‘Art with a purpose’: Ringling students, faculty hope to help solve real mysteries through forensic skull workshop
SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — A forensic artist with 25 years of experience is holding a workshop at Ringling College of Art and Design this week, teaching fine artists how to become forensic artists.
Joe Mullins calls it “Art With a Purpose.”
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He is part of a small group of around 200 forensic artists across the nation who can do facial approximations.
However, with more than 2,000 medical examiners and coroners’ offices around the country housing thousands of unidentified remains, the need is great for more people like Mullins. That is why this forensic artist is working to show fine artists what it takes to help solve some of these longstanding mysteries and give families some of the answers they’ve been searching for.
“The best thing we can hope for in this realm of doing facial proximation is we are providing answers to families because these are families that are frozen in uncertainty for five, 10, 15, 20 years that they don’t know what happened,” said Mullins.
On day one of the five-day workshop, each participant was given a 3D-printed skull from a real victim. Some of the skulls came from a medical examiner’s office in southwest Florida. Each skull comes with only limited information, such as race, sex, age range, approximate time of death, and when the remains were found.
Ringling College Professor Alex Snyder chose to participate in the workshop this week and was given the skull belonging to a Hispanic male between 30-50 years of age who died in Hendry County in 2011.
“I’m feeling a little bit more attachment to it as the face starts coming out, it is sort of sinking in that this is not just a study of anatomy. This is probably at that age, somebody’s father or at least probably somebody’s husband,” said Snyder.
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Freshman student Leighton Karpinia says it was the combination of science and art that intrigued her to participate. The information on the skull she is working on is extremely limited. All she knows is that the individual is between 30 and 40 years of age and is of Asian or Native American descent.
“Just seeing this come to life has been the most fascinating thing. There is so much story left in the skull,” said Karpinia. “I can feel a little emotional attachment to this person I don’t know in a very strange way. I lost my father, who I was very close with at 13. I can’t imagine what it is like just having a person vanish from your life, just not knowing whether they left or if they were taken from you. Knowing that I could maybe help someone have that [answer] is truly something very special to me.”
Mullins has had success with these workshops in the past and he’s been doing classes with active cases since 2015.
“The face is the story and you hope the right person sees it and you hope they get identified. It can work, but it only works if the right person sees it and of course you have to be a fine artist before you can be a forensic artist, and what better place to find fine artists than Ringling College,” said Mullins.
Ringling College of Art and Design plans to hold an exhibition of the finished sculptures at the end of this month on the second floor of the college’s library.
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