ARCHEMY in Talloires by Daniel Jay

About this Exhibition

This exhibition presents chemistry-based abstract art pieces that artist and scientist Daniel Jay developed during a residency at the Tufts University Center for European Studies in Talloires, France in Spring 2015. Daniel Jay used dyes, chemicals and chemical reactions to create art works inspired by the life and science of Claude-Louis Berthollet, one of the greatest French chemists, born in Talloires in 1748.

Colleague of Lavoisier, friend and advisor to Napoleon, Berthollet contributed to both theoretical and practical chemistry. He developed the concept of chemical equilibrium and established the nomenclature for chemical compounds that we still use today. He served as director of dye manufacture at the Gobelins tapestry factory, where his work helped to make some of the most beautiful tapestries of their time.

For this exhibition, Jay drew from Berthollet’s science using dyes from his era such as Indigo, Cochineal, Madder and Turmeric and chemicals such as copper sulfate, alum, tin oxide and liquid bleach (which he invented) that he used for textile and tapestry manufacture.

About Daniel Jay

Daniel Jay has had parallel careers in science (as a professor at Harvard and now Tufts University) and in art for the past 30 years. In the mid-1980s, he was elected a junior fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows to do both science and art and was provided with both a laboratory and an art studio there. Recently, he began combining his two passions by developing a series of art influenced by science. Titled ARCHEMY, this current art uses chemicals and chemical reactions to make novel marks on paper.

Find out more about the artist