CHEMISTRY FOR THE SAKE OF ART

Abstract

DISPERSED THROUGHOUT Cheryl Safren's modest home in a dense residential neighborhood east of Queens on New York's Long Island are signs of intense chemical investigation. Her basement looks like a laboratory. Hanging on one wall are goggles, a splash visor, and heavy-duty rubber gloves. What once was a bar now serves as a lab bench, hosting bottles and vials with liquids and solids in a rainbow of colors. On a table on another side of the basement rests a few ziplock plastic bags containing colored globs, the results of experiments with different polymer formulations to determine which ones hold together better. Nearby on the floor are scores of copper test strips the size of playing cards, each one subjected to a different chemical treatment. Safren, who had worked since the 1970s as a graphic artist and then later as an art teacher, is a homegrown, self-taught applied chemist. Rather than making new medicines, commercial polymers, ...