If you have recently driven down Neil Street, you may have noticed that some new, and colorful, neighbors moved in at Dixon Graphics. Alerted by the bright colors and patterns warning of danger, you probably quickly drove away as to not risk your chances against the poison dart frogs inhabiting the space. 

Fortunately for Champaign-Urbana residents, these are not real poison dart frogs—which are native to South America and the Caribbean—but instead an art display designed and installed as part of the Art of Science program at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. 

The lightbox art display on Neil Street was originally started by Ed Weiskamp to feature local artists. After Dixon Graphics acquired Weiskamp Screen Printing in 2021, they decided to keep the tradition alive. “Artistic outreach is part of our broad corporate plan. We pride ourselves on being a local family-run business and a union print shop, so we're really community focused,” said Lance Dixon, President of Dixon Graphics. “Art and science are two things that I think most people don't assume go together, but that’s the beauty of having something at the intersection of two different studies. People can relate to it in different ways.”

Art of Science has run for fourteen years and celebrates the common ground between science and art with an annual exhibit showcasing artistic renditions of images from the IGB’s research portfolio. From an artistic perspective, Dixon was drawn to the research imagery, especially the blown-up microscopic images. This prompted him to invite Art of Science curator and IGB Creative Program Manager Julia Pollack to develop an installation for their lightbox display.

The current Dixon Graphics installation is an expansion of the most recent Art of Science exhibit in Spring 2024. Pollack adapted the piece “Storgechrome” for the window, which was created in collaboration with Eva Fischer, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who recently moved to the University of California, Davis. Fischer’s research group uses integrative approaches to study the brains and behavior of poison dart frogs.

“As a biologist, I think about how we are very visual creatures, and so we rely heavily on our sense of vision. That's part of why we're tickled by things that are visually interesting. I'm biased, but I love the frogs and think they lend themselves well for this. It brings me so much joy to know that our science had a role in inspiring someone to make this beautiful art display,” Fischer said. 

A key feature of poison dart frogs is their beautiful, high contrast colors of reds, yellows, black, and white. In nature, these colors are part of the frogs’ defense system to warn predators that they are toxic if consumed. Pollack incorporated the colors and shapes from Fischer’s frog specimens into the art piece. “The spots on the frogs’ back are how you identify them and also how they identify each other. There are the black spots, and then there are the big, colorful spots,” Pollack said. “So, all these colors and shapes come from the frog specimens, and then I sort of remixed the patterns.” 

Beyond their colorful appearances, Pollack also took inspiration from the frogs’ behaviors. Studies, including Fischer’s work, demonstrate that male poison dart frogs are loving parents that play an important role in caring for their eggs and tadpoles. When creating her original piece “Storgechrome,” Pollack wanted to design something that could be used for clothing fabric, and like the frogs, was not confined to the conventional ideas of gender.

After adapting her art for the window display, and then printing the components at both Dixon Graphics and Dean’s Graphics, Pollack installed the piece in the light box window on Neil Street. “The frogs are just really beautiful and compelling in a space where people are generally going to drive or run by it. This is sort of how I think people might experience poison dart frogs in nature anyway,” Pollack said.

“It's not often you have an opportunity to have an effect on people that you don't even know. I'm just glad to be able to be in a position where I can just make people's lives a little bit nicer and a little more pleasant by having a rotating art display,” Dixon said.

Dixon Graphics plans to rotate the display every six months to highlight different local artists. So, the next time you are going down Neil Street, make sure to check out the Art of Science poison dart frog installation before it is gone. 

For more information about Art of Science, visit https://www.igb.illinois.edu/outreach/artofscience.