Photo by Lauren LaRocca Fort Detrick scientist and artist Craig Cavin creates abstract paintings based on microscopic fungi and traditional Japanese fish prints with a contemporary bent.

Based in Frederick with a full-time gig at Fort Detrick, he is the featured artist at Dragonfly Art Cooperative in downtown Frederick throughout November.

“These are actually spores,” he said, standing next to “Blue Vesicle,” one of his oil paintings. “Sometimes I’ll get an image and something appeals to me beyond science,” he said. “So I use that as a basis for exploration.”

Cavin began as an art student at Webster College in St. Louis, Mo., in the ’70s. He worked as a deckhand on a tugboat on the Mississippi River, then moved to California (“The ’70s were sort of like that,” he said.), then tried Maui, where he met his wife, had two kids and started painting orchids (he still paints orchids).

“In Hawaii, there’s that aspect of beauty that just permeates the place,” he said. “There’s just a healing energy.”

His plan was to work his way to Japan, to study pottery, but instead he stayed, and besides painting, Cavin began making fish prints, a technique he learned from Japanese he met. Called gyotaku, or “fish rubbing” in Japanese, the method was originally used by fisherman before cameras to record their catch.

He uses water-based acrylic paint so he can eat the fish when he’s through making art with them. The process is relatively simple: clean the fish with vinegar and water, brush with paint, place rice paper on top of them and press down for a print.

Besides switching from Sumi ink to acrylic, Cavin veers from traditional techniques by tearing paper and putting fish onto Masonite. He also sometimes adds background color or details such as eyes and fins.

While living in Maui, he began school to study horticulture and then plant pathology, eventually earning a Master’s degree in environmental science from Hood College (he lived in Oregon for period, too), after moving to Frederick in 1987 to work at Fort Detrick.

As a biologist studying fungal organisms, he said his life is a balancing act between “artsy fartsy” and “stiff scientist.”

When looking under a microscope, he sees specimens from both perspectives; art is not a night job or hobbie, per se.

“I think everybody has the ability to use both sides of their brain,” he said. A specimen “looks random, but it’s really not. As an artist, you sort of aesthetically get a hit. As a scientist, you get a whole other feel for it.”

As for the fish prints, Cavin sees multiple perspectives, wears multiple hats — a fisherman, an artist, a cook.

“I design fishing lures and fishing rods,” he said. “I like to catch fish, print fish, and I like to cook.”

And it goes without saying, even after a vegetarian stint before raising two children, he likes eating the fish.