Adrienne Lee ’21
Tell me where is the fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head?, 2019
Plasma-cut steel
Winner: 2019 Brain Art Competition, The Neuro Bureau (international)
As the sun rose one day in late September, a blurry shadow cast down a hallway onto the concrete floor of the E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center. The source of this shadow was a steel sculpture displayed down the left hallway on the building’s first floor. I gazed for several moments at the intricacy of this steel structure before me. I decided to learn more about the work of art. The piece was created in 2019 by Davidson College senior, Adrienne Lee. With this sculpture, titled Tell me where the fancy is bred, Or in the heart or in the head?, Lee encompasses her two passions, neuroscience and art, and questions our source of love and desire as human beings. I met with her this fall while we were both on campus. In my interview with Lee, we discussed her original idea for the sculpture, how she made it, why it inspires her, and Lee’s accomplishments with this sculpture.
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The inspiration for Where is the fancy bred, or in the heart or in the head came to Lee during a Behavioral Neuroscience course at Davidson. As a Studio Art major and Neuroscience minor, Lee frequently combines her cross-disciplinary passions to create art that includes science influences. In her design, Lee plasma cut 15 40 by 40-inch steel plates and intertwined them to create the two lobes of her sculpture. The two sides are wired together with continuous welding. The strength between these steel connections is what allows the sculpture to hold itself up. Because of its self-reliance, the piece can be viewed from multiple angles with the same sense of beauty and wonder. Lee explained, “as the sun hits the steel, the grind marks glisten just like electric signals in the brain.” She exclaimed, “brain cells that fire together, wire together!” Lee “fired” the steel together through welding and this “wired” the brain’s lobes together, just like a human brain. Additionally, the precision and fine cut angles emphasize the fragility of a human brain too.
The fragility of the human brain and our neuro-electrical connections are further accentuated by the title of Lee’s piece, Tell me where is the fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? This is a Shakespearean line from The Merchant of Venice and was featured on a slide in her Behavioral Neuroscience class. The line is spoken to question the mind-body problem that was a knowledge dilemma in the Shakespearean era. Lee often ponders this same question. In our conversation, Lee mentioned many events in 2020 and how many people felt emotional effects differently. She explained, “right now, we are thinking about inclusivity and love and these things weren’t talked about or being brought to justice.” No matter the source of our emotions right now, Lee believes there is a disconnect between the heart and the brain — a disconnect she feels between how we think about our emotions, with our brains, and how we feel about them, with our hearts. In our conversation, she mentioned that thinking about our emotions and utilizing the connections within our brain helps foster unity as human beings. Lee emphasizes that “sourcing our emotions more through the brain helps us look at the larger scale before the smaller scale.” Sourcing our emotions through our brains and looking at the larger scale can help us feel less fragile, instead, we can “wire together” as a society and change our focus to the whole population, not the individual. Just like when we view the sculpture, a change of perspective for our emotions can bring us a new sense of beauty and wonder. After our conversation, I was impressed by the thought and meaning behind the brain sculpture. Walking past it in the Wall Center leaves me with a resonant feeling.
Tell me where the fancy is bred, Or in the heart or in the head? the won Brain Art competition’s award for Best Submission in sculpture for Organization for Human Brain Mapping (OHBM) during their annual conference in 2019. It was also a selected artwork for the 32nd European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP) 2019 Congress in Copenhagen, Denmark. Recently, the piece was also featured in a publication of HAS Magazine (Humanities, Arts & Society, a branch of UNESCO-MOST) and their interview with philosopher Divya Dwivedi. The web version of the magazine can be found here: https://humanitiesartsandsociety.org/magazine/interview-with-divya-dwivedi/.
Adrienne Lee’s piece remains on display in the E. Craig Wall Jr. Academic Center. Its long tenure is fueled in part by the admiration and support of the neuroscience department, including her Behavioral Neuroscience professor. This spring, more of Lee’s work can be viewed in her senior solo exhibition in the Smith Gallery at the Belk Visual Art Center from March 10th to March 15th. Lee’s eye toward the unique connection between the world around her and the neurons within us keep an art lover yearning for more.
-Isabel Walter ’24
Work Cited
Lee, A. (n.d.). Tell me where is fancy bred, Or in the heart or in the head? [Digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.adrilee.com/tell-me-where-is-fancy-bred-or-in-the-heart-or-in-the-head/