Teagan Crawford-Greene, ESJ, 2025
Before I came to MICA I was primarily used print and fiber practices. One of my favorite methods for creating monotype prints is gelli-printing. Using a gelli-plate to spread ink and paint onto and picking up or putting down images from that plate. Each time creating a unique look. Much like my bacterial-cellulose project, I was processing the destruction that Hurricane Helen had caused my hometown Asheville. Hurricane Helen’s impact on western North Carolina really motivated the process and outcome of this project.
Project Overview
I was thinking a lot about impact, breakage, disruption, transfer and application throughout this project. My emotional processing of Hurricane Helen motivated how I approached this project. It went far more off of what I felt like doing that day than I probably should have lol. When doing the CRISPR editing project, I noticed how unsatisfied I was with the outcome of the color, which lead me to use the fluorescent E-coli on black agar. I used tools dipped in fluorescent E.coli to press into and disrupt the smooth surface of the agar. When I was creating these disrutpted agar plates, I was looking at the weather maps of the hurricane to help motivate the shape and placement of the cells. Even though I had not idea how the cells layered on top of one another. Once those plates had grow for a few days I then took fabric covered 3D stamp shapes to transfer the pattern of the “based plate” onto the plates that became my final images.
Process
I started out by making a 500 ml of LB media for agar plates that contained 12.5 g of LB media, 8.5 g of agar, 100mg/l of ampicillin and 2.2 g of activated charcoal. I used more than the recommended agar so it would be a bit stiffer while I was messing up the surface of the plate. These became my “disruption plates’ that also later acted as my “gelli-plates” in my transfer process. Through the project I got very good at using the speed clave. Every time I came into the lab I sterilized a set of various metal tools, spoons, brushes and glass sticks. I used these tools to dig into, press into, and “disrupt” the agar plates. For my tests I used a combination of dipping my disrupting tool into a pulled 2-5 ml (in order to not contaminate the main e-coli culture) of liquid culture and disrupting the agar with E.coli on my tool and disrupting the agar and then spraying or pushing E.coli cells on top of the already disrupted agar.
I enjoyed how the ecoli grew along the edges of the disrupted agar. Once I was happy with my tests, I used both the red, green and yellow and sometimes just the red and green fluorescent E.coli to make my “base gelli plates. I found that the yellow E.coli showed up as a more muted version of the green E.coli on the charcoal agar. I used a small lab metal “spoon” (featured in the first agar plate picture with no E.coli growth) dipped it into the pulled E.coli liquid culture and pressed the back of the spoon into the agar. I had multi of these spoons speedclave and used separate ones for separate colors. I waited 2-3 days in between cell transfers from plate to plate to let them grow.
By the time I had successful growth on these “gelli-plates”, and they were finished works in themselves, Ryan had mention someone who had used velvet as a method to transfer bacteria images from one plate of another. This is where the print making practices really came into my project. I 3D printed circular “stamps” that could fit within the plates. After making another round of ampicillin and activate charcoal LB media agar plates (250ml this time) I speedclaves both cotton linen, a silk and a wool (all 100% natural fiber) and wrapped it around the ends of the 3D print shapes and picked up e.coli cells from my agar “gelli plates” and transferred them on to new plates. It is important to note that I put almost now pressure down when doing this transfer otherwise it breaks the agar and leaves weird edges to the print. It was far more like a gentle put down of the stamp and fabric and then picking it up and softly placing it down again on the new agar plate.
Learn More
Instagram: @green.tea.ec
Website: https://tecrawfordgreene.wixsite.com/mysite