art, or obsessing over the TV show Survivor.