Episode #109 Creating through Illustrations with Juliana Spahr
On today’s episode, Sharri Harmel speaks with Juliana Spahr. Juliana is a scientific illustrator and creates the most beautiful illustrations that are not only visually gorgeous, but they teach and communicate with others as well. Juliana talks about her work and how it was formed by these dual passions of illustrations and advocating for our environment, plus more!
Juilana Spahr’s website, https://www.scivisuals.com
Juilana Spahr’s Instagram, www.instagram.com/science_visuals/
Resources and Links:
Trailer of The Superpowers of Bears where one of Juliana’s illustrations is used
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJH1HStwS0I
Joint Program for Scientific Illustration where Juliana attended – Maastricht University and Zuyd University
Other artists mentioned: John J. Audubon, Ernst Haeckel, and Walton Ford
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Episode #109 Creating through Illustrations with Juliana Spahr
Sharri Harmel: Welcome everyone to episode 109 of the Extraordinary Women Podcast. Well, today I’m going a little off mission, but I absolutely fell in love with the work of Juliana, also known as J Spahr. She is a scientific illustrator and creates the most beautiful illustrations that are not only visually gorgeous, but they teach and communicate, just the sort of thing I love. I was introduced to J by what Women Create with Jo Packham, and J talks about in the podcast, talks about her work and how it was formed by these dual passions of illustrations and advocating for our environment. Plus, there’s a whole lot more. So let’s get started.
Sharri Harmel: So J, I have to say, first of all, as I was saying right before I hit the record button, you’re not my typical podcast guest, and part of it is one of the biggest reasons is you’re young. You’re, you know, you’re not that second career woman, third career woman, you know, after raising children and all of that. But I saw you inside, I read the article inside of what Women Create and what Jo Packam’s magazine, as you well know, and I just found your work, all of it, so interesting. And I thought I have to bring this gal on. I have to bring J on. So talk to us, first of all, explain for the layman what is scientific illustration.
Juliana Spahr: So when you think of, when you’re in school as a kid and you’re looking through your anatomy textbook or your, your general sciences textbook, or you go to a science center and you’re looking at a graphic outside that explains the life cycle of an animal from the area of the science center, or you’re looking at posters in your doctor’s office explaining, you know, parts of the body, scientific illustration is a really broad term that encompasses all of those very scientifically accurate, academically rigorous graphics that are elucidating all of these scientific, whether it be anatomical or biological or you know, botanical, all of these illustrations are encompassed within the umbrella term scientific illustration.
Sharri Harmel: Okay, so there is that. As I listened to your, where you got your master’s, and we’re going to talk a little bit about that. The one thing that, that the person being interviewed mentioned was that it’s real education. It’s a combination, obviously, of education as an illustration, so pictures as well as education. And when I looked at some of, you know, your work both on Instagram as well as on your website, it’s something that I could, it’s not written for a child. But yet it’s not super complicated. So somebody like me could understand a little bit about that amazing ego, or the falcon, the baby Falcons was really interesting. Would you say that’s true, even if it’s people, flowers, animals, sea world, whatever?
Juliana Spahr: Yes. So exactly the whole point of scientific illustration and the reason often paired with text or with other pop out images is that the goal is to take a complex body system or individual parts of a plant and distill more complex information to share with a general public. So that they can understand too, why these are cool adaptations that an animal has, or you know, why does this plant bloom in this way? So making that clear not only through illustration and learning to create an illustration that does clarify that information, but also knowing how much text and how little text is needed for the general public to understand.
Sharri Harmel: Or be interested. And be aware, you know, because you talked in one of your pieces, and it might have been with What Women Create, and so I want you to go back to how you got in this field because you talked about how you kind of viewed as a way almost to advocate for things that really matter to you in our environment, in our world, to some extent. But back into that because you also have a PhD in English, right?
Juliana Spahr: No. That must be someone more exciting than me. I have an art history degree and an environmental studies degree, and I lecture on scientific illustration
Sharri Harmel: There you go. That’s That must be where, I thought it was the PhD, but how PhD?
Juliana Spahr: Next up, maybe, who knows?
Sharri Harmel: You’ll create one, but how did you get into this? Environmental, did you say environmental studies? And what was the other one? Art History? Were you always an artist?
Juliana Spahr: Yeah. Art history. Yes, since I was very little, I was always drawing. My dad is actually the director of collections and exhibitions at a muse, and so I spent a lot of time growing up exploring in a muse. It was an art muse and also taking art classes since I could lift a pencil basically. And so that was always something that really inspired me, but I never really felt like and I said this in my article that, that I never felt like I had anything to say. Particularly there are so many artists out there who are creating this non-representational art that that represents their emotions or, you know, experiences. And I never really felt like I had that in me, but I still had this desire to create stuff, and so I was having a hard time finding something that melded those two ideas together. The creativity, but the lack of, you know, some grand division purpose to share with people.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. So what happened, like, you know, were you struck by lightning? Where were you? You know, do you remember?
Juliana Spahr: So even before I decided to do what I ultimately ended up doing, I was definitely always interested in science and nature and studying environmental studies and. I finished college feeling completely lost at sea with no idea what I was really going to be doing. I was working full time for an artist as her assistant, but I had this art history degree, but I also was really passionate about the sciences, and I had been. With my family at home and I live in a small town in rural New Hampshire, and I went to the town garbage dump with my mother, and while I was, I ask why. So in small towns you actually have to bring your garbage every week. Oh, they don’t pick it up for you. Okay. So I live in a town. I, when I was growing up, I lived in a town so small that there wasn’t a traffic. So every week we would bring our trash to the town dump. That also was a recycling center. So at this recycling center on the side of a pile of, you know, used newspapers was an anatomy and physiology textbook and I saw it and picked it up, sort of. I said, Mom, would you mind if I if I brought this home? And she sorts of rolled her eyes and I started flipping through it, and it just captivated me. Obviously, I had been using textbooks for my entire, my entire schooling, looking at this particular textbook, flipping through it, seeing these images clicked in my mind that maybe this was actually a career. Somebody had to be making these illustrations. And that coupled with, I just decided I’d spur of the moment that I was going to start a really big drawing project, and the project was a self-portrait that was a slice through my head basically.
So it was my profile, but then looking through my skull into slice of my brain and I looked through the anatomy textbook and used parts of the anatomy from all over the body. Histology’s, beautiful cell structures, you know, different looks at the heart, strings inside the heart, and used a stippling technique and created this huge graphic that was just all of these different body systems inside of this drawing, and that was so inspiring to me, and that kind of just snowballed from there to look into making medical illustration potentially, or scientific illustration into a career.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. How fascinating though. And you bring out a very good point. We look at things so many times we see things. You’re an art history major, so I’m sure you saw, you know, DaVinci and some of the other amazing artists through history and, and yet how did they. I just came from Amsterdam and I was in the re muse, and I’m sitting there thinking, how, how do you take reality and, and then turn it onto, you know, something that’s absolutely beautiful and it feels like you could walk right in the painting, but what you’re talking about is almost what lies beneath what’s underneath, what’s going on underneath the face I’m looking for right now, which is just, it’s amazing to me. So in all that art history, you know, to get an undergraduate degree in art history, did you think about that? Like, what’s going on in the story or what’s going on behind what it is?
Juliana Spahr: One of the many reasons that I chose to get an art history degree rather than a studio arts degree was I really liked being inspired by other artists, and particularly with realism and hyper realism. You know, Dutch Masters, you were just in the Netherlands, you were just at the Rijksmuseum.
You know this stunning, beautiful ability to capture the natural world in a really profoundly beautiful way, but also accurate way, and that always fascinated me, and I think I never thought of myself as an artist and I still don’t think of myself as an artist, actually. I think of myself as an illustrator so that, so those things are separate from me, but. But the idea that, that you can turn something so basic, benign, simple as a crusty loaf of bread and five apples into a gorgeous manipulation of light and color is, has always been something that that really inspired me. And I did not think that art history would take to where it did ultimately to be a creator myself.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. But yet I’m imagining that both those degrees mattered as you move to the next step, which was, okay, so now you find the, the book at the dump, so to speak, and you’ve come up with this creative. Amazing project of taking, you know, self-portrait. Did you finish that?
Juliana Spahr: I did. It’s up on my parents’ wall. It’s 20 by 30 and they have it in their living room still, actually.
Sharri Harmel: Incredible. So why graduate school and tell us more about this field of graduate studies.
Juliana Spahr: So, As I was getting excited about scientific illustration as a potential career, I was, despite being fascinated by the hand body, really wanting to make sure that I was getting a degree that was both medical and scientific. So I didn’t want to box myself into the medical field of, of illustration immediately. And there are several programs in the US that are very highly repeated as medical illustration, but scientific illustration is much less common, and finding graduate degrees rather than certificate programs is also very difficult and as an extremely picky perfectionist. I was also looking at some of these programs and not liking the work that was on their websites. And I wanted to find a place that the second I opened their website and looked at the portfolio of work from their students, I went, oh my gosh, I have to be able to do stuff like that. And at the time, I was dating a guy from the Netherlands. And on a whim thought, I wonder if the Netherlands has a scientific illustration program and. It did, and it happened to be the best one in Europe and the one that fit my desires the most. It was the most hands on, lots of dissection, all sorts of other components that weren’t just the artistic component and I was kind of blown away at the idea of even doing this, going to, you know, live in the Netherlands and study, and this was a very, a pretty small program. They accept six to eight students per year, and so I didn’t think there was a very great likelihood that I was going to be accepted, but nonetheless, I put a great deal of work into my portfolio, including the brain that I had done, the slice, the self-portrait, and many other things that I had done and, and drew some other things to augment my portfolio and couldn’t believe it, that I heard back that they wanted to, to talk to me for an interview and to continue with the application process. And lo and behold, there I was the next year in Must in the Netherlands, studying scientific illustration.
Sharri Harmel: Incredible. Now. If any of you, and I’ll put it down in the show notes, just some information about that joint program, because I thought the video and even the program description was fascinating, even though I would never apply to it. It’s really interesting how you know, we see the finished product and how, what was the education that person received up to that point, but they called the program nata. And so tell us what was different about this program. You mentioned dissection and medical as well as scientific. So tell us about that and how did you, how’d you get, and also if you can weave in going to school in a different country, you know, what’s that?
Juliana Spahr: Well, let’s start with that question and then I’ll see if I can wind back to the, to the other questions. For one, the Netherlands speaks a great deal of English as you know, because they’re such a small country. They, the population generally is, is very, very talented at English speaking, but I also took 10 years of German before that and German and Dutch are very similar. So I fell into learning to speak Dutch and trying to get around using Dutch while I was there pretty easily because of my German experience. So, but in the school, it’s an international program, so it’s taught completely in English. Okay. But the program weaved so many different aspects into it that it was just, honestly, I can’t believe how fortunate I am that I found the program and got to, to partake in it because it combined two, so it was two years, and we did one year that was almost entirely hand anatomy. So that included dissection. It included life drawing, nude model, drawing classes, portrait drawing. Lots and lots of anatomical classes, skeletal drawing classes. Anatomy classes with the anatomy professors from the University of Music, so going to lectures about anatomy, so that more academic rigorous side, but then also learning to make scientific illustrations in different styles and learning what my own style was from that and learning hand anatomy as best I could.
I was being taught anatomy by the same teachers as we’re teaching the med students from the school. So that element of the hand was really fascinating. And the dissections were really very interesting. And we got to do a lot of cadavers, do cadaver lab studies, which was really fabulous. But what I really liked was the animals, which was the second. So we branched out into doing a lot more animal research and animal anatomy, animal skulls, you know, different muscular studies, dissecting rats, dissecting other animals, and that was really fascinating to me. And that harkens back to what you were talking about briefly at the beginning, was wanting to use my talents to talk about environmental issues and various other things, and, and the animal world, I find far more inspiring in that way than humanity because we’ve done everything that we’ve done to the world is we don’t learn. We spend enough time focusing on hands and I didn’t, didn’t feel the need to be focusing on them so that was just the combination of the hand and the animal anatomy and then learning to do more stuff with, you know, digital media design, graphic design was really beneficial as well.
Sharri Harmel: So, so much as you were describing, I think it’s on your Instagram, it might be on your website where you talk about how you, you do your artwork and then you put it up on the computer and you will tweak it. Is, am I saying this sort of layman’s terms, more than sort of, sort of like a five-year-old, anyways, so that merging because many artists are not that comfortable. Peer artists are not that comfortable turning their work into digital formats, and so that was something that you had to learn in that program, I would imagine.
Juliana Spahr: Yes. And even the things that we were doing on paper, I did a massive study of the hand skeleton that was full size one to one, and I had to scan that completely into the computer, edit it and label it to make it into a scientific illustration. And it can be difficult to put labels and arrows, dots, and markings all over your finished illustrations. In the program we used to call it Killing Your Darling, that you have something that you’ve made that’s so beautiful and then you have to cover it with all these different labels and stuff to explain what people are looking at. But it got easier, and I actually feel like I’ve learned with time that at least for my Instagram audience, rather than my, the typical clientele that I have, they actually prefer. Illustrations with labels. I think people find that very compelling and I think it reminds everybody of, you know, early botanical illustrations and atypical illustrations that everybody at this point is familiar with those old weathered yellowed pages with the labels and a beautiful botanical illustration. I think that really appeals to people. And so that kind of turns your brain on too. And people are so curious, people you don’t give people credit enough for, for how curious they are, and they may not give themselves credit enough for how curious they are but if you give them things, a few little things to read or to look at, think it opens up a, a whole little world of curiosity about everything.
Sharri Harmel: Yes. Yes. It’s funny you say that because I was, I printed that off, as you can see, and I thought it was so beautiful and, and that other one, I think this is you, is it?
Is this you? This is you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And I thought, I wonder if she sells her illustrations as you call ’em. I call it artwork. And if you did, how cool it would be to have. The actual scientific, you know, additions as a separate sheet that you can put on the back of the frame or whatever or hold it and pretend that you’re smart and share with everyone what’s on your wall, whether it’s a flower or a bird or whatever it might be. Do you sell your art?
Juliana Spahr: So I work mainly with science centers, botanical gardens, and research journals, and I do the illustrations for them. But I also occasionally when there’s a lot of outcries of support and excitement about a particular thing that I’ve done that I post on Instagram, I do occasionally print some prints, maybe a run of 20 or 30, and then I don’t have a place on my website. All I do is say on my Instagram, if you’d be interested in this print, let me know. And then people direct message me and I send it to them, and that I do maybe a few times a year. I find it very exhausting to pack all these orders, and I did a poster last Christmas of owls that was very popular, but I spent the majority of my Christmas break rolling up posters labeling them and shipping them out and going back to the post office and back to the post office and back to the post office and that just because it’s not my, my quote, real job, it can get pretty overwhelming. But the more popular I guess that I get on Instagram, the more it seemed viable as an additional part of my career. It’s just, I think I need an assistant.
Sharri Harmel: Yes, yes. For eCommerce, you need an eCommerce person, you know? Yeah. I, I think it’s, I, yeah, it to me, just looking at, what’d you call him? A Harpe Eagle? I’m just mesmerized by this guy. And then he is got like a mohawk going
Juliana Spahr: that’s the best part. A messy Mohawk.
Sharri Harmel: Very interesting. How do you sell your business? You know, your work to the people, corporate clients, and nonprofits Yeah. That are interested. How do you, how do you do that? Is that, are you one of a few? Are you one of many? This doesn’t sound like many people can do this.
Juliana Spahr: Actually I am. I am one of a few. Yes, I was. It’s a very niche career. Although you’d be surprised how many people on Instagram now message me and say, do you think I could do what you do without a scientific illustration degree and just get into it also? Maybe, but I don’t want you to.
Sharri Harmel: Exactly. We we’re always looking for the easy route, you know?
Juliana Spahr: But amazingly enough, the majority of my work comes from word of mouth, from different science centers, talking to each other. Different science centers have found me through Instagram, different publications that I’ve done, People have found me through publications and reached out to me. I would say the hardest part of my job and the part of my job that I am the worst at is self-promotion and being aware. Even though I am working currently on a $20,000, huge cool, great project that at the end of that project there’s going to be nothing unless other people have found me and have reached out to me and, and that the acquisition period of my, my work, I do not spend enough time on, this is a word to the wise, make sure that you do that part of your job because it’s the most important part and it is the hardest part to do. I am very confident and comfortable reaching out and putting myself out there to people. I just don’t do it. And that’s as simple as it gets. And typically if I cold email people, since you don’t cold call people anymore, I hear back probably 50% of the time. And then from that, only get, you know, a, a small fraction of, of projects from that. But sometimes it’s the most amazing project and I’m so glad that I reached out. So, yes. It’s a, it’s still a learning curve. I graduated in 2017 and so I’m, I’m still getting my, my legs under me.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. And that might be as time goes on, you know, we talk about it in the business world, so to speak, fractional teams and people who do specific things. And that might be something that you pursue going forward because, and it’s a perfect example of we can do things. We could be pretty good at, but we really don’t like doing ’em and honestly just standing on the outside looking in, it’s really a waste of your time. You need to do more things like this. And, you know, people like me can do the emailing, , but, but also I think of cities because, you know, I live in Boston, in the seaport and Boston’s put in this harbor walk all along the ocean and all of boards like you created for, what was the name of the, The Squam Lakes Yes. Science Center. All the boards that are along the harbor Walk in Boston are all basically photographs that are showing you what it looked like in the 1600s, what it looked like in the 1700s. And yet here we are in present day and there’s all kinds of things going on all along the harbor, and there’s no way to connect you to anything beyond the photographs of, you know, 300 years ago or whatever it might be. So that’s something that I look at and I think this is how we develop a relationship with water, a relationship with the coastline and what we. While we’re sitting there looking at it or thinking about it.
Juliana Spahr: Exactly. That’s, I mean, that’s, that’s half of my job is creating interpretive signs like that. But you can bet they’re not photographs.
Sharri Harmel: No, no, and exactly. Yeah. Photographs are, you know, and they’re lovely in all of that, but they do not dev, they don’t create this relationship. This in the moment in real time relationship with the environment because you could read that in your home. So, are you seeing that there is a little, because of the focus on the environment now and all the damage we’ve done, are you starting to see more interest from a variety of places like cities? You know, you’re in Virginia. There’s a beautiful coastline in Virginia, you know, are they thinking about this?
Juliana Spahr: Well, it’s interesting you mentioned that because I live a block away from the Hampton Harbor and they’re, they’re, and that’s filled with sign boards that also have photograph, historical photograph. And information and nothing about, you know, the native species that live in the water, et cetera and that’s certainly something that I’m interested in getting people more interested in, but I have not done a project specifically with a city that’s passionate about stuff like that. But I have definitely seen an increase in smaller science center’s realizing the value of these interpretive signs and how they can really engage the public that they have for visiting.
Sharri Harmel: that’s terrific. Yeah. What about books? Are you going to, are you going to write a book?
Juliana Spahr: I would love to write a book. If you would like to hire me to write a book, I would be, I would really love to do a young adult, really heavily illustrated book about animal adaptations. That’s kind of my, would be my dream.
Sharri Harmel: Tell us what that means.
Juliana Spahr: Well, there are so many species that have such incredible adaptations for such specific jobs, you know, from bird beaks that are specified for a specific fruit or insect, or nut to birds with amazing long talents that are, that are for poking through skulls. Every animal has a cool adaptation and there are so many that are specifically fascinating and specific to one creature and those adaptations, I think especially for, for young people, are really captivating because it’s kind of like superheroes, right? They all, each of these animals have an ability to do something that no other animal can do in the same way. That, that, that idea I find very exciting. And I have not remotely found my way into publishing at all, with the exception of working with scientists who happen to be publishing something and I make the illustrations for them. But I have never specifically worked with a publisher myself.
Sharri Harmel: And I hope it happens because, I mean, just even the illustration you did, and everyone will want to take a look at this, I think it was a falcon. Where the, you, you did the whole growth of, or the process of drawing, was it on Instagram of the baby and the eyes?
Juliana Spahr: What was it? Was it the, was it a Sea Eagle?
Sharri Harmel: It’s the one where the female bird is bigger than the male bird. Oh, Falcon. Yeah. Yeah, the Falcon. Yeah, you know, it’s just here I was, you know, obviously down the rabbit hole this morning before preparing for this conversation and me. How interesting and how many conversation topics could come out of what you just described. How we adapt we to some extent, or why was this creature created this way and this creature created that way, and how, how did they cope with the changing environment? So you came back from graduation, you graduated from, and may strip, I’m going to say it totally wrong, but obviously it’s on the lower part, like that tear drop of the net.
Juliana Spahr: Exactly. That’s right. It’s dangling into Belgium.
Sharri Harmel: Okay, okay. Yeah. Very beautiful city from what I have heard.
Juliana Spahr: Oh, it is. It really is. Yes.
Sharri Harmel: So you came back and where did you go back to New Hampshire at that point?
Juliana Spahr: I went back to New Hampshire for a few months and, was really, really fortunate to. So I got home during the summer and then went immediately back and did a lecture circuit in Scandinavia about scientific illustration to a couple of different universities and some research facilities. And that was something that I was really enjoying doing pre pandemic and then kind of have lost my nerve a little bit and I’ve also become busier, which is yeah, other elements as well. But so immediately went back and then I was home around Christmas time, and I was on a walk in the woods and I typically, when I met home in New Hampshire, go for probably an hour long walk in the woods every day. And I miss that being here. In Virginia. Yes. And I was walking, and it was snowy and there was a salamander in the middle of my path crawling on the snow extremely slowly. And it was a spotted salamander, so black with yellow spots. And I thought, this is not what’s supposed to be happening right now. I don’t know why this guy is out. I don’t know if his, you know, little den got disturbed or what. And so I picked him up with a leaf. And I knew that there was an abandoned porcupine hole nearby, and I put him into that hole and then I went home. And in New Hampshire, we have a really great program on New Hampshire Public Radio. I. Knew of the people from something wild, vaguely and decided that I was going to email one of them and ask why? What was this behavior? Why was this sound salamander out in the snow? And I got into a conversation with one of the gentleman from something wild and we started talking and he asked if I would like to make a graphic for their podcast, which is silly it’s audio, but lots of people visit their website and so over time I worked with this particular scientist and we created this graphic and that graphic really snowballed my whole career. I think I became very fascinated in herpetology, which is the study of salamanders and all these other kinds of slimy animals, and they’re particularly fragile with all of the things that are happening with the changing of the climate.
And I started working more with other scientists who were interested in that and. New Hampshire Public Radio, you know, hits pretty high up on the Google search list. I was very high up for many years actually, if you were looking up life cycle illustrations that I, I was very high up on the, on the search list, which really helped my career start. And at that time I also, or a little bit earlier when I got home, I was also at the garbage dump. And again, if you can believe it, and there was a very cute young man there who I had gone to school with and he had just finished medical school and we became very close and ultimately, I moved to Buffalo, New York with him for his medical residency. So I was in Buffalo for three years and I worked full-time freelance there. And that was really the real beginning of my career and getting my bearings and figuring out how. Reach out to people and starting to do it for real, to spend, you know, nine to five every day doing, doing scientific illustration. And the fact that I was actually making that work was pretty remarkable and very fulfilling.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a career that I’m assuming you can, you can do from really almost anywhere. Cuz now you’re in Virginia, so you just bring all of. Tools, so to speak with you, correct?
Juliana Spahr: Yes, yes. All, all I need is a, all I need is a few pieces of watercolor paper in my iMac and my drawing tablet and that’s it. I’m very lucky that I am able to, Whether I’d like it to or not to follow my partner or as he’s moving, it is easy.
Sharri Harmel: He’s lucky. You have the career that you do have, but what about this movie? Because I saw the trailer of the Superpowers of the Bear. Yeah. Yeah. It’s really interesting.
Juliana Spahr: So that project I was really, really lucky to be part of when I was in the middle of my master’s degree. Our second year is spent mostly creating your, your master’s thesis, which is in this program, finding a research project that you find exciting and reaching out to the scientists and offering to illustrate all of their work basically. I had become really captivated by the idea of brown bear research. When brown bears are in hibernation, they don’t get any of the things that a human does. If they’re, for example, in a coma, they don’t get osteoporosis, disuse, muscular atrophy. They’re. Kidneys don’t back up. They don’t have blood clots, any of the things that humans get in the same exact situation. Six months out of every year, a bear is essentially in a coma and there’s no negative health effects. And so there’s a group of researchers in Scandinavia called the Scandinavian Brown Bear Research Project, and they have. Radio collared a huge group of bears, and I was fortunate enough to team up with them and actually go to Sweden with them in the middle of the winter, two meters of snow, negative 25 degrees.
Sharri Harmel: You’re a New Hampshire girl, so you can get a sense of what that’s like.
Juliana Spahr: So I was there, and we trudged around using, you know, radio telemetry, found the bears as they were hibernating, dug them up while they were sleeping, and then, you know, put them under deeper so that they wouldn’t wake up. And we actually were taking samples from the bear of tissue to figure out why, why are they so capable of, of doing these things that humans are not, And the potential for using that as to, to better the human recovery from a lot of these, these disuse situations like bedrest from an injury or, or older people who are stuck in the hospital. And so while I was there, it actually that year they happened to have a French, documentary team who was also following them around as they were studying. And so I happened to be there, and the French documentary team was there, and they saw me doing all of my sketches when I got back every day after the bear captures. And they asked if they could use some of my illustrations in the documentary and I, as one does, I of course said, yes, please of course. And so we did some work together. They animated some of the illustrations that I gave them, and that was just a fantastic bonus that was happening even while I was in, you know Grad school. It wasn’t, it wasn’t even, you know, my career had not yet technically started it then. So that was a very lucky thing.
Sharri Harmel: Incredible. Actually, now you could redo the movie in, was it called Inside Out or something like that? You could, you could do, you could do the whole movie, but with true scientific illustrations as to what’s going on. So your career though, and this is true of so many creatives and, and really scientists as well as academics is really solo. You’re, you’re interfacing with your client, but you’re doing your work alone and you, like me, were introverts, but yet we can get really tired as we found out during covid of ourselves. So how do you, how do you balance this very, you know, quiet. internal space that you have to be in in order to do your work with having a full life balance.
Juliana Spahr: It is a great question and when you figure it out, you let me know. No answer for one thing. I am very aware of how lonely I do get, even as introverted as I am. And in Buffalo, especially during the pandemic, having just moved there and the pandemic starting, I became very isolated and was very, very tough. Even if I was feeling, you know, on, on, from a day to day basis, very professionally fortunate that, that my work was going well, staying motivated when you are working from your own home, as I’m sure you probably know, can be difficult when you go downstairs to get a glass of water and, and that turns out that you didn’t wash your lunch dish.
I’m usually very good at doing all of these things, but sometimes, you know, life gets away from me and I can get very easily. Distracted. But I really, I try to motivate myself, and I am a huge list maker. Oh, every day I create a list. And being a fairly obsessive person, I try very hard to achieve what I have put on the list. But one of the other things that I really have decided that is necessary for me is making sure that I take breaks which I am terrible at doing if I don’t sort of force myself. And then also making sure that I sometimes work in public. I, it’s, it’s a huge benefit to me, even as little as I want to interact with people. So that just a simple interaction at a coffee shop saying hello to the barista, sitting down and putting on my noise canceling headphones and working for a few hours on email or whatever I have that I can do in a coffee shop. Cuz obviously a lot of my work requires being at home with my big computer or with watercolor paper, that that little bit of interaction really actually feeds me sometimes on big social interactions exhaust me, but these, these smaller social interactions really feel much better. And that has made a huge difference as well as deciding that these sort of exploring elements, if you’ve spent time on my Instagram, you know that I, that I make a lot of videos of going around and finding species and filming them and talking about them. And deciding that that part of myself is, can also part be part of my job. and having my Instagram is actually monetized, so when I make videos, Instagram pays me which is nice but not much. Don’t, don’t think that it, that it has made me any money. It hasn’t really, but it gives me a little motivation. It feels a little bit more like work because oftentimes I can get on Instagram and, you know, where does the time go? And so going out and exploring as part of my day and, and adding, augmenting my day with some outdoor time and some exploring time, as well as finding time to meet other people who are likeminded, Instagram has blown that wide open for me. I am terrible at making friends but apparently Instagram is a wonderful way to make friends, which if you had told me five years ago that the majority of my friends I was going to have met through Instagram, I wouldn’t believe you.
Sharri Harmel: What a testament though. I mean, it’s a testament to Instagram, but it’s also that you stay in your lane, or you stay connecting to the people that are in your tribe. Yes. Whether or not they, they have the same skill set you do, or, and it’s probably better. They don’t. But they’re your people that have some share some of the same values. Yeah, you, you bring up a really good point though also that even going to the coffee shop, putting on your headphones, and doing the work that you need to do, you feel a part of the community that you do not feel. When you’re in your own home, especially if you’re working from home or you rent a space and you go to that space every day, you’re all by yourself. And that’s the difference I think, in many ways of people working from home versus going to an office, is you’re a part of something. And so if you’re a solo entrepreneur, which you are, you have to, you have to create community in different ways, and I love that. So there’s not very many scientific illustrators. You came from a school where you probably graduated with five other people. How do you stay in like, I don’t know if I’m describing this right, but connected to others in your field and know what’s happening in your field and how do, how do I, if, if I’m you, how do I keep improving my skills and all of that? How do you recreate that?
Juliana Spahr: That’s a really good question. I think a lot of it is looking at current publications and I mean, even then, if you have ever looked at National Geographic, they are filled with incredibly talented scientific illustrators. That is, that is their bread and butter is those beautiful, you know, expanded illustrations of, of different animals or sleep cycles or all sorts of stuff. They’ve got incredibly beautiful graphics. I find that extremely motivating and looking. You know, keeping up to date on new infographics and new infographic styles, because that’s what I make essentially is infographics for most of what I do. And so current publications, looking at current infographics and on Instagram, honestly, of course, that’s, it’s a wonderful community and me. As much as I, I hate the idea of being tied to social media the way that I am. It is, it is definitely integral to my work now and integral to my creativity and, and to, to, I mean, going back to the social aspect. It feeds me more, more than I ever would’ve expected when I first started an Instagram. So, really interesting. It is terrific. And I have, I mean, you, you probably can’t tell, but, and this is just one small, I have books everywhere. I get science books all the time. Anything lichens books, color books, plant books, animal books, they are everywhere. And my mom is the director of a library. And she, when she finds a new, you know, science book with cool illustrations, she is the first to buy it And I always ask for, for my birthday or for Christmas by the main thing that I ever ask for is books.
Sharri Harmel: Yeah. I’m, I’m there with you. Honestly, I’m old enough to be your grandmother, but I’m there with you.
Juliana Spahr: Nonsense
Sharri Harmel: So we’re going to wrap this up, but if you, I want to ask you one question, and I should have, I should have given you time to think about this. So do your best. If you were going to have a dinner party and invite, you know, 2, 3, 4 people past or present, who would you love to be to spend an evening with at the table? Talking about life, talking about your business, Talking about the world.
Juliana Spahr: Oh my gosh. Well, gave me, it just gave me goosebumps thinking about it. One of my favorite illustrators of all time is Ernst Haeckel. He did beautiful illustrations of animals of the sea, anything from tiny, tiny, tiny little diatoms to gorgeous larger squids octopus corals in the most beautiful style of any other scientific illustrator to me in my mind. I, I adore his illustrations. He’s German so we could speak a little German.
Sharri Harmel: How do you spell his last name? Just so we know?
Juliana Spahr: h a e c k e l, I think. But I’m dyslexic, so don’t quote me on it, but I’m pretty positive. I highly recommend looking him up. And then an obvious choice, as I’m sure you wouldn’t be surprised would be Audubon. Both for his illustrations and for his prowess and bird knowledge, research and everything would be amazing. And then let’s see, how many people do I get? As many as you want. Okay, definitely DaVinci. Leonardo was an incredible artist for many different reasons, but obviously his, his anatomical research was cutting edge at the time, which is very cool. And there’s an artist who I currently really like, whose name is Walton Ford. He’s a watercolor artist and he does giant, almost ABA inspired illustrations of animals from around the world with a little bit of commentary, social commentary, and text over some of his illustrations. He’s fascinating. You’d be surprised based on that list that I, I have my mainly male friends, I get along with men more than women and so that’s probably partially why my list is, is obviously male dominated, but also the field of science, at least for the, the past couple of hundred years was pretty male dominated, obviously. And we really have a dearth still of female researchers and scientific illustrators so that makes the list of them more complicated. But of course there are plenty of female artists who aren’t science based who I would, who I would love to speak with, but
Sharri Harmel: I’d like to be at that dinner party actually, I would. How interesting. What an interesting movie that would make or short clip. Well, thank you. Thank you, J, so much. I have loved this conversation. We could chat forever because this is just so interesting to me that here’s somebody who’s very skilled, very gifted in a certain area and an area that I know nothing about. So thank you. I, I’m fascinated appreciate your time today.
Juliana Spahr: Well, I’m delighted to enlighten you a little bit about scientific illustration
Sharri Harmel: Incredible, right? I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and as I said to J after the recording ended, we could have talked for hours. I just loved this conversation. If you want to explore what we discussed, please check out the show notes below, and do follow J on Instagram. She’s a perfect example of how Instagram can be used to actually grow a business and a business that doesn’t seem really aligned with Instagram. And if you’re in the publishing business, a city planner or in the environmental advocacy field, contact J. Building that relationship between humans and the environment requires an engaging story, and that is what J is obviously magnificent at doing. Thank you everyone for listening, and we’ll talk soon.
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