‘Holy cow, how can that be?’
We brush worlds off our feet – Gary Greenberg shows us the impossible in grains of sand
By Chris Worthy
Gary Greenberg sees things that most of us miss. My life has never felt landlocked, but it turns out that my vision was. I’ve always lived within a few hours’ drive of one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world. South Carolina attracts visitors from far and wide who spend summer basking on its broad, sandy beaches and many snowbirds who leave harsh winters for our relatively mild Southern version. If you’ve spent any time on a beach, you know the sand isn’t just ubiquitous where waves meet shore. When you leave, it comes with you. It is on your feet, in your shoes, in your car, and stuck to every object that came on the trip, along with a few that didn’t.
What I didn’t know, until I discovered Greenberg’s microphotography, is that there is an unseen world in every bit I’ve brushed from a flip-flop or shaken out of a beach towel. I sent galaxies to the trash heap. Its brown/gray monochrome conceals a magical rainbow of colorful waves, ripples, and candy cane stripes. Grains of sand are tiny worlds made of porous fibers and glistening crystals, sparkling gems and the most prized minerals, and bits of shells long ago left behind by their inhabitants. The ocean even takes humankind’s garbage and smooths and tosses it until it becomes transcendent. Fibonacci spirals of green and blue and yellow are everywhere in Greenberg’s art. I now know that every color I could ever imagine is under my feet as I walk in and out of the waves on the shore. Greenberg found them, showed them to us, and I’ll never look at sand the same way again.
A surprise every time
“I’ve been looking through microscopes for 50 years,” Greenberg said. “I never cease to be amazed at what I’m looking at. Every time, it’s a surprise and beautiful. People don’t get a chance to look through microscopes, and there’s this whole world there. When I saw sand, I was just as flabbergasted as everyone else was because I didn’t know what was in sand. I had no idea.”
Greenberg is a scientist, with a Ph.D. in biomedical research. He spent a career developing high-definition, 3-D light microscopes. But he is also an artist who specializes in jaw-dropping microphotography, creating images of truly unbelievable beauty that we look at but can’t see without the help of technology. Greenberg lets the rest of us in on the magic happening in the tiniest of worlds. His combination of skills results in a brew of art and science that is more than the sum of both fields.
“I see things that other people may not see,” he said. “And I’m a pretty darn good photographer with probably the best microscope in the world. In that sense, people had not seen it in the way I can show it to them – in high-definition 3D.”
Sand is one of Greenberg’s specialties. It is the primary medium in which he works to reveal nature’s art.
“It looks like brown, tiny pebbles or beige pebbles. It turns out that’s not what it is. There’s a wealth of biological and geological remnants of the ecology of the particular area where the sand comes from. It tells a story.”
Each beach has its own tales that render a unique gallery of art unseen to most of us.
“Every grain of sand is coming from somewhere and going somewhere and has a story to tell,” he said “Every beach has a story to tell. Every beach is different, literally every grain of sand in the universe is different. It’s inspiring to think that. What’s really inspiring about that is we think we know what sand is. Of course, when we look close, we don’t. But that turns out to be the same as almost anything.”
Greenberg shows us that art is all around. It’s our individual and collective vision that is lacking.
“Humans are locked into seeing things in a certain time, in a certain space. We see things that are a millimeter large to something a mile away or however far your eyes can see. We see things about a second at a time – kind of our heartbeat. But when we see things in slow motion, all of sudden we see things we’ve never seen before. If we speed it up and go time lapse, now we see patterns we’ve never seen before. And it’s awe-inspiring because it brings us into a world, a frame of reference we don’t normally see, and it shows us that the world is deeper and more complex than we ever imagined. It all depends on how you look at it. That’s the message I try to send.”
A few grains made the difference
Greenberg’s passion for grains of sand began when a friend sent him a film canister of sand from Maui. It was a few thousand grains from an ordinary looking beach, if such a thing exists.
“It still inspires me. Every time I look at sand, it’s different,” he said.
The Maui treasures were stunning, but then a friend living in the Virgin Islands sent some local sand to Greenberg.
“It was totally different,” he said. “That’s what hooked me. I said, ‘Holy cow, how can that be?’ The thing about science is if you get curious about something, science allows you to find answers about your curiosity. It was the combination of science and art that allowed me to pursue this whole idea.”
The result thus far has been Greenberg’s two books, a website, a TED talk, and countless people inspired to look a little closer at the world.
“Art creates a window or a doorway for people to embrace science and nature in a way they wouldn’t do otherwise,” he said. “When you see something like that, you realize it’s not just one thing. It’s a whole world that can be explored. It’s not just one view and “oh, isn’t that nice” and you go on your way.”
For all his passion about the micro view of the world, the macro one impresses as well.
“We do get a chance to look at things through telescopes, thank God. We look up in the sky and think, ‘that’s awesome,’ but when we look through a telescope and see an exploding star or a supernova or a black hole, it’s more than awesome. It’s understanding through science and nature what’s actually happening. It makes it much, much more awe inspiring than to look up at the sky and see a bunch of white dots. That’s what science can do for us, to let us truly appreciate nature, because most of nature is hidden.”
Cultivating the emotion of awe
The gateway to awe comes through paying attention. Will awe meet us where we are? Maybe so – if we don’t miss it.
“Nature works on every level,” Greenberg said. “That’s the thing about it. It will work on the microscopic level, the macroscopic level. It will grab you by the hair. It works on every level, it’s just the attention you give it. It will give you answers back, depending on how you explore it and how you look at it and how you are with it. For me, the microscope is just another way to see it. My mission in life has been to show people what they can’t otherwise see. I realize that everything is like sand. The beauty is hidden everywhere. Hidden treasures are everywhere. You can be walking down a dirty alleyway and find a treasure. It’s everywhere.”
Learn more about Dr. Greenberg and his art at sandgrains.com. His book, A Grain of Sand, is available. Learn more about his work and watch his TEDx talks on his YouTube channel.
Amazing!!