AS SOON as she saw her first images of the brain, Marjorie Taylor was spellbound. The vibrant pinks and blues, the intricate detailing – somehow they spoke to her. “I couldn’t help but look at them with the eye of a quilter,” says Taylor, a psychologist at the University of Oregon. “I thought the folds of the cerebral cortex would be great in velvet.”
And so was born a new genre of visual art: scientifically accurate fabric brains. True to her original vision, Taylor’s first piece was a quilt with a cerebral cortex in blue velvet on a silver background. She has since completed three more brain-themed quilts. “Not very many,” she admits. “They take a long time to do.”
Taylor isn’t the only fabric artist who draws inspiration from neuroscience. Psychiatrist Karen Norberg of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, also creates anatomically correct fabric brain art. Independently of Taylor, she decided to make an accurate model of the human brain – in wool.
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It took a year to knit, and the result is astonishing. The cortex of Norberg’s larger-than-life brain has realistic folds, while the internal structure is correct down to the nearest stitch. All the parts are properly connected, as can be revealed by undoing a well-concealed zip that connects the two hemispheres.
Like all the best art, the brain is a one-off. “This is one of a kind,” says Norberg. “It’s a labour of love.”
The woollen brain is now housed at the in Boston, while Taylor’s works hang in various offices and institutes around the University of Oregon. “Someday we hope to bring all the pieces together for a show,” says Taylor. For now, images of both women’s work can be seen at the online Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art (), curated by neuro-economist Bill Harbaugh of the University of Oregon.
Neither artist is resting on her textile laurels. At the moment, Taylor is using a traditional Nova Scotian technique to make a rug depicting an fMRI scan of the brain lighting up in response to spoken words. Norberg is working on quilts showing the chemical structure of various brain hormones and neurotransmitters. “It seems to work well to represent them using a very traditional quilting pattern,” she says.
Norberg and Taylor don’t take their art too seriously. Norberg accepts that there is something faintly ridiculous about knitting a brain. And yet, she says, it was surprisingly instructive. “It’s a way to learn microanatomy and neurodevelopment.” Taylor also sees the humorous side. “I do think it’s beautiful, but there is something funny about it,” she says. But she too remains defiant about her hobby. “There are plenty of rugs that show flowers and cats and lighthouses,” she points out. “Why not fMRI scans?”
