By Tom Tracy

Walking into the main gallery of the Palm Beach Photographic Centre this month might best be described as a large-scale Rorschach test designed to reveal something about your own Freudian mindscape.

That’s because through the end of the year the Photographic Center on Clemetis Street is hosting Images of Science, an exhibit of 40 photos from scientific research done by Max Planck-affiliated researchers.

The images are presented as large 40x40-inch prints of colorful and exotic shapes and forms created through macro and microscopic photography and other imaging technologies in the worlds of science and industry.

Every year, Germany’s Max Planck Society asks scientists from their 80 institutes and research facilities to provide images of their research that are then juried by a panel of architects, photographers and journalists.

Winning photos are included in the exhibition that has traveled to museums and embassies in Germany, Austria and Thailand. Thus far there have been three rounds of the competition as the show makes it way around the globe.

“There is one photo that looks like Martians to me; I think it was actually a picture of blood cells,” said Fatime NeJame, executive director of the Photographic Centre, which collaborated with the Jupiter-based Max Planck Florida Foundation to present the free exhibit through Dec. 30.

Images of Science represents a first for the Photographic Centre in terms of science and biological research photography and should strike a chord with the Centre’s community supporters and students, many of whom specialize in nature photography and abstract photography based the natural world.

“When you look at these images and realize how important compositions is for photographers — the attention to detail and placement of the subject and lighting is great; you end up with these amazing images that have a lot of impact,” NeJame said.

High-powered microscopic photography reveals a hidden universe when the lens is turned on leaf hairs, nerve cells in mammals, tiny silicon nanowires on a wafer of gold, or a beetle’s feet, And a computer-generated image of a planetary nebula reconstructed from conventional photography.

The spectrum of technologies used is broad. It includes conventional photography, color-added microscopy — light microscopy, electron microscopy, low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy, confocal laser scanning microscopy — and computer simulations, according to organizers.

The Photographic Centre has invited select groups of local school children and others interested in science and medicine to come tour the exhibition this month, according to NeJame.

“I have four or five favorites. There is one that is multicolored and it looks like buoys in the water, beautifully composed,” she said. “Another looks like a landscape and it reminds me of a mountain range in Turkey. In probably about You look at the different 30 percent of them I can identify them with something else: flowers or things.”

The images not only “make the invisible visible,” but they put a face on scientific processes that have an enormous impact on all our lives, according to Claudia Hillinger, president of the Max Planck Florida Foundation.

As an example, Hillinger points to one of the images in the exhibit, which captures how a particular type of white blood cells, neutrophils, act almost as “linebackers” in our immune system. The cells literally devour harmful bacteria and can also cast out fibrous structures like nets to catch bacteria and kill them outside of the cell.

“This image actually shows a shigella bacteria caught in the net of neutrophils. It’s an amazing thing to be able to see our own bodies working to protect us on a cellular level,” she said.

Hillinger has been honored at a local Women Pioneers in Florida Business event and is based at Max Planck’s first scientific research facility in the United States — the 100,000-square-foot Max Planck Florida Institute on the MacArthur campus of Florida Atlantic University in Jupiter.

The Foundation is the philanthropic arm of the Max Planck research institute, and its mission, including the photo exhibition, is to create awareness of the company’s work, research and its application.

“By doing so, we hope to find a strong network of supporters that will help us continue to carry on this work that might revolutionize our understanding of the brain, how neural networks form, and how we can address neurological and psychiatric disorders and diseases,” Hillinger said.

One of her own favorites is a photograph showing the crystallization processes in liquid films, but the image resembles perhaps a painting by Vincent van Gogh. Another, titled Starry Night, was made with an electron microscope and shows salt droplets embedded in a gelatinous structure.

“They invite us to look at the world with different eyes and in new ways, and in doing so broaden our perception, Hillinger said. “Then the spectator transcends the boundary between science and art. And that is exactly what we hope to achieve.”

Images of Science, through Dec. 30 at the Palm Beach Photographic Centre, 415 S. Clematis St., West Palm Beach. Ehibition hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Admission is free. Call 253-2600 or visit www.fotofusion.org for more information.

Ongoing at the Flagler Museum is a history lesson on passion and perseverance. And unlike boring history lessons, this one is told through work songs, candid photographs and rare historic film.

First Train to Paradise: The Railroad that Went to Sea is just the beginning of a long celebration marking the 100^th anniversary of the completion of Henry M. Flagler’s most ambitious project: the Over-Sea Railroad, on Jan. 22, 1912. Unofficially, it also marks a time in history when a man with visions and dreams was able to turn them into reality, the major players being money and time. Flagler put a lot of both into this seven-year endeavor.

The fall exhibit encompasses three gallery rooms and documents the hard work, visions and ordeals that went into building this overseas railroad connection to Key West, the United States' closest deep-water port to the Panama Canal.

The idea came to Flagler after his first visit to Florida in 1878. He saw the potential that everyone else apparently missed. A solid transportation system would mean new communities, businesses and industries as well as more tourism and a stronger agriculture. It would also mean shorter trips to Havana.

With the yellow walls and black-and-white photographs, the show may seem tedious at first glance. But that is a risk that history takes in order to tell a story accurately. It consists of mostly photographs and includes some objects and drawings.

Mangrove Swamp at Snake Creek, May 1907, features a few men facing the difficult dense terrain that the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) would have to cross many times to make the 156-mile stretch of railroad possible. Snake Creek is between Plantation Key and Windley’s Island. This is one of 44 photographs in the room featuring the land cleaning, excavating, pulling, pushing, and many other tasks.

But the biggest challenge the team faced was how to cross the major bodies of water in the Keys. We learn that a series of 42 bridges were built for this purpose. The show highlights three, the first of which resembled a Roman viaduct and became Flagler’s favorite. Known as the Long Key Viaduct, this bridge spanned 2.7 miles and later replaced the old FEC logo, as seen on a dining car menu shown in the third gallery room.

A photographic copy of a 1907 blueprint shows the massive skeleton of rods inside each concrete arch of the Long Key Viaduct: about 5,000 tons of steel were used to reinforce its long arches. The next major task was the Seven-Mile Bridge, which took four years to finish. It was followed by the bridge crossing the Bahia Honda Channel, which was only 1 mile long but 35 feet deep. A large rolling piece of scaffolding called a traveler is depicted on photograph Bahia Honda Bridge Construction. This is was one of the most unusual pieces of equipment used on the entire project. Workers needed it as they assembled the Bahia Honda Bridge’s steel trusses.

Historical audio recordings of railroad work songs give a nice touch to the second part/room of the exhibit. They include John Henry by Harold B. Hazelhurst, who, according to the description, learned this song from workers while he worked as a water boy at age 15-16 on a logging camp railroad in Central Florida. There is also Let’s Shake It, performed by novelist Zora Neale Hurston and Big Boy, Can’t You Move ’em, by “Uncle” Bradley Eberhard, who served as a singer when the men were laying tracks.

A Men Wanted poster from 1906 reads “$1.50” – as in daily salary. The wages for African-American and white workers were equal, although they slept separately. An average of 3,000 men worked on the Over-Sea Railroad at any given time. They worked six days a week and rested on Sundays.

Of the 63 photographs here, one titled Booze Boat made me smile. It features one of the private boats that offered clandestine alcohol to FEC employees. Liquor was prohibited in the living camps. This was one of the hardest policies to enforce. Booze Boat is accompanied, ironically enough, by a Safety Always lapel pin that workers presumably wore during the project.

I welcomed a series of intimate photos taken by a worker at Camp 12 which depict a makeshift barber shop and waiters and cooks posing in an outdoor kitchen. Although their clothes and hair styles are certainly from another time and contribute to making us feel all modern, the faces and expressions are not strange enough nor that distant in time, that the anxiety and uncertainty of their situation cannot reach us.

While looking at these men, standing in groups, relaxed and attentive at the same time, I wonder whatever happened to them. Did they go on to become something more than laborers? Were they missed by anyone? Did they ever doubt Flagler’s sanity over this seemingly impossible dream?

The third gallery room provides some answers as it focuses on the damages and deaths caused by unexpected hurricanes before giving us a semi-happy ending. It turns out some of these men never got to see Flagler arrive at Key West that Jan. 22 morning. The lucky ones who did presented him with a collective gift: an 18-karat gold replica of the Western Union telegram sent to him announcing the completion of the railroad. The original piece, by Tiffany & Co, was lost. Shown here is a 2006 replica produced after a six-year collaboration between the museum and Tiffany.

Flagler’s emotive letter, expressing his gratitude for this gift and for long years of hard work, is also shown here and reads: “The work I have been doing for many years has been largely prompted by a desire to help my fellow men.”

A 1935 newsreel at the end of the exhibit depicts the destruction and death caused by the Labor Day hurricane that year. The serious damage, along with new emerging ways of transportation and the Great Depression, weakened the FEC to the point of declaring bankruptcy. The roadbed and remaining bridges of the Over-Sea Railroad ended up being sold to the state of Florida, which turned the remaining railway infrastructure into the Overseas Highway to Key West.

This is a show that requires a good chunk of time, although nothing compared to the long years thousands of men and a visionary leader spent to give us the Florida we have today. It is not for those after colorful interpretations, a quick art fix or the shock factor.

But if you are one to marvel at the miracle that it is to make an imagined idea breathe in the real physical world, then this is definitely your show. Once submerged in it, you will realize it is as good as any. The best part is that it happened for real.

First Train to Paradise: The Railroad That Went to Sea runs through Jan. 8 at the Flagler Museum on Palm Beach. Regular ticket prices: Adults: $18; $10 for youth ages 13-18; $3 for children ages 6-12; and children under 6 admitted free. For more information, call 561-655-2833 or visit www.flaglermuseum.us.

By Elaine Meier

Special to Palm Beach ArtsPaper

There was a completely different vibe to Art Miami, as compared to Art Basel.

Even on the second day of Miami’s longest-running contemporary art fair, there was an energy, excitement and element of surprise not felt at Art Basel. When visitors thought they had seen it all, all they had to do was turn another corner to find something else that grabbed their attention.

Art Miami, which just closed its 22^nd year, is the anchor for Art Week in Miami, located in the emerging midtown district in Wynwood. Art Miami prides itself on the quality, depth and diversity of modern and contemporary art.

This year, the show hosted more than 110 galleries from 18 countries, with about 400 American artists represented. According to Nick Korniloff, director of Art Miami, the fair provides a platform for seasoned, cutting-edge and emerging galleries to showcase their artists. In other words: Accessibility.

The diverse range of disciplines and price points offered the hardcore art collector and the casual art lover an opportunity to purchase a must-have new piece, and that brought a certain level of excitement to the fair.

Gallery owners seemed pleased last week with the foot traffic and response to the work they presented – there were lots of red dots indicating sales. It was what was selling that was the news.

Catharine Clark Gallery, the first San Francisco gallery to create a dedicated media room, presenting new genres and experimental video art, brought Diagram of Chance and Will Intersecting by Adam Chapman. Since when did artists need to learn computer code?

Colored lines and forms seem to swim across a traditionally framed and mounted drawing in a two-hour cycle that starts with abstract elements -- think Miró -- and periodically resolves into figurative compositions – think lovely nude, in this case.

“There is an increasing interest in new media, and it’s selling,” Catherine Clark said. She sold two of them by early the second day, for $15,000. “I used to refer to the media room at the gallery as the non-profit room,” Clark chuckled. “Not any more!”

There were several galleries showing new media, including one that was a framed “painting” in which the artist created the art within the piece, continually changing it. These new media pieces avoid the “installation” aspect of what used to be considered media and allow a collector to have a continually changing conversation piece that can be mounted on the wall like traditional art.

Thinking of more traditional disciplines – there were stunning contemporary sculptures at Galerie Piéce Unique from Paris. Bronzes by Sophia Vari were showstoppers, as well as a very non-traditional, rubber sponge canoe, Barca Bianca by Marcello Cinque, also at Galerie Piéce Unique.

Ashley Rice, at Lisa Sette Gallery of Scottsdale, Ariz., said that her gallery was enjoying success at the show. “Our art is obsessive, humorous, smart and high quality,” she said. “On-target for this fair.”

Lisa Sette Gallery was showing one of several art pieces seen at the fair, which mount directly on a wall. This necessitates a home visit by the artist to install the art. When Alan Bur Johnson’s Pollinium is purchased, it includes a visit by the artist to the collector’s home, where he mounts 266 photographic transparencies in metal frames, with pins, on any given wall for $9,000.

Ferrin Gallery of Pittsfield, Mass., was attracting a crowd with the surrealist ceramics of Sergei Isupov. The Russian artist, who emigrated to the United States in 1983, uses sexuality, relationships and human encounter to create a narrative in sculptural form. Prices ranged from $16,000 to $45,000. Leslie Ferrin said she was doing well at the fair and finds that business at Art Miami is better than other major cities where she shows.

Finally, another crowd pleaser, and selling briskly, were the creations of Enrique Gomez de Molina at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami.

Sternbaum was showing only Cuban artists, some still living in Cuba. Gomez de Molina creates a frame and then adds fur, hoofs, feathers and eyes to create animals that are part bird, part lamb or a bison with feathers instead of fur.

It is his comment on the environment and how humans are destroying it by depicting the bleak future he sees for animals. They were shocking and infinitely creative. The three creations under glass domes sold together for $9,000 the first night.

Once again, Art Miami’s opening night benefited The Lotus House Women’s Shelter, which was also given a prominent position inside the front entrance for the duration of the show for continued exposure and hopefully, more donations.

This made the “Heart Miami,” as they call it, a genuine effort on the fair’s part, rather than just a ploy for an opening night crowd. Other fairs, take note.

(Next year’s Art Miami is set for Dec. 5-9, 2012.)

One day is too much and a week isn’t enough.

After a full day and night (until 2 a.m.) of seeing Art Basel Miami, one installation and too much walking, one comes to realize that there is so much art, so many shows, galleries, lectures, that even a week would not be enough. Satellite, gallery shows and events are spread throughout the metropolitan area, and parties at hotels, residences, and restaurants and, of course, the Lincoln Road strip last until the wee morning hours.

Here are some of my outstanding picks and sights from ArtBasel Miami 2011.

Most mesmerizing: In the Cecilia de Torres gallery is a floating kinetic sculpture, 4-Net, by Elias Crespin, a Venezuelan artist residing in Paris. Foot-long bronze and stainless-steel rods seem to hang in the air and are operated by 224 individual motors running through a 20-minute-long program of coordinated gyrations, some which seem to imitate the ocean’s surface, while others feel musical in nature. Math, science and technology collide with art in this 118-inch square work; Crespin’s piece is both mind-boggling and hypnotic.

Best trompe l'oeil: Sometimes, when you see a work of art in these shows, you think, “Really! Who are they trying to kid? It’s the emperor’s new clothes …” etc. Then, on closer look, you get it: The piece is meant to be just that, a trick of the eye that captivates the mind. Such is the case here, where it seems as if two tires are piled up; then one notices that they are linked together in an infinity shape. Impossible without cutting the rubber, right? No, it's actually a life-size black marble sculpture: Infinito, by Fabio Viale in the Speroni Westwater booth.

Most fun: In the Gavlak Gallery booth, Worth Avenue gallery owner Sarah Gavlak photographs two New York artists, Megan Boody and Randy Polumbo, sitting on a sculpture by Orly Genger, who hand-weaves massive sculptures out of rope and then paints them. This, by the way, is one of Genger’s smaller pieces. Boody and Polumbo are both featured in Art Miami.

Most simple, yet inventive, found art: Presented by the Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Greek artist Eftihis Patsourakis arranges found amateur paintings to create a new landscape. He uses found art, he writes, to “delve into the individual and collective memory, into the relationship between identity and history, and reexamine representation as a carrier of these matters, both through a net of actual social and cultural references as well as through particular reinterpretations regarding the history of art of modernism.”

Most political: Tree No. 11 (2009-10), by Ai Weiwei, was reassembled from wood from dead tree trunks collected in Southern China. It is the Art Kabinett exhibit in Galerie Urs Meile Booth A17 and expresses the artist’s concern and experiences with China's culture and history. Rock (2009-10), seen in the foreground, was created in porcelain.

Most missed: Many visitors might just walk by Color Cup (2006), by Ai Weiwei, in glazed ceramic in the Robert Miller Gallery space.

The Most Hidden, but Close-By Award would go to the staircase at the Sagamore Hotel at 1671 Collins Ave. Five stories of the staircase walls have been painted by college students from the New World School of the Arts. One of the artists, and a docent at the Sagamore, Felipe Lagos, stands on the landing of the area that he painted - a fantasy world of inner turmoil and hope. The Sagamore also has an outstanding collection of art, so you may want to sip on a martini in the bar lounge while enjoying the art.

If you want to keep up with what is happening in the art world; if you want to collect modern masters or contemporary emerging artists or discover newbies; if you want to be entertained, visually wowed, even if you only have a day, don’t miss this year's Art Basel Miami. I only wish I had more time.

Art Basel Miami is open daily from noon to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon until 6 p.m.

Art Basel Miami admission tickets: One-day ticket: $40; students with ID, senior citizens age 62 and above, groups of 10 and more: $23; permanent pass: $85; evening ticket (after 4 p.m.): $28; chaperoned school class (per student and accompanying adult): $8.

Katie Deits is an art critic and executive director of the Lighthouse ArtCenter Museum and School of Art in Tequesta. (LighthouseArts.org)

A month ago I sat to write the art preview for the upcoming season and included a then-future exhibit at the Norton Museum that promised to make us think. But I did not know how just yet.

Dave Cole: Flags of the World has been running since early November and delivered on its promise.

A commanding 15-by-30 foot American flag hangs in the middle of the white room. This is the much-awaited centerpiece whose size thrilled me from the minute I learned it was coming to the Norton. Cole cut the red, white and blue fragments of fabric out of the 192 international banners from an official United Nations flag set and stitched them together with gold thread to form this gigantic quilt-like American beauty. It is majestic and accurate.

The Rhode Island-based artist built it following the specifications from the U.S. Marine Corps Flag Manual; thus, you know you are seeing a real American flag and not the artist’s version of it.

I would love to say it is the highlight of the installation, but once your eyes have seen and registered it, they drop to the floor like weights and stay there. It is here, at the foot of one suspended giant flag, that the remnants from the other flags of the world rest. They appear spread out in small colorful piles. No particular order to them.

This is a sight that’s hard to swallow, especially for the immigrant/foreigner. People have died trying to keep flags like these up, but it would be too obvious and predictable to get upset. I think the artist expects it, too. He has invited viewers to write their comments on the white sheets against the walls. They are not all positive.

“Grotesque and macabre,” reads one of them.

“Biggest waste of space I’ve ever seen,” reads another.

There are about 11 sheets so far calling the scene patriotic and outrageous, gorgeous and disrespectful. They are all right. The show comes across as both.

The best way to take it in is to stand in the room and trust your instinct; within seconds, you will know how you feel intuitively. Try not to get influenced by the comments already written.

Once inside the museum, there are two ways to get to Flags of the World. The way you happened into the gallery room is crucial, because it makes a big difference whether you see the actual work before a video of the artist discussing the installation. If you are one of those, like me, who saw the piece first and the footage later, resist the temptation of leaving any feedback right away. Watch it before you make up your mind and leave your comment/contribution.

There is also more than one way of looking at the work, the simplest of which is: America is a melting pot. Some will see it as a cruel, egotistical representation of America and its power over other nations. Some will say it reflects an America that takes what it wants and leaves behind a mess, or an America that feeds from the rest of the world, as a vampire.

But an entirely different possibility has it being a humble America that recognizes it is the combined contributions and sacrifices of all nations. Some will see this, too: an America that says thanks, that knows it would not be what it is today without the rest of the world.

The beauty of Flags of the World is that its meaning varies with each viewer.

Personally, I think that if it was indeed the artist’s clear intention to depict an America that is grateful, there have got to be better ways to show the world America appreciates them. But Cole did not want to make anything clear. The Brown University honors graduate, who became well-known in 2005 with an installation called The Knitting Machine, wants to leave it up to you. His work is not about telling people how they should feel. It is more about reflecting a contradictory notion and let people experience those contradictions.

This does not mean Cole, as a person, lacks a personal take or opinion on his own piece. What is his personal view then? That is a complicated question, as he himself admits on camera. I’m going to guess he feels closer to the view that America takes what it needs and leaves the rest behind. I could be wrong, of course, but this idea is mentioned twice in a 6-minute video so it is a good guess -- and he has asked that I leave my opinion in writing, after all.

As I stood near the wall with the handwritten comments, some museum custodians handed me a pencil. Before I could start writing they shared anecdotes of the opening night. As word got around this installation was going up, some museum staff, whose motherland is not America, began coming in and out of the room. They were mortified, I was told.

I can understand that. The flag of my motherland was there, too, but I cannot say I took it personally. My jaw was not locked.