Week 3 - Art & My Major

 

    This is a blood stain that I smeared and stained in my hematology class this week. My original idea was to do the use jello and colored sugar to draw bacteria on a petri dish, but you said that seems like regular art so this is what I chose. The procedure was written in our lab manual and taught to us by our lab instructor so I didn't necessarily have to do any research for this. The execution and overall project was terrible. I failed miserably. Getting blood out of my fingers took me 2 hours alone because the blood kept clotting and my fingers healed from the needle stab too quickly, so I kept having to re-stab my finger and draw more blood. My smears were also really bad because they either didn't look right, were too thick, or too thin. This was suprisingly the best one and it was still too thick so it didn't stain properly. Looking at the finished project makes me sad because this is supposed to be my career, and I was terrible at it. I should've watched videos on how to do this before walking into class and should have tried moving quicker. I chose clinical lab science as my career which has a lot of blood smears, staining, and bacteria growth which I think does have a lot to do with art. The process of smearing, staining, and inoculating bacteria on a petri dish is very similar to art in the sense that both have specific techniques that are required to look good. Honestly after this, I really feel like people wanting to go into clinical lab science should take a painting class or something to improve hand and finger dexterity.