Biographies

Tina Bolyos was born in Kingston-Upon-Thames in 1959 but moved to Hungary at the age of six. For a time during this period she lived with her Grandfather, a Doctor with knowledge of plants and their medicinal properties, a subject which has remained an abiding interest to Tina. During the few years spent in Budapest the architecture and decorative style, which was mainly late nineteenth early twentieth century, had a deep influence on her, as did the tensions created by the Communist system. It was on her return to England at the age of thirteen, that she first realised her passion for art. In 1975 she had been commissioned to decorate a jug, and had sold her first paintings. At that time her interests were already varied including biology, botany and philosophy. Tina worked for a number of years in the plans department of the Land Registry gaining a solid foundation in draughtsmanship and undertook commissions in her spare time. In 1986 she left full time employment to start a family and gradually considered the possibility of being a full time artist. As the commissions increased she returned to college to widen and consolidate her skills, enrolling in a Textile Design course at Buckingham University. While doing a project at college on fungi she was invited to visit Rothamsted. That interaction resulted in a number of designs and pictures and inspired her to want to reveal the beauty of these otherwise invisible worlds. It was from this initial college project that the present collaboration and exhibition grew. Contact Tina at tbolyos@yahoo.com

Keith Davies was born in Rochdale in 1956 and at school opted to follow a scientific curriculum having to give up art at the age of 14. After leaving school and undertaking a first degree in Applied Biology at Hatfield Polytechnic, he did Voluntary Service Overseas working on a World Bank integrated rural development project in Malawi, Central Africa. It was here he became interested in the impact of science on rural community development. On his return to the United Kingdom in 1981 he undertook a research project investigating the use of bacteria to control plant-root diseases. During this period, while based in the School of Plant Biology at the University College of North Wales, he also followed the final year undergraduate degree option on the Philosophy of Science in the Faculty of Art. Following the completion of this research project he came to Rothamsted as a post-doctoral research worker to investigate the use of bacteria to control plant parasitic nematodes. His current research involves understanding the genetics of an interaction between a bacterium and a plant-parasitic nematode in order to find an alternative to the pesticides that are currently used. In April 2000 after hearing Prince Charles' Reith Lecture, he was goaded into writing an article entitled, 'Creative tension: what links Aristotle, William Blake, Darwin and GM crops'. This article was subsequently published in Nature as a Millennium Essay. It was through the interaction with Tina Bolyos and some of the ideas expressed in his essay that a grant was awarded from the Biotechnology and Biological Scientific Research Council of the UK to fund an Artist-in-Residence to help increase public access to science.
Contact Keith at keith.davies@bbsrc.ac.uk, or see his website

 

Acknowledgements

Rothamsted Research
(http://www.rothamsted.bbsrc.ac.uk)
Business Information and Liaison - Stephen James
International Liaison and PR - Susannah Bolton, Elspeth Bartlet, Barbara Vernon
Visual Communications Unit - Nicky Seymour, Lynda Castle, Peter Swatton, Manny Cefai, Andrew Wallace
Plant Pathology and Microbiology and Plant and Invertebrate Ecology Department - Jon West, Judy Pell

This work was funded through a BBSRC grant for developing resources and activities to enhance public access to science