Cosmic Collaboration between Artist and Scientist
Artist Josiah McElheny has been collaborating with cosmologist David Weinberg, Ph.D. on a series of objects that reflect cosmological theories such as the Big Bang. Walking into the lobby of the Phoenix Art Museum last night was to come face to face with McElheny’s The Last Scattering Surface, a large glass sculpture that seeks to explore issues of modernism and cosmology.
The work, hung at eye level at the museum entrance, is a handsome piece that pulls us back to a late 1960’s aesthetic. A central glowing orb made of multiple smaller lights explode outward in space, forming clusters of glass galaxies at each endpoint.
The two collaborators participated in a tag-team discussion at the Phoenix Art Museum on Tuesday night, sharing their inspirations and insight into their process. Unlike another piece The End of Modernity, where they attempt to capture the complete history of the universe throughout time, The Last Scattering Surface addresses two distinct moments in time — the moment of the Big Bang, represented by the inner glowing sphere, and the current state of our universe, represented by the exploding forms that reach outward from the center.
McElheny shares with us that the initial inspiration for this body of work came while sitting in the “cheap seats” at the Metroplitan Opera House in Lincon Center. From his vantage point in the theater, McElheny was able to gaze upon the suptnik-like chandeliers that lit the space. He remembers thinking how these forms made him consider the Big Bang. After conversations with Ohio State University comologist David Weinberg, the two formed a collaboration to develop a visual model of the Big Bang as it is understood today.
McElheny is a skilled glass artist who is devoted to the study of traditional glass factory technique. His work is seductive, and embedded with the ideas of reflection, infinity, purity and utopia. Along with The Last Scattering Surface, the Phoenix Art Museum also has on exhibit McElheny’s Entended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction. In this project, realized in mirrored glass, the artist responds to a philosophical discussion between Isamu Noguchi and Buckminster Fuller from the 1920’s. A discussion that explored the possiblities and consequences of abstract forms that cast no shadows and exist in a completely reflective environment.
Collaborations between artists and scientists offers opportunity for understanding complex theory through works of art. Artists become the translators, presenting us with alternative ways of “seeing” complex theories mostly understood by scientists. Works like The Last Scattering Surface deconstruct complicated concepts into abstract forms that help awaken us to the elaborate order of the world around us.
Tags: David Weinberg, glass art, Josiah McElheny, Phoenix Art Museum, The Last Scattering Surface
January 14th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Atoms, factuals, outer space are some of the most beautiful these.