Hello All!
My name is Jeanne Oss and I have been creating this blog as well as a video on the current art exhibit, Shedding Light: Art Explore science!
Check out the video here or click on any of these screen shows below to navigate to the youtube page!
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MPR radio did a segment on Shedding Light: Art Explores Science!
Click the image to navigate to the page to listen to the segment!
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Phyllis Goldin is a composer, singer/songwriter, visual artist, writer and physician. She lives in River Falls, WI.
Anyone doubting the interconnectedness of art and science will have an eye opening experience at”Shedding Light”, an exhibition on display at the Phipps Galleries until June 6, 2010. The show features the work of six seasoned artists, Susan Armington, Christine Baeumler, Heidi Haferman, David Lefkowitz, Jantje Visscher and Krista Kelley Walsh.
The work of these artists, though strikingly different from one another, seems to me to cluster in two ways. Some of the work serves as commentary on science or science as a springboard for inspiration or creative stimulation. And some seems to express scientific principles, given unique life through artistic process.
Beginning in the Atrium Gallery to the right as one enters the building is the beginning of a piece by Susan Armington called the Life of Petroleum. Many small oil paintings of primordial sea creatures and two larger pieces hung on top of a turqoise and gold shawl introduce the journey of oil that continues on a ribbon of black tape through the lobby and into the galleries at the other end of the building. At intervals small paintings and explanations illuminate the perilous history of human exploitation of petroleum resources that required eons of development. In this way science is given an expanded context through educational, artistic process.
Entering the northern gallery on the main floor two walls hold large, illuminated three dimensional installations by Jantje Visscher. As artist, lost in science, these pieces are constructed of clear plastic panels scored in ways that bend light into fascinating shadows on the wall behind. One piece is hung vertically under white light creating intended effects of leaves, feathers, fish ribs, waves and ripples. The other piece features curved panels exposed to blue and white LED light producing images, sensuous and reminiscent of musical staffs, in white, blue, and it’s complementary opposite, yellow. To summarize the artist herself these pieces “focus” light into a “cosmic fabric”. Distant as I am from studies of refraction, comingling of art and science is beautifully apparent in this work.
Upstairs the work of Heidi Haferman comments on her concerns about the destructive effect of the pharmaceutical industry on humans and the environment. The artist wonders how small pills we see advertized on TV can have such powerful effects. One of her installations is a curled up figure under a sheet with big cloth pills and capsules sprinkled on top. This overdose scene is aptly created in white. In contrast the other fabric piece is a colorful collection of five bins overflowing with medicines. Hanging at assorted heights above the bins are oversized pills and capsules giving the larger than life effect that challenges science run amuck.
I didn’t have a chance to speak with David Lefkowitz about his striking collection of bright, precisely painted tangled vines and ropes in oil on wood panels. In his work I see the fragile connection between Nature and the ropes of bondage created by humanity (and science) to harness Nature. In his written summary he says “science is the dominant paradigm of how the world works while art makes the conundrum visible…art complicates the straightforward separation between observer and observed.” Science is the launching pad for this artistic work that broadens our perceptions of reality.
Christine Baeumler created a body of work after journeying to the Galapagos Islands and encountering species that amazed her and got her to wonder about the connection between observer and observed. Scientists also grapple with this question. One part of this exhibit is a group of black and white photographs of creatures she saw either live or preserved in museums. Since her journey took her to Charles Darwin’s scientific home, she used the platinum photographic process of his era. Also, in keeping with the objects in Darwin’s laboratory, she installed a long rectangular table with five large, glass bell jars set into it. Peering into the jars the observer sees exotic birds, amphibians and animals in motion accompanied by a soundtrack obtained on location and combined with an original musical composition. A magical quality in this admixture of life, science and art, gives credence to their abiding connection.
Set in the small gallery with a wall of windows facing the St. Croix river are jars and vases, partially filled with water, created by Krista Kelley Walsh. This installation reveals changing patterns of light and shadows throughout the day as the sun is refracted by the variously shaped glass. Here we experience art merging seamlessly with science. With a little imagination one may see spiritual images on the walls or small panoramas of outdoor scenes in the vases. The artist indicates her fascination with “things unseen…moments of wonder” and harkens back to Einstein”s words, “The most beautiful thing we can experience is mysterious: it is the source of all true art and science”.
Artists and scientists are related at their core, sharing roots in unbridled curiosity. Come, take the time to immerse yourself in these offerings and you are likely to tap your sense of wonder, the artist and scientist in you and each of us.
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THINGS UNSEEN
After Krista Kelley Walsh’s installation: Things Unseen 2010
A valley’s sedate landscape
is turned upside down
when you see it through
a sunlit, water-filled
round glass vase. Mysterious,
how treetops become
roots, nourished
by underwater clouds. So, I think
if we each turn our own landscape
topsy-turvy
something magical will happen
like after a desert rain
when a tadpole, nurtured
by water as scant as a cirrus strand,
morphs into a spade-foot toad
in less than two weeks.
Alberta Lee Orcutt , May 2010
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By Anastasia Shartin, Director of The Phipps
On Monday, May 10, Christine Baeumler led a seminar for 27 area artists who are participating in a series of gatherings to explore the role of art and sustainability. This series, organized by The Phipps Center for the Arts, is designed to build community relationships, generate dialogue, stimulate understanding, and spark action. This is the second year of this project and both new and returning artists have enrolled. These artists are from throughout the St. Croix Valley – from River Falls to St. Croix Falls, and from Spring Valley to Bayport – as well as from White Bear Lake and the Twin Cities.
Christine began the session by showing artists’ projects that inspired her environmental community art projects for which she is as well known as she is for her studio work. Two projects she shared with the group were Mel Chin’s Revival Field project (http://www.satorimedia.com/fmraWeb/chin.htm) and Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape (http://www.greenmuseum.org/content/artist_index/artist_id-129.html). Chin’s Revival Fields have been created in various locations from 1990 to the present. For these, he designs gardens using plants that remove heavy metals from contaminated soil. Sonfist created Time Landscape as a living monument to the forest that once blanketed Manhattan Island. He proposed the project in 1965. After extensive research on New York’s botany, geology, and history, Sonfist and local community members used a palette of native trees, shrubs, wild grasses, flowers, plants, rocks, and earth to plant the 25′ x 40′ plot in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1978. The result is a slowly developing forest that represents the Manhattan landscape inhabited by Native Americans and encountered by Dutch settlers in the early 17th century.
Christine then showed the group images from her own environmental art projects including a wildflower garden with Como Park Conservatory Youth Program and Friends of Swede Hollow, St. Paul (2000 – 02); and a much longer term project, the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary at Lower Phalen Creek (http://www.mepartnership.org/sites/LOWERPHALENCREEK/sub_page6.asp), for which she worked on a steering committee to create a new city park along the Mississippi River in St. Paul (1996 – 2006).
Important to each of the seminar meetings is an opportunity for interaction among participants. For this session, Christine introduced the group to a series of questions developed by No Limits for Women Artists, a group she was involved with for a number of years. Participants paired up and then took turns of five minutes each to be the listener and then the responder. The questions were, “What is your greatest vision as an artist?” “What are your next steps to realizing that vision?” “What kind of support do you need?” And, “How are you going to make sure you keep going?” While for this session, each responder was given five minutes, Christine said that her group built to the point where they each took an hour to respond. The group at The Phipps found even five minutes to be challenging, particularly for the listener who was to listen only and not verbally interject or question what was being said.
After this, the participants took time to walk through the exhibit, “Shedding Light,” and then met in Gallery Three with Christine’s work, a video installation titled Darwin’s Table and a salon style hanging of 30 platinum prints, South American Miscellanea. She spoke briefly about the work and then opened the discussion for responses and questions.
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Thanks everyone for coming out to visit the new exibit that is now open until June 6th. Hours are 9:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. daily, Sunday, Noon – 4:30 p.m., as well as one hour before and during performances in the theater.
Here are some pictures taken at the opening by Helios Photography:
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