Spineless: Portraits of Marine Invertebrates at County Art Museum

 — from Rebecca Parks of San Juan Islands Museum of Art —

Hermissenda Crassicornis, opalescent nudibranch, a Susan Middleton photo, on display with others at San Juan Islands Museum of Art, May 23 to Aug. 21. (Photo copyright Susan Middleton)

From May 23 to August 21, the walls of the new San Juan Islands Museum of Art will be filled with huge close-up sea critters in an exhibit titled Spineless: Portraits of Marine Invertebrates, the Backbone of Life by celebrated wildlife photographer Susan Middleton. The photographs are from Middleton’s book of the same title published this year by Abrams. Middleton specializes in portraiture of the rare and endangered. Her spellbinding images of octopuses and jellyfish reveal a close-up world of the marine invertebrates that represent more than 98 percent of the known animal species in the ocean.

“Colorful, quirky, quivery, spindly, spiky, sticky, stretchy, squishy, slithery, squirmy, prickly, bumpy, bubbly, and fluttery, the invertebrates appear almost surreal, even alien,” Middleton says. She visually isolates each creature to best capture its individual character: resplendent sea cucumbers, ethereal jellies, otherworldly nudibranchs, and more. From the stubby squid to the frilled anemone to the white phantom crab, these images open our eyes to both the fragility and the resiliency of these species.

About IMA
The new IMA gleams at the top of Friday Harbor’s Spring Street. For more than a decade, a band of passionate volunteers produced courageous exhibitions in abandoned store fronts and theater lobbies. In 2014, IMA moved into its new permanent home. Designed by architect Richard Hobbs, the state-of-the-art facility features a soaring glass atrium that brings the art right to the street.

IMA’s mission is to bring fine arts to the islands of the Salish Sea. The 501c3 non-profit institution supports art education in the San Juan Islands schools, an Art as a Voice lecture series, and a host of varied workshop adventures for experts to amateurs, adults and children in addition to its world class art exhibitions, adding significantly to the San Juan Islands’ growing reputation as an exciting art destination.

About Susan Middleton
Susan Middleton is an acclaimed photographer, author, and lecturer specializing in portraiture of rare and endangered animals, plants, sites, and cultures. The recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in 2009, for many years she was the chair of the Department of Photography at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, where she currently serves as research associate. Her photographs have been exhibited worldwide in fine art and natural history contexts and are represented in the permanent collections of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Gallery of Art. The author of Evidence of Evolution (Abrams) and co-author of several other books, Susan Middleton lives in San Francisco.