Creating new colours from plant material

with Lorenzo Li Greci

While working as a biotechnology research scientist, Lorenzo Li Greci was inspired to start creating artwork out of his own lignin based dyes. Lignin is a key component making up plant material, and so, is biodegradable. This contrasts with the largely petroleum based plastic products we see all around us today. Lignin offers untapped potential for a world that is shifting to a sustainable future.

His background in genetics and optics inspires his art project, where he creates new colours using lignin - a key component of plant material. He experiments with this new palette of colours to see how they adapt on materials such as canvas and clay, in order to make new visual experiences to share with the world, as we can see in the following pages.

Q & A - Lorenzo Li Greci

From studying genetics, how did you come to start developing colours and materials in the laboratory?

The two groups (genetics and optics) have a lot of things in common and they are not necessary two separate fields. Genetic studies are often molecular investigations that use biochemical dyes to identify and quantify cellular features and gene expression. Fluorescent reporter systems work with coloured light to describe cellular or molecular interactions. Sometimes I work with colours at molecular level, other times I move in a bigger dimension. I like to create new colours or new colour applications. Inspired by the chemistry and the physics of the colours, I have decided to create and apply a new lignin-based colour palette and I was positively surprised about the results and the public interest upon this research. I know the physical and chemical properties of the compounds I use to generate new colour: density, hardness, melting point, toxicity, solubility, and I feel confident to use them with precautions to generate new visual experiences. I was curious to experiment with new colours, following different directions that have never been presented to the public before. I felt like there was a need to invite these instruments of science in visual art territories and present them to the public in a special way.

Why is lignin research so important today, particularly with a growing interest in the circular economy?

To ensure ecological sustainability the economy must change or provide paradigmatic shifts. One of the options is the circular economy that extends the lifetime of raw materials. Lignin is produced from recycled papers, and it is part of the circular economy’s processes. To protect biodiversity, an eco-sustainable approach is to reduce the use of fossil fuels and natural resources, therefore, we need new discoveries and technologies that allow us to reintroduce waste materials in our daily life.

Lignin is produced in bioreactors through the fermentation of recycled paper and its number of applications are growing every year. Lignin research is focused on the valorization of this relatively new material to understand and discover any new possible and usable applications, including ways to use lignin in everyday life so that they may replace plastic materials that are not biodegradable.

What materials and methods are needed to achieve different colours from lignin?

First, you need lignin. One can either purchase it from the industrial sector or build a bioreactor at home (which is much more complicated). You caould even look around the world for university or academic research teams that are involved in lignin research and ask to collaborate with them. Lignin’s natural colour is brown, and it might range very broadly from light brown to dark brown depending on the starting materials, fermentation, and post-fermentation processes. Old methods for colour formulation starting from the pigment are applicable. Lignin is highly soluble in certain conditions; therefore, liquid lignin water solutions are able to be used as a watercolour technique (as if you would use liquid wood.)

In addition, I start to create my own colour formulations by simply look at the chemical structures of each compound I use and with a basic understanding of physical and chemical knowledge I was trying to predict how lignin could interact or react with other chemical compounds in certain conditions to generate outcomes on the canvases or ceramics samples. Methods are simply physical applications, with or without brush works, I can sometimes boil the lignin to concentrate it, for example, or add iron oxide or others salts to change its hues.

Please discuss a few of your art pieces created with lignin.

The first was simply a drawing on recycled paper presented at Venice for an international fair of contemporary art focused on the themes of identities, relationship between man, society, and contemporary cities (see image on previous page, Figure in Lignin).

After that I moved to canvases, and I started to use the lignin through vertical strokes only to generate continuously uniform and defined patterns by reducing the variables associated with the paintings process and get to know the material better. I call them cascades because the whole process, and sometime also the outcome, reminds me of waterfalls made of lignin (see image below, Lignin study). I wanted also to reproduce tree bark simulation on canvases, since lignin in the most abundant compound of the tree structural tissue and for this I use vacuum driven and free energy physical applications (see the image Lignin Cascade on the next page).

Sometimes I do not use the brush, other times, instead, if I focus on figurative art representations, I use the brush and I try to control the lignin applications as much as I can.

Taking a ceramics course, you applied lignin to stoneware clay. What is the potential for lignin to be applied to different materials?

Its potential, as well as its limitation, are described by its chemical structure and physical characteristics.

Lignin can adapt on different media, but it is up to the artist to understand the best way to ensure the quality of the new product over time. My lignin paintings are sensitive to water, therefore, I moved toward ceramics to overcome this issue.

With ceramics, the whole artistic process is less predictable because of the firing process. Inside the kiln small changes in the microenvironments might result in drastic and unexpected results which I also learnt how to appreciate them. More precisely, I am using lignin crystals in glaze formulations starting from my ceramic teacher’s glaze recipes.

We have seen the lignin behave very differently from keeping its original colour to changing it completely, or even disappearing or becoming transparent, like glass. We are still trying to figure it out why lignin does that inside the kiln. (See image Lignin Glazed Stoneware.”)

Final thoughts

Using his research knowledge in biotechnology, Lorenzo has successfully developed a new lignin-based colour palette. His art project is driven by the knowledge of the physical and chemical properties of the compounds that generate each colour. Constantly learning, Lorenzo took a ceramics course to see how lignin applies to stoneware clay. Applying the lignin based dyes to different materials is a technical, experimental process, which he and his collaborators are still exploring. See his website to find out what happens next.

Bio

Lorenzo Li Greci has a master’s degree in science and is currently working as a biotechnology research scientist in Finland.

Links

Website: https://www.lorenzoligreci.com/