Overview
Artist Statement:
The 12 panels in the hallway of Gordon College's Ken Olsen Science Center demonstrate two artists? attempt to meaningfully engage with the sciences. The project was commissioned as the gift of the class of 2011 and created in dialogue with the division of natural sciences and under the supervision of the art department.
The theme for the series, Framework and Fluidity, we see as representative of a fundamental tension within the scientific disciplines. On the one hand there is the desire and the need to construct systems of understanding to use as jumping off points for further exploration. Additionally this pursuit of understanding honors God. However, these frameworks are held with a certain amount of humility and the acknowledgment that they are ultimately approximations of the truth. The possibility of the discovery of a new and truer framework always looms. It is this recognition of fluidity that propels scientific investigation forward. The mural series explores this paradigm through abstraction. Similar colors and textures as well as a repeating gridded square element tie the pieces together down the length of the hallway and reinforce the idea of framework. Within each set of larger and smaller panel, however, value shifts, placement of the squares, and discipline specific themes serve as elements of variation, paying homage to some of the unique pursuits of the individual disciplines and showing the versatility and fluidity of the grid.
To guide our planning of the compositions for each panel, specifically how the interaction between framework and fluidity manifests itself, we asked the science departments to develop sub themes, pairs of opposites, that would reflect the mindsets of the different disciplines. Moving from left to right down the length of the hallway, you encounter the disciplines and their subthemes in this order:
Math: Infinite and Infinitesimal
Physics: Foundational and Emergent
Biology: Life and Death
Kinesiology: Movement and Stasis
Chemistry: Reaction and Equilibrium
Computer Science: Abstraction and Implementation
We hope that the pieces in their individuality and totality spark conversation and continued engagement not only with how the scientific disciplines relate to each other but also how science intersects with, informs, and is perhaps even shaped by other areas of academic pursuit.
Note: Although Anna Taylor and I collaborated on the concepts and critiqued each other though the entire process, when it came to the actual painting of the pieces, Anna painted three and I painted three. Although Anna lived in Baltimore for the entirety of the time the pieces were painted, she now lives in Philadelphia. So, I would like to submit the three paintings I worked on (as noted in the description section of each painting) and the concept that we worked on together. Although I could have submitted my three paintings in isolation, I believe it is necessary to see the entire series to fully understand the paintings individually.
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