A jewellery designer is finding beauty in bacteria as she using her own skin samples to colour her own creations. Chloe Fitzpatrick Chloe, from has taken samples from her hands, feet, face and even her armpits – and said they all produce different colours.
The 22-year-old from Bo’ness, Falkirk, takes samples from her own skin to grow the bacteria and develop into colours. She has also used swabs from her pet chihuahuas and plants.
Visual artist Chloe said: “Bacteria is natural part of life and using it to make jewellery is really exciting – I didn’t want to use things like silver. I want to push the boundaries of what art is.
“You create lots of colours from bacteria, red, orange, yellows, pink – and everyone’s different. Samples from my hands and feet were yellow with some orange, and ones from around my stomach were pink.
“The bacteria from my face and armpits didn’t have any colour which was interesting.”
Chloe swabs parts of her body and transfers the samples to petri dishes with a special growth medium inside called agar. The bacteria samples are covered and allowed to multiply into coloured colonies for about a week at room temperature.
She then isolates particular colours in a new dish so they can multiply further before being used to create the jewellery.
Chloe said: “The reaction to the jewellery is split 50/50 – I always expected some people to think it was gross and was ready for some negative reaction. I think it’s similar to people wearing jewellery made of ashes or breast milk."
The idea came about while Chloe was studying at Duncan of Jordanstone college in Dundee where she took a science class. She was amazed at the ‘microscopic world’ and thought the bacteria she could see was beautiful.
Chloe said she has been inspired by the BioArt movement and plans to make jewellery to sell but further safety tests need to be carried out. She hopes people could send her skin samples which she would take and grow bacteria from to turn into jewellery and is also interested in doing exhibitions.
Chloe added: “People were very interested in seeing the process of me swabbing and were keen to follow along. Some people have commented on videos saying they could send sample of their child or their dog and I could make jewellery from the bacteria.
“I am planning to make some jewellery to sell. The rings I make are more statement pieces, but I would like to do some more commercial stuff.
"I am hoping I can get people to send me samples of their hands for example, and I will grow their bacteria into their colour and make a piece of jewellery for them. There is this microscopic world no one can see that has so much beauty in it.”
