Morgane Merlin, an environmental science PhD student and visual artist based in Alberta, Canada, and Giorgo Skretis, a visual artist and musician based in Chania, Greece, are the artists selected for a residency at the next EGU General Assembly. The meeting is taking place on 7–12 April 2019 in Vienna, Austria.

Merlin is a hobby artist who works with a variety of media, including watercolors, acrylics and pastels. She says that, at the meeting, she will focus on creating illustrations based on the main research results of selected presentations. “The art work will be a copy of this main result encased in a colored painting (watercolor) or drawing (colored pencils) embodying the beauty and singularity of the object of research, whether it is a landscape, rock formation or living organism,” she writes in her winning application. With a background in environmental science, she says she strives to share her passion for the natural world through both her research and hobbies: “I wish to showcase the admiration for the natural world we have as scientists, fueling our passion for research.”

Skretis is an artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and sound. He says his participation in the EGU General Assembly “will be a great influence towards recontextualizing my art practice, both in terms of looking at Earth processes in a finer detail, and in terms of the analogies that can be drawn between the geosciences and the human sciences.” He is fascinated by the way matter crashes, merges and disintegrates in every possible scale, while at the same time it provides the conditions for life to emerge. During his residency he will create a small collection of sculptures using natural materials such as clay and plaster. The form and manner of creation of these sculptures will reflect the various processes and forces of nature, with a focus on themes presented at the meeting.

EGU General Assembly participants will be able to follow the art work produced by Merlin and Skretis via social media (using the hashtag #EGUart), through screens at the meeting, on the EGU blog GeoLog and live at the conference centre (in Foyer D in the Brown Level -2/basement). Participants will also be able to take part in short courses organised by Merlin and Skretis: ‘Get creative! Sketching and drawing (your) science’ and ‘Sculpt your Research’.

Last year, the EGU hosted a cartoonist and a poet in residence at its General Assembly. Matthew Partridge and Sam Illingworth documented the Assembly through art and taught short courses on cartooning science and using poetry to communicate research.

• EGU General Assembly 2019 website
• EGU blog, GeoLog
• Call for applications for artists in residence