Astronomical art inspires many of today’s scientists

Beyond the study of the celestial bodies that glitter across the night’s sky, astronomy has a way of connecting science with art.

“It’s really interesting because technology has allowed for amazing images of planets and the moon,” said Mary-Kay Lombino, curator of the “Touch the Sky: Art and Astronomy” exhibition supported by the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition Fund at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. “(Astronomy) continues to be a fascination among people and artists.”

Jon Ramer, president of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA), which has 115 members worldwide, including professional artists, hobbyists, astronomers, engineers, scientists and others, said astronomical art has inspired many of today’s scientists.

“There is a deep-set need in the human psyche to go and explore; to want to see what is over the horizon,” Ramer said by email. “(It’s) a need that has defined humans since we first stood up on the savannah millennia ago. And there is nothing more compelling than the stars in the sky. Even our ancient gods are named after the moving lights we saw in the night. Art is the only way we can actually explore those as-yet unreachable places.”

Art, said Ramer, is humanity’s first method of communication across generations and the only way to explore as-yet unreachable places.

“Before we even invented the alphabet, we painted,” he said. “There are paintings of the night sky in the pyramids of Egypt, Mayan temples, and monuments of ancient cultures across the world. Stars and comets have appeared in legends and art for thousands of years.”

IAAA members, Ramer said, create astronomical art in many genres, including photo realistic, impressionism, hardware art, digital, acrylic, oil, glass-blowing, sculpture, wood work and others.

“Scientific data helps us base our imagery on what is really out there and, in turn, make artwork that can inspire the public to want to go and see it,” he said. “Quite often new scientific discoveries are just numbers, graphs, and charts. It takes the knowledge, training and vision of an artist to interpret the data and create an image that the public can understand.”

Although ongoing technological advances teach us more about the universe, people still can’t step foot on those distance places, Ramer said, which is where art comes in.

“Orbiting probes have shown us images of active volcanoes on Io, geysers on Enceladus and Triton, and solid nitrogen oceans on Pluto, but only the imagination of an artist can put us on the surface of Pluto, looking across the rolling ice dunes, or on Triton beneath a towering column of liquid nitrogen blasting up into the sky,” he said.

At the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, the “Touch the Sky” exhibition not only presents an artistic view of stars, planets and other heavenly bodies, but also offers an underlying perspective of Vassar College’s past and present.

“The exhibition is dedicated to Maria Mitchell, the first American astronomer,” Lombino said. “She discovered a comet in 1847 and was the first professor at Vassar College. The (school’s) observatory was named after her. She’s a very important figure in our history. I thought it would be appropriate to do an exhibition on astronomy.”

With that, she said, the college is celebrating the sciences, including next month’s dedication to the campus’ new Bridge for Laboratory Sciences building.

“There’s this idea through the sciences … that seeing is believing and understanding,” Lombino said. “Of course, artists have a notion of what we see and how to interpret these things that may be different from a methodical way of seeing things.”

Many contemporary artists are interested in the idea of astronomy, Lombino said, the science of which dates back centuries, including the work of Lewis Rutherford, an amateur scientist whose 1865 image of the moon is a part of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center’s permanent collection and included in the “Touch the Sky” exhibit.

In all, the show features more than 50 pieces of art consisting of books, prints, drawings, paintings, photography, film and a large-scale site-specific photomural by 18 local, national and international artists, including Laura Battle, Michael Benson, Matthew Brandt, Vija Celmins, Caleb Charland, Chris McCaw, Linda Connor, Teresita Fernández, Nancy Graves, Sharon Harper, Mishka Henner, David Malin, Lisa Oppenheim, Thomas Ruff, Lewis M. Rutherfurd, Kiki Smith, Michelle Stuart, Mungo Thomson and Penelope Umbrico.

Among the pieces is “Night Sky,” an image by Matthew Brandt, where the Los Angeles, California-based artist took a sheet of photography velvet and sprinkled it with cocaine dust, instilling the appearance, Lombino said, of stars twinkling in the sky along with the hard-to-believe concept that we’re here on this planet amid the incredible enormity of the universe.

The show also features Mishka Henner’s “Astronomical,” a 12-volume, 6,000-page collection that shows a scaled model of our solar system, from the sun on page one to the dwarf planet, Pluto, on the last page.

“The width of one page is equal to 1 million kilometers in space,” Lombino said. “It helps us imagine this vastness but also brings it down to a readable scale. You can hold it in your hand.”

Another piece is west coast-based artist Thomson’s site-specific mural, “Negative Space,” a 23-foot photographic assemblage of L. Gordon Cooper Jr., an American astronaut from the first U.S. manned space ship, Mercury. For the mural, which looms over the atrium gallery, Thomson inverted the photograph’s colors.

“The skin glows electric blue and the background is a strange, outer world coppery color,” said Lombino.

Rhinebeck-based abstract artist Battle, a drawing and painting teacher at Bard College in Annandale, was commissioned to do another of the show’s site-specific pieces, a large painting for the atrium gallery, “How long is your past, how far is your future.” At 16-feet wide by 5-feet tall, Battle’s oil and mixed media painting on canvas is her largest piece to date.

“For me, the subject of astronomy really comes out of my interest and use of geometry in paintings and drawings; to see how things exist in relationship to one another,” Battle said.

For the exhibition piece, she referred to the work of Vera Rubin, a Vassar College alumnae and American astronomer known for her pioneering study of spiral galaxies.

“I had to build a 23-foot compass to help form the curves of the spiral that’s the underlying basic structure of the painting,” Battle said.

Other influences came from her interest as an artist in the unknown via the rectangle, which has historical precedence, and which serves as the framework for the exhibition painting. There’s also that Battle’s husband is involved in scientific work with John Carlstrom, a Vassar alumnus that knew Rubin, plus the geometric aspect of astronomy along with the poetry of the science.

“There’s really nothing more beautiful than how we conceive of the universe,” she said.

Karen Maserjian Shan is a freelance writer: mkshan@optonline.net

If you go

What: “Touch the Sky” exhibition

When: April 29-Aug. 21; 5:30 p.m., April 29, opening lecture and reception

Where: Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, 124 Raymond Ave., Poughkeepsie

Admission: Free

• For information on the exhibit’s opening night, preschool event, movie screening, gallery talk and observatory nights, contact the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, 845-437-5632; visit http://fllac.vassar.edu/about/news/announcements/2015-2016/160429-touch-the-sky-checklist.html

Also visit: International Association of Astronomical Artists, http://iaaa.org/