Geoscientist brings passion for rocks to museum audience

A scientist and public speaker says she hopes to increase appreciation for the beauty of the Earth, by connecting geology to what we do and where we live. 

Geoscientist Catrina Russell-Dolan presented At the Intersection of Art & Geology earlier this month at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History.

This interactive event was part of the 4th annual Atlantic Geoscience Society’s Travelling Speakers Series. Russell-Dolan says she wants us to think more often about what’s beneath our feet. 

“Geology is the foundation to everything we do, everywhere we live,” Russell-Dolan told The Signal at the event. “The entire world exists the way it does because of the rocks underneath us.  

“I was able to talk about geology, but use different mediums like art and heritage and history to make those connections.” She said making those connections can make geology more accessible.

Due to the snowy weather, only a small group of museum-goers attended the talk. But Russell-Dolan, who has been involved in science communication since early in her university years, projected her voice as though she was speaking to a full room, even calling on the audience for crowd participation. 

As she spoke, she didn’t just gesture with her hands — she motioned with her whole body to express her point, leaning backwards as she described taking a step back, or layering her arms over each other when she talked about layers of rock. 

“I’m trying to sell you on this idea that geology is cool and that learning more about our planet is just amazing.” 

Russell-Dolan wore a special pendant for the presentation — a polymer rendition of her favourite animal, the trilobite.  

Trilobites were small crab-like creatures that lived during the Paleozoic era, about 521 million years ago. She said the largest trilobite ever found was the size of a dinner plate, though most are smaller than a human fist. The necklace is just one example of the intersection between art and geology. 

Another example is a cardboard model representing glacial advance and retreat that Russell-Dolan brought to the presentation, in order to explain Saint John’s Reversing Falls, an underwater waterfall that causes the direction of the water to reverse each day. 

Local artists Sparrow Granite and Lucy Collins attended Russell-Dolan’s presentation together. 

“We were just very lucky to come across what was going on today and make it over despite the storm,” Granite said. 

“The crossover, the overlap, intersection between art and geology is fascinating. A saying that I like to say all the time […] is that ‘art is in everything I see around me,’ ” she said. 

Following the presentation, the audience was invited to view a display of recently re-discovered and repaired historic geology maps with Tim Fedak, the curator of geology at the museum.