Kris Ellingsen: Artistic Scientist or Scientific Artist?

(6/97) BOZEMAN -- The scientific world is an intriguing one. So is the realm of an artist.

But neither world is enough for Kris Ellingsen, who, at various phases in her life, could have been called either an artistic scientist or a scientific artist.

"The grounding of science has always been really important to me, but the grounding plus imagination is critical," Ellingsen explained recently from her office at Montana State University-Bozeman. "Although you can find both of those elements in the arts and both of those in the sciences, I can't make up my mind."

Now, after years of pondering the relationship between artists and scientists, Ellingsen will finally have time to explore her ideas and explain them to others. Ellingsen is moving on after working two years as an adjunct faculty member at MSU-Bozeman. She now plans to write a book about the intersecting worlds of artists and scientists.

She has seen many scientists who work in a visual, intuitive way, but her seven-year collaboration with famed dinosaur expert Jack Horner may have made the artist/scientist connection most apparent, Ellingsen said. Ellingsen and Horner worked together from 1986 to 1993 at the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman to help others see dinosaur bones as Horner envisioned them in his mind. With bone fragments setting in front of them, Horner would explain to Ellingsen how the pieces must have looked at one time. Ellingsen would then use a dry paint brush and carbon dust to draw the bones he described. Those consultations, which led to a 120-page book called "Cranial Morphology of Prosaurolophus," were extremely important, Ellingsen said.

"He knew in exquisite detail the form of the bones," she remarked. "I was the one who knew how to get that on paper."

To discover the origin of Ellingsen's duality, one can start by looking at her resume. In 1977, she earned a bachelor's degree in zoology from MSU. She then spent the summer studying with the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators in Washington, D.C. She later received a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona. She went on to work as a graphic designer in Butte, a contract artist for the Museum of the Rockies and a graphic design instructor at MSU-Bozeman.

"I think it's safe to say I have never worked a day as a scientist. I never have been paid for a day's work as a scientist. I think my record is clean," Ellingsen said.

Science and art have been intertwined for her since college, though. Ellingsen had no training in graphic design, but she drew sketches to help her learn the information in her science classes.

"It was my way of touching the material," she explained.

She also began drawing bones as a hobby after someone gave her the skull of a grey fox, and she noticed that the ridges on top were shaped like a musical lyre.

"I just thought they were beautiful," Ellingsen said of the bones that obsessed her. "It was completely out of context with anything that was happening in my studies."

Now entering another phase in her life, Ellingsen said bones are behind her. So are her years as a scientific illustrator and an adjunct faculty member.

Focusing on her upcoming book, she said, "I am really interested in making connections between art and science. Perhaps scientists take the visible world and come to a conclusion about the invisible world we can't see. Maybe artists are working from a place that is invisible, and they bring forth the visible."

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