Julia Buntaine Hoel is a professor and conceptual artist whose work has been featured both nationally and internationally. Currently, her piece, The Unexpected Visitor by Ilya Repin is on display at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center in Dunedin, Florida until December 24th, 2020 as part of the “Vespertine” exhibition. Hoel’s piece consists of seven drawings that track the movement of a viewer’s eyes as they look at Ilya Repin’s painting Unexpected Visitor.Using eye-data by A.L. Yarbus, Hoel penned the different pathways of the eyes, creating a type of visual map.
The “Vespertine” exhibition as a whole is described as a collection of “artworks that incorporate the daylit logic of scientific and technological concepts or process into their creation,” according to the Dunedin Fine Arts Center. In her work, Hoel utilizes her background in neuroscience and fascination with concepts of consciousness to create. Part of her artist statement reads “unlike articles and raw data, scientific ideas in the form of art inherently demand subjective judgment and interpretation, and my goal as a science-based artist is to provide my viewer an alternative way to understand the wonders of biology we have discovered in ourselves.” She is also the founder, and editor-in-chief of SciArt Initiative, a non-profit that explores science-art interactions as a way to connect and cross disciplines. The Visual and Performing Arts Department is thrilled to have Professor Hoel this year and excited about the unique cross-disciplinary approach she can help students explore.
