SCIENCE

GIRL

PARTY

GROUP EXHIBITION
September 5 – October 25, 2025

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Science Girl Party is a nod to the early scientific spirit of photography’s evolution through the perspective of the woman-identifying artist. Though this exhibition is a “party,” it speaks to more than just play; these artists show a proficiency in chemistry, technology, research, and craft, which they use as tools to ignite curiosity and empathy.

Including works by:

KATINA BITISICAS & SCOTT MCMAHON
MACKENZIE CALLE
ROSEMARY JESIONOWSKI
COURTNEY JOHNSON
BETH JOHNSTON
GALINA KURLAT
ANNA LAZA
DAKOTA MACE
AMANDA MARCHAND & LEAH SOBSEY
BEATRICE THORNTON
DM WITMAN

KATINA BITISICAS

& SCOTT MCMAHON

In Cellulose Documents: Forget Me Not, a new purpose is given to a found archive of discarded studio portrait nitrate film negatives from the 1930’s. The crumbling and decaying negatives were preserved through digital scans and reinterpreted by the artists by combining them with microscopic imagery of botanic material. This parallels the use of cellulose in nitrate film with the makeup of organic plant cell walls. Nitrate film was used by photographers and filmmakers from the 1880s to the 1950s, but was replaced by acetate safety film after it was found to be highly flammable and unstable. By preserving these found and unidentified portraits, we illuminate the obsolete material of nitrate film through the examination of cellulose at a molecular level.

MACKENZIE CALLE

NASA's Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronaut candidates were required to take two heterosexuality tests. In 1994, NASA asked flight surgeon Dr. Patricia Santy, "to include homosexuality as a psychiatrically disqualifying condition," for astronauts. The psychiatric team protested, but NASA insisted.

In 1983, Dr. Sally Ride became not only the first American woman in space, but she is currently recognized as the first queer astronaut. However, her sexuality would not become public until 2012 when her obituary read, "Dr. Ride is survived by her partner of 27 years, Tam O'Shaughnessy." Ride chose to keep her sexuality private and was never out in her lifetime.

A 2022 found LGBTQ+ astronauts, "perceived that being out may 'hurt their chances of getting a [Space Shuttle] flight. While three astronauts' queer sexualities have become public after going into space, NASA has never selected or flown an openly LGBTQ+ astronaut.
The Gay Space Agency confronts the American space program's historical exclusion of openly queer astronauts. The first part of the project includes documentation of queer history and manipulated NASA archival material. The second part documents aspiring LGBTQ+ astronauts and imagines a fictional space agency called the Gay Space Agency (GSA). GSA offers a counter-narrative to the history of the astronaut program and imagines a diverse and accepting future, both above and below our atmosphere.

ROSEMARY JESIONOWSKI

All Science is Fiction Until it's Not uses wet plate collodion photographs to explore fictional planetary worlds, early discovery, alchemy, and ideas of place and communication.

COURTNEY JOHNSON

Dark Skies is a series of tri-color gum bichromate prints of stars in areas with low levels of light pollution, which protect the world’s ecosystems.

Gum bichromate is a full color alternative photographic process produced by hand printing three color channels of a photographic image on watercolor paper in the sun.

The prints emphasize the embedded light, mystery, and exploration of the night sky.

BETH JOHNSTON

“The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” – Carl Sagan

The Absence of Evidence was an art/science collaboration commissioned by the University of Colorado School of Public Medicine for a public education campaign on the impacts of high-concentration cannabis use on the developing mind.

The exhibition as a whole explored the nuanced landscape of cannabis use—acknowledging both its potential benefits and harms—while highlighting the complex political, industrial, and social forces shaping contemporary understandings of the plant. At its heart, the exhibition hoped to foster thoughtful conversations and encourage open public dialogue.

My project, The Absence of Evidence, specifically addresses the dramatic rise in THC concentrations over the last decade—from roughly 3–30% previously to as high as 90% today—and highlights critical gaps in scientific research, which exist largely due to federal regulations and industry influences.

Using archival micrographs of neurons sourced from Yale Medical School, the project visually emphasizes the neuron both as the literal site of THC’s impact and as a symbol of knowledge production. The integration of these archival images with custom-crafted wood frames and stained glass employs the visual language of scientific inquiry. This approach not only honors the insights provided by scientific research but also intentionally creates space for perspectives, experiences, and narratives that science does not currently see.

Overall, the project stresses the value of community discussions, especially given the current gaps in scientific knowledge. In the frame here, a neuron synapse is framed by stained glass, highlighting the synapse as a crucial point of communication and a symbol of knowledge exchange. It is also the literal site of THC impact.

GALINA KURLAT

Vestige is a series of lumen prints in which ephemera from my body directly interacts with silver gelatin paper, creating a non-representational self-portrait. In these color-scape photograms, the female form, which is subjected to an onslaught of societal pressure and objectification, defies conventional representation, appearing as mark-making and surface disruptions on photographic paper. Lush pinks, mauves, and reds directly engage a "female" palate while subverting the recognizable for the abstract. Throughout the series, the repetition of the circle is not a direct reference to the body, but a nod to its absence.

Lumen prints are a historic photographic process; they are made by exposing silver gelatin paper to light for extended periods. The paper develops outside the darkroom, needing only sodium thiosulfate to fix the image. By making these photograms outdoors, I connect my body to the environment I live in. Day-to-day changes in light and temperature directly affect the individual print's outcome. Although these images resemble paintings, they are fundamentally photographic; the colors and their variations directly relate to the type of paper used, exposure time, and UV in the light source.

This project is a natural extension of my work with figurative and portrait photography. Instead of a classic depiction of my body, these images reinterpret the gaze by eliminating sensuality (the body) for the sublime (abstraction), creating a new self-portrait while challenging representation of the corporeal. Here, the physical remnants of my body are an affirmation and serve as evidence of my existence. These images become a collaboration between process and intention while addressing themes of identity, mortality, and the body from a uniquely female perspective.

ANNA LAZA

Blue Bayou

"They are among us."

Mysterious flying objects over New Jersey in late 2024 reignited global attention surrounding a phenomenon that has persisted for nearly two decades, with authorities citing security threats.Yet, no location on Earth has reported more extraterrestrial activity than the remote island of Cyprus.

Project code-named "Blue Bayou" deployed military-grade systems like XM25 and HELLADS, uncovering non-human artifacts and traces. Advanced surveillance detected electromagnetic anomalies, unexplained equipment failures, and various physical and psychological effects on local residents. Data was shared with top authorities, including the Habitable Worlds Observatory.

Security footage captured circular lights morphing into ghostly figures, seemingly attempting contact with locals. Witnesses reported episodes, including telepathic communication and ultrasonic interactions with the luminous figures. A key case, Contactee #116, described a March encounter with a shape-shifting object emitting a paralyzing light, leading to a time lapse and enhanced sensory abilities, Contactee was found repeating phrase "They are among us.”

Subsequent social media research revealed similar global incidents, aligning temporally with the Cyprus events.

The question remains: what are they, and why are they here?

UAP SC Task Force

Sector 7

DAKOTA MACE

Łichíí (Red) Series is dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous women. Their stories continue to exist within the landscape and impact our relationship with these sacred places. Through their memories, may we never forget who they were: mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, nieces, and daughters.

Creating this work started with listening to the stories of those whose families had gone missing or were murdered. With each story, the importance was placed on the memories of those individuals and places that held significance for them. As a result, a more profound appreciation of these individual's strengths inspired me to reflect on what it means to be connected to the land.

Each piece was dedicated to these stories, places that hold memories or are abstractions of their home. The work was also created to be eventually placed back into the earth. The original works have slowly deteriorated over time, with the emulsion slowly peeling and separating while the dye takes over the entire image. I intended to see this work as an extension of those who were no longer with us, a chance to live through the work and slowly go home, becoming one with the landscape. As an artist and someone who works in the museum field, this went against everything I learned in terms of preservation, but it also was a starting point for me to see my work past its material presence.

Through the stories of MMIW and looking at our shared histories, I realized the significance of creating work that has a timeline. Like my ancestors, our stories eventually go back into the land to be shared and honored. This work was what inspired my later series, titled Sacred Places, and looked at the significance of oral narratives and photography.

AMANDA MARCHAND

& LEAH SOBSEY

Beginning in the 2020 pandemic, Amanda Marchand and Leah Sobsey began collaborating on This Earthen Door, a work documenting their encounter with poet Emily Dickinson’s herbarium. The resulting artwork is not a copy of the original but an entirely new and incandescent work of and for our time.

Published only after her death, the iconic 19th century poet was better known as a

gardener and budding botanist during her lifetime. Over one third of her poems and half her letters reference flowers and plants, illuminating her deep connection to the natural world. In a gesture honoring her nearly 200-year-old effort, the artists grew and harvested plants from her garden to remake her flower sampler with an early 19th century photo process known as anthotype.

Anthotypes (from the Greek meaning flower) are plant-based photographs. The sun’s

rays have both a chemical and bleaching effect, leaving a shadow imprint on paper, a slow-to-expose, camera-less sun-print. This eco feminist collaboration provides a portal through which to examine our changing environment, and revives exciting possibilities of working with non-toxic, sustainable photography. With permission from Harvard’s Houghton Library, the artists used the existing digital archive to reproduce Dickinson’s book of flowers. The series highlights the importance of archives and the scientific/artistic contributions of women.

This Earthen Door is a two-part work, in conversation with scientists and Dickinson

scholars, forging a necessary connection between literature, art, and ecology. Part I,

HERBARIUM reanimates Emily Dickinson’s original herbarium, a book now too fragile to be viewed again. The 66 botanical prints reflect a cacophony of non-synthetic hues derived from nature. Part II, CHROMOTAXIA, is both color sampler and research project, including 33 abstract images that address vital stories about the poet, climate, gardens, and ecology. What can we learn about our current world from this unique,nearly forgotten archive? How can this work entice us to engage, as Dickinson once did, through slow, deliberate attention to the natural world? This work provides a glimpse into the nature-inspired world of the enigmatic poet and asks where she might point us in this moment of “plant invisibility” and climate chaos.

BEATRICE THORNTON

Balsamic Time features recent plant-developed gelatin silver fiber prints by Oakland-based artist, archivist, and historian Beatrice Thornton. Beatrice’s practice centers on using sustainable darkroom processes to develop film and make prints using homemade chemistry from foraged plants to communicate ideas about place with geometric arrangements of exposures on a single sheet of paper.

This installation at the gallery in Small Works SF includes a series of multi-image compositions made from 35mm gelatin silver film shot mostly while hiking along the California coast and in Mexico City. The works, or “balsamic moments,” climb across the gallery walls, intersecting to form diagonals and zig-zags.

Balsamic Time is an herbalist practice for harvesting plants when their healing properties are most potent. It is also the final waning crescent of the lunar chart and considered a period of introspection. To make each of her film and print developers, Beatrice brews a tea from foraged plants specific to the locations pictured but also mindful of the plants’ medicinal uses as they might relate to her imagery. For instance, mugwort is commonly used to induce dreaming.

These works reconsider the frame — both as it appears on a roll of film and the rectilinear format in which photographs are typically printed in the darkroom— through her use of overlapping negative frames and circular masks to obscure and create alternative experiences of the same image through repetition. Her work also considers relationships to place through references to art and design history, poetry, and Buddhist and environmental concepts, mingled with biographical details.

DM WITMAN

Ecologies of Restoration consists of images documenting the growth salt cultures on glass. The project, a continuation of Witman’s Ecologies of Mourning, is a personal exploration of healing and resiliency as a counter to experiences of loss and grief.

There are many types of salts, just as there are many reasons for grief, however each salt compound has an inherent crystalline structure that is influenced by its environment and can yield new possibilities. These images provide meditations for building, mending, and reconfiguring – of ourselves and the world around us.