Biologic Agents and Disease Emergence

ABOUT THE COVER " I think of my work as an inhabited landscape, never static or empty…. The wind ruffles; ants crawl; a rabbit burrows " (1). A painter of Salish, French-Cree, and Shoshone heritage, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born in St. Ignatius, Montana, and raised on the Flathead Reservation. She studied art at the University of New Mexico, but her personal aesthetic and her poetic association with nature go back to her childhood, when under her father's tutelage, she learned " to see and feel " (2). Feeling and astute observation characterize Smith's representational, abstract, and symbolic landscapes (3). A prolific artist, inspired by the formal innovations of Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, and others, she uses paint, collage, and other media to compose unique forms on tactile surfaces that explore the continuum of life, the connection between living beings and the land, and the fundamental relationship between all things. As artist, curator, and lecturer, she has promoted understanding and reverence of nature, articulated Native aesthetic tradition in a modern art context, and made her mark on the contemporary American art scene. Native American cultures did not refer to art as a separate discipline before the mid-19th century. Cultural materials with aesthetic value (totem poles, pottery, beadwork) were integrated into everyday life and traditional practices. Artists painted geometric patterns or symbolic representations of figures on readily available media (sand, hides, clay); wood, bone, and stone were carved too for a three-dimensional effect. The iconography and function of the work varied widely with region and tribe, but all objects were imbued with spirituality and were meant to serve the community (4). Throughout the 20th century, Native American work was influenced by European realism. The early years were dominated by depictions of ceremonial dances and genre scenes painted in linear, decorative style. Later years saw a multiplicity of styles, including pop art and art deco (4). Smith, like many contemporary artists rooted in Native traditions , uses unique forms and nonfigurative visual language to express truths at once deeply personal and profoundly universal. Rain, on the cover of this month's Emerging Infectious Diseases, comprises three parts in a nontraditional ensemble depicting one of Smith's favored themes, the close bond between humanity and nature. The main part of the ensemble is a long visual field painted in somber tones and punctuated with glistening metal spoons, arranged without regularity but with internal vertical symmetry, …