Eveline Kolijn’s Coral Kaleidocycle, 2008.

An artist’s studio overlooking the foothills of the Rockies seems an unlikely setting for a focus on marine life. However, for printmaker Eveline Kolijn, it’s the perfect place to make a connection between land and sea.

Ever since she was a child, marine biology has been a passion. Kolijn was born in the Netherlands and grew up in the Caribbean, where much of her time was spent exploring local beaches and coral reefs. By age 12, she had produced six volumes of shell illustrations. Her interests led to a master’s degree in cultural anthropology and later, when her children were in their teens, she earned her degree in printmaking at the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Kolijn’s portfolio includes numerous complex illustrations of biological and marine life forms that possess the quality draftsmanship found in Victorian scientific texts.

A luminous four-colour etching, titled Symbiogenesis, illustrates microscopic bacteria organelles responsible for the decomposition of organic matter. A serigraph print, Plastic Culture, is an image of yogurt container rims that the artist bonded into spherical molecular models. Like something you would find on a microscopic slide, it is a provocative rendering of seemingly cell-like structures that overlap and dominate strands of kelp.

Outstanding linoleum prints form the Coral Kaleidocycle, a complex series illustrating the stages of brain and star coral reproductive cycles. Each multicoloured print is folded to produce a 3-D kaleidocycle, or what mathematicians also refer to as a moving paper flexihedron. As you hold the kaleidocycle in both hands, one combination of illustrative patterns is evident, and then, with a roll of the thumb the next image tumbles open to view.

Kolijn’s printmaking practice expands to several stand-alone sculptures, such as Infinity Box, which consists of plastic coffee cup lids, plastic debris and fibre optics encased in a mirrored box. When you peer inside, a phosphorescent school of jellyfish appears along with fragments of your own reflected image repeating in the distance. Repurposing disposable containers as artful creatures and then housing them in a mirrored aquarium animates the plastics and emphasizes the preciousness of the organisms represented.

Kolijn returns to the subjects of shells, corals, diatoms (algae), radiolarian (animal phytoplankton) and bacteria because she laments the deterioration of the coral reefs and accumulations of discarded plastics that pollute the beaches of her childhood home. She is also concerned about the problem of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (an ocean gyre comprised mostly of plastics that have accumulated to the size of Texas). However, Kolijn’s consolation is art, which she sees as a partial key to public awareness. “Beauty is a better lure for the public to be informed and take action than this constant fear-mongering, panic and fatalism that happens. Every little thing helps and it is never too late to start solving some problems,” she says.

Kolijn’s work bridges science and art, consumerism and ecology. Her art encourages interaction; it is made to be didactic and romantic — to prompt us to scrutinize and to marvel.

Beyond the studio, Kolijn collaborated with poet Christian Bök on Virus From Outer Space, she was a recent artist in residence at the Telus World of Science and is currently one of 12 artists leading the This is My City municipal arts program. Kolijn also teaches print media for ACAD’s extended studies program and is a member of the Alberta Printmakers Society. Visit evelinekolijn.com to see more images.

Peer Review is a series of articles about Calgary artists who maintain rigorous professional careers but who might be unfamiliar to the public often because they do not have a gallery in the city.

Laurel Smith is a Calgary artist and educator whose art can be seen at Herringer Kiss Gallery.