Saxton Fisher

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Saxton Fisher is an interdisciplinary artist and scientist who has exhibited work in Houston locations including The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Art League Houston, and The Jung Center, as well as the YoungArts Gallery in Miami. As a graduate of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts and now a PhD Candidate in Chemistry at Rice University, Saxton practices both art and science as ways of seeing, representing, and making sense of the world.

Their current research involves synthesizing gold nanoparticles and using liquid-phase electron microscopy and x-ray scattering to observe the collective self-assembly behavior of nanoparticles into highly ordered superlattices in real time. This investigation into formation mechanisms aims to probe the spontaneous emergence of chirality in nanoparticle assemblies which could be applicable in designing a wide range of materials with tunable optical and electronic properties. ​Saxton's scientific work has a significant visual component, with data taking the form of microscope images and 2D scattering patterns that have an intrinsic artistic quality.

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Saxton is working to bridge their experiences in art and science towards a transdisciplinary science-art practice that includes creating art informed by science, bringing creative artistic perspectives to scientific research, and harnessing artistic talents towards science communication and outreach to make make science accessible, engaging, and fun to those historically excluded from science.

Saxton's early artistic work was fueled by their interest in a resurgence of Dada-esque philosophy and (anti-)aesthetic, drawing upon modern issues of climate change, over-exploitation, corruption, and injustice. This primarily sculptural work harbors themes of absurdism, irrationality, and hostility to mimic contemporary reason. The spectre of the industrial haunts their absurd, threatening, sometimes amusing relics. Some of these objects are crafted as artifacts, tools, and weapons that might exist in an surreal post-disaster or post-mass-production society. This work also draws on tongue in-cheek themes of falsely inhabiting cisgender patriarchal bodily and cultural ideals of masculinity, and is further informed by depression, disassociation, hopelessness, and senselessness.

Their slightly later and ongoing work expanded on themes and aesthetics of the industrial, with a focus on objects and infrastructure of transportation (cars, airports, elevators). This included the idea of cars as an extension of the body when navigating complex freeway systems. Here, car modifications echo gender affirming changes to the body and performative masculinity is reminiscent in road aggression and tire spikes. Dash cam footage from the artist's I-45 commute is incorporated to give life to Houston's sublime intertwining monstrosity of freeway overpasses and "spaghetti junctures." Furthermore,​ airline travel, specifically TSA checkpoints also have clear implications on the movement of those with bodies deemed deviant. Elevators are also explored as an isolated and moving installation site.
 

More recently, while performing chemistry research for their PhD, Saxton's current work has evolved to include objects and imagery from chemistry and materials science. In this intermediate space between disciplinary boundaries, glassware and laboratory equipment becomes material for assemblage sculpture, electron microscopy becomes an alternate image-making process, chemical structure becomes form, etc.​ Previous themes of mental health reappear, and Saxton's drawing, collage, and sculptural work is heavily influenced by their living with treatment-resistant depression and burnout while completing work for their PhD. Their plans for future work will expand on these themes within 2D, 3D, and video/performance based work that grapples with recovery while transmutating the scientific known and unknown into new forms.

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Saxton also advocates for the representation and inclusion of trans, queer, and gender non-confirming people in the physical sciences, which manifests in their community organization as well as their recent artwork that will be featured on the cover of the scientific journal ACS Nano as part of the American Chemical Society's diversity, equity, and inclusion cover art series.​​​​​​​​