Katharine Ogle is a poet interested in the intersection of art and science. She has a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Washington. She lives in Seattle with her family.
How has your time in Rome shaped or shifted the direction of your project so far?
My collaborator here, Adam Summers, is a scientist, and I am a poet, and we are both committed to direct observation as a primary method in each of our practices. We look closely at things for a long time in order to think about them. So when we proposed a lyric reference guide to fishes in Rome, the project existed only in our imaginations until we arrived here. Our creative process involved "going fishing" in Rome—searching for fishes on walks, in museums around the city, in mosaics and fountains and paintings and tombs, then documenting them and taking notes—and then spending time in "the lab" (our studio), making replicas of the work we were tracking, pinning our record of fishes to the wall, and developing our research through inquiry. A lot of staring at the wall. Our time in Rome is where the project took shape, both in the field and in the lab, and has been an extraordinary opportunity for us to develop an ongoing conversation about the relationship between art and science.
Have any encounters—with people, places, or new information—opened up new paths in your research or practice in the past months?
Though we had a long list of fish and fish-like creatures that we intended to see in Rome prior to our arrival—we knew we wanted to look closely at the fish mosaics at Centrale Montemartini, we knew we were interested in studying the scary-looking dolphins in Baroque fountains around Rome, etc.—we didn't know anything about ancient Roman fish plates until curator Valentina Follo showed us one in the Academy's own archaeological study collection. We might have later spotted a fish plate in the Capitoline Museum or a few in the Villa Giulia, but we hadn't heard of them prior to our arrival because, for the most part, fish plates are not given a lot of weight in the history of art as objects worthy of deep consideration. And yet they became central to our collaboration. Adam spent a lot of time with a monograph documenting fish plates around the world and identified over a thousand species recorded on these plates. We made replicas of the plates so that we could look at them in color and handle them more casually, and discovered that making models of art added an essential dimension to our conversation, allowing us to speculate about both the artists who made them and the people who procured them.
One of my favorite "uses" of our fish plate models was when the Rome Sustainable Food Project staff came to our studio to check out our research, and we were able to pass around a few different replicas of varying sizes and pedestal heights and ask the experts for their opinions regarding functionality. I remember RSFP intern Nathan Rhee saying he would never serve dinner on a plate with such a high pedestal because it would become unstable with food on it, and this detail became an interesting point of inquiry in our research.
The most wonderful part about being at the American Academy in Rome has been that we've had meaningful encounters with so many people here. We've relied on the expertise of other fellows to help us with our research (like when artist Heather Hart suggested I form clay around a 3D-printed model to approximate a more accurate ceramic handfeel, and then provided the clay; or when classics scholar Katie Dennis extemporaneously translated a plaque accompanying a marble relief of a sturgeon while I was standing in the Capitoline Museum looking at it). The project we've developed here is inextricable from the support and interest of the staff at the Academy, the fellows and fellow travelers, visiting residents, and our families. And beyond the practical help so many have offered (not a single meal goes by that I don't hear someone say, "I found a fish for you…"), it's really the sustained interest in our project and the visible joy people express when engaging with it that have allowed us to observe an essential vitality in our idea. As Adam would say—it's just fun.