*** DISCLAIMER: this post is LONG and BORING. read at your own risk. i promise tequila and nudity in the next one.***
last thursday was our playday.
steve, ruth, and i piled into their subaru forester with
a couple trader joe’s freezer bags and ice blocks, and cruised on out of our
high desert cradle down into the civilized world. at the second stoplight as we’re parked alongside a bald
tattoed man in a 4WD truck, steve says, “wanna see me drag race this car?? watch this.” ruth rolls her eyes.
“remember the bad old days ruth??” steve continues. “ohhhhhh i remember them all too well
deary…” concedes ruth, as she puts a protective coat of clear nail polish over
her bright purple sparkly toenails (no joke). she then tells me how obsessed he was with racing anything that
was possible. he’d race VW buses,
he’d race to the toilet, they bought a hobie cat to take some relaxing sails
off the coast, but instead steve spent every second racing anything else in the
harbor that moved (or didn’t move, he’d just pretend). it was obvious that the day’s plans had
made steve excited and nostalgic before we even left home.
we were taking a special visit to artcenter college of
design, in pasadena, the graduate program where steve got his degree in
industrial design. steve and ruth
are some of their most treasured alumni, and not only because they believe so
passionately in what the school is doing (and they have donated money as well),
but i learned on this trip that steve was an incredibly talented automobile
designer, having worked in his dad’s autoshop for years and designed or built
innovative cars and engines for fun.
i even just learned he raced three times, twice in cars he built
himself, in the BAJA 1000, an endurance race from ensenada to la paz. artcenter is reknowned for its
transportation design program (consistently working on projects for major
clients like BMW), and is also arguably at the very top of the industrial design world. but what’s most inspiring about the
school is their focus on quality craftsmanship and real-world problems rather
than strictly theory. in fact,
they were the first art school to be given NGO status by the UN, because they
were so active in promoting positive social change and improving people’s
lives.
anyway, steve has talked about artcenter ever since i’ve
met him, and i was so excited to finally see the place. the purpose of the trip was to attend a
private viewing and reception of a new exhibit in their gallery that was set to
open the next day. the exhibit was
the third in a special series done by their curator, steve nowlin, which was,
coincidentally, focused on blending art and science.
up my alley, alley?
i think so.
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| (apologies... i couldn't take photos at either exhibit, so these are photos of photos) |
it was called WORLDS, and blended work by both artists
and scientists to shed light on various perspectives and understandings of earth
in relation to the heavens, the universe, everything else. actually, the president of artcenter,
lorne buchman, had come out to steve’s for lunch the previous week and i’d
gotten to meet him. he was utterly confused, but also (i’m
telling myself at least) intrigued, by my supplanting to the desert to
apprentice with steve, after finishing a medical phd. (actually, steve told me later that lorne was also jealous,
and wanted the apprenticeship position.)
lorne thought it all too much of a coincidence that their curator at
artcenter, steve nowlin, had been fixated on the intersection of art &
science for 15 years now. not to
mention, pasadena, with its world-renowned art and science institutions often
collaborating, has prided itself as the “city of art + science” for a long
time, and had an annual festival going on at the moment.
the opening of steve nowlin’s exhibit WORLDS was timed
so that it would also be a part of this larger festival in pasadena. so lorne invited us to a special
pre-opening of the gallery last thursday evening with a wine reception and some
famous artcenter alums. he also set
us up a meeting with steve nowlin earlier that evening, so i could be introduced,
and so all of us could get a private tour of the gallery before the reception.
i mean, seriously… it just never ceases to overwhelm me
how lucky i am to know steve and get to pal around with him.
steve and ruth excitedly used the invite as an excuse to
make it a playday in pasadena.
there was also an exhibit going on at the huntington museum there, on a
famous woodworker named sam maloof,
who steve both knew and greatly admired, so he was eager to see it. we drove in, went out for sushi at
their favorite little spot there, then spent the afternoon at the huntington
before heading over to artcenter for the rest of the evening.
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the sam maloof exhibit alone was enough to make my
day. seriously! sam was a groundbreaking furniture
maker, known for bringing exquisite craftsmanship and sculptural elements into
woodworking in the 50's through 70s. his pieces were
collected by US presidents, celebrities, and art connoisseurs across the globe,
and he was given the “Genius Grant” in 1985 by the John D. and Catherine T.
McArthur Foundation. however, the
exhibit, titled “the house that sam built”,
was focused on his house, his art collection, as a metaphor for the incredible
art community in southern california that he helped create. the exhibit included many pieces of his
own furniture, but more importantly a variety of work (sculpture, watercolor,
ceramics, textiles, and enamel) from 35 artists in his close circle of friends,
who were all living in the pomona valley post-WWII. it was a stunning illustration of how the rich networks of
influences and exchanges between artists in their group of friends helped
formed the LA art scene.
what i dug the most, was that the show subtly highlighted
how overlapped craft and fine art can be.
it’s rare these days to see the two side-by-side in a museum setting,
yet in this exhibit it worked so fluently, drawing attention to the aesthetic conversation between the different objects.
and in many cases, the ceramic piece, quietly sitting on a hand-sculpted
endtable, far out-shadowed the famous painting hanging on the wall behind
it. part of what inspired me to
work with metal jewelry in the first place, was a love of jewelry not just as a
material or functional object, but as an evocative sculptural form. i still wonder how far i can go with
that before the concept feels exhausted.
and ultimately, even after a short time with steve, i know i’ll be
exploring other forms of art to get at something deeper. but it was an inspiring
message to see just how powerful the piece can be when you blur those
functional/sculptural boundaries.
and sam maloof insisted on deliberately maintaining direct relationships
with his clients. somewhere in the exhibit i wrote down an explanation he was was quoted giving:
“i want to be able to
work a piece of wood into an object that contributes something beautiful and
useful to everyday life. and i want
to do this for an individual i can come to know as a friend. i want that person to know that it was
made just for him. and that there
is satisfaction and enjoyment in the object for both of us.”
from the huntington, we made our way through their
beautiful botanic gardens, and across the city up into the artcenter campus. steve toured me around the machine shops
and studios and labs designed to manufacture things in ways i never thought
were possible. a young student was
in one room, controlling a robot in another room, who was printing, in 3D, an
entire motorcycle. it was like
being on another planet, or ours 30 years in the future. fitting for the main exhibit we were
about to see.
we then met steve nowlin, chatted for a bit, and got to enter the gallery where WORLDS was on display, just as the final
technicians were straightening glitches in film reels and power cords. the exhibit was incredible. there were beautiful, large-format,
black and white photographs of rocks from earth, set on a black background so
they looked like photos of meteors.
in front of them, in silhouetted display cases, were pieces of meteors,
looking like rocks from the earth. there were galileo’s hand-drawn images of
the moon next to NASA-generated photographs of the surface of enceladus (one of
saturn’s moons). it was all
designed to contrast our imagined narratives of the world beyond earth, with
the mind-blowing realities revealed by modern science.
“if
from our current perspective, for example, it seems incredible to accept with
any plausibility the story of uranus, ancient greek god of the sky who arose
from a cosmic primordial soup to sire enceladus, the part-human part-dragon source
of volcanic fires in mount aetna, how incredible is it to know with a far
greater certainty that enceladus is also the sixth-largest of 62 sibling moons
of saturn, a planet in a solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago in a galaxy
100,000 light years across in a universe of hundreds of billions of such
galaxies. enceladus is a frozen
ball concealing an ocean of liquid water that erupts through its ice crust into
space through massive geysers, literally running rings around its custodial
planet. and, enceladus may just be
gestating organic life beneath its tantalizing watery shell.” (writes steve in the exhibit’s
brochure.)
aside from addressing a provocative topic using work by
both artists and scientists (which could have been enough in itself), the real
brilliance of the exhibit was the way
it was displayed, and concepts and perspectives were juxtaposed, in order to leave a truly lasting impression. it was the first time i really wanted to go home and read
about planets for the next 3 weeks, and i still haven’t stopped thinking about
it. at the end of the tour, i
finally got the nerve to start asking steve nowlin questions, and talk about
the exhibit and art/science in general.
i don’t recall many times in my life feeling passionate about science itself. about literally molecules or hypotheses or DNA. but there are plenty of people who
do. so probably not a good idea
for me to be a scientist, eh? well,
the ways the subject impacts humanity have continually pulled me back to the
field, and the gut belief that there are aspects of science and medicine which are absolutely fascinating. but i rarely pick up a scientific
journal and feel the type of emotion and passion i feel working with art. some who know i have an interest in
both things will suggest, “oh, why don’t you make jewelry that looks like
cancer cells?” or “put together a
photography exhibit of your microscope images”. neither one does it for me. in fact, they are way less appealing than art or science
alone.
in talking with steve nowlin, he seemed to fully
agree. “nowhere in the
mind-numbing thicket of pages, texts, diagrams and quizzes was it ever
expressed to me that science has a soul.”
but he has been continually drawn, not to what science knows, but to what science, as a human
concept, means in our culture. and
how the two disciplines of science and art profoundly need each other. “art and science as left-brain and
right-brain is an ancient dualism—the conversation between intuition and
reason, and emotion and intellect.
there are examples of it throughout history. and i don’t think it’s been any more vital than it is
now.”
so can we make anything of this?
how do you effectively bring these worlds together?
well, on one end of the spectrum, you have science
museums. these seem to have it
wrong a large majority of the time.
they are stuffed way too full with facts and information, in a way
that’s not stimulating to the human brain, and you end up leaving without
remembering a great deal, or feeling much more inspired. and yet we talk so frequently about
needing to encourage our children to pursue science and math, and how they’ve
lost an interest in these subjects.
on the other end of the spectrum, we often see things in science that remind us of art. some students will track the
fluorescent movements of drosophila over time, merge the images, and it will
coincidentally look like a jackson pollock painting. that’s great in it’s own right, but as for bridging the two
disciplines, that doesn’t do it either.
there’s nothing deeper there.
steve, as the completely autonomous director and curator
of the williamson gallery at artcenter, has successfully managed to make a
career out of solving this problem.
what he strives for in his exhibits (which have involved collaborations
between ArtCenter, NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Engineering
departments at Caltech) is something that falls in the middle of the two
extremes above, that’s really powerful to the viewer. he defines it simply as contemporary art
that stirs meaning. maybe it
doesn’t present as many facts, but you forget those anyway. the bigger point, it seems, is to use the power of art, as a
medium that can deeply connect to another human, to fuel the mysteries and the
discoveries, to shed light on new perspectives, and to bring to surface the
emotional and the profound. and
in doing so, it leaves a lasting impression of how compelling and vital the
dialogues between artistic and scientific processes are.
“we commonly describe the ways
of science and the ways of art by using terms filled with tension and conflict,
as if the two domains reside at polar ends of a spectrum. one wonders, though, which is more
profoundly aesthetic: nature sculpted with divine purpose; or nature sculpted
by random encounters with forces of energy that we, by virtue of our privileged
chemistry, experience as beautiful.
if the latter, the aesthetic lies not in the shape of things, but in
us—we, the lucky finders of beauty where it wasn’t meant to be.”
i’m still trying to understand where my perspective fits
into the picture, but it’s been intriguing to have all these thoughts mulling
on the backburner. after that full
day of stretching my brain, i was damn excited for the drive back up into our
sandy perch, and to get home to the hi-dez.
all week we have been busy bees, finishing some smaller,
more affordable pieces (i’ve been making birds and more birds, and working on an
enormous piece called the birdhouse that isn’t yet finished, but which i'm SO excited about!), and eagerly setting up the studio for the art tours this
weekend. we finally put up the two
composite pieces i worked on as initial welding studies (scroll down), and the influx of
visitors and family has already begun.
given the economic state most are in, who knows if we’ll sell much, but
regardless, i’m so excited i may pee my pants!! seeing this art community come together in all its love and
quirkiness makes my chest tingle. wish you all could be here.
in the meantime, for anyone
in the LA area, it’s sure to be an amazing two weekends up here, and it goes
without saying that for anyone else interested in owning a piece of steve’s
work, at any time, all you have to do is ask…
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