Quote of the Week

"The silence is all there is. It is the alpha and the omega. It is God brooding over the face of the waters; it is the blended note of the ten thousand things, the whine of wings. You take a step in the right direction to pray to this silence, and even to address the prayer to 'World.' Distinctions blur. Quit your tents. Pray without ceasing."

~Anne Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Well here we are.

It's all over. I spent the week between my last post and this installing my show, adding images to my document, completing my oral defense, spending over three hours just on page numbers, submitting my paper electronically, and gathering all my signatures. My parents came into town Thursday night and left this morning; my brother and his girlfriend came in Friday afternoon and left Saturday morning. A dear, dear, friend of mine from Towson came down too, and stayed with me. We hadn't seen each other since I'd moved down here so it was great to catch up on her life, her thesis experience and what was going on with some other good friends I left behind in Maryland.

The show looks amazing. I couldn't be happier with how my work looks, or how the entire gallery looks. I think we were all a little apprehensive with so many of us in the gallery, but everyone filled the space and it all went together incredibly well. The opening went great as well; there was a steady stream of people almost the entire time! Some of the faculty have been saying that this is one of the best MFA shows they've seen. I could not be graduating with more talented people.

But people are asking "What next?" In the immediate sense, we still have a couple weeks of school left, and while I do have very few obligations, I do still have a few obligations. I have work to make for friends and colleagues, work I'd like to make for myself, job hunting and applications to begin working on in earnest, grad assistantship hours I need to keep showing up for. In the more long term sense, as in where am I going to go, and what am I going to do after graduation, well, that's a little trickier. I got a summer studio assistantship at Arrowmont starting the end of June and running through the end of July. I couldn't be more excited about this opportunity, and I'm hoping that by the end of my time there, I'll have the next place to go. And as much as I hate moving, I realize that this is how my life is going to be for the next few years. There are too many things I want to do, all over the country, for me to pick a permanent spot right now.

The future seems scary and exciting all at once. Even this blog is going to undergo some changes I expect. I would stick around for the ride, if I were you. I have a feeling it's gonna be good.

Felice Frankel

Featured in Bruce Mau's book Massive Change, Felice Frankel is concerned with how scientific ideas are visually represented. She works with scientists to develope an image that communicates their scientific research to the general public. She is a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Univerisity, where she heads the Envisioning Science program. She also works as a research scientist at MIT. Frankel's images have been published in over 300 journal articles and have been featured as covers and in other various publications. In 1997, she co-authored On the Surface of Things (I saw this at the bookstore not too long ago, and thought it was more recent, I almost bought a copy). Her latest book, Envisoning Science, the Design and Craft of the Science Image, has been deemed "priceless" by Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, and acts as a guide on the production of effective scientific images. Frankel is also a leader of the Picturing to Learn, program, which encourages students to develop their own visual explanations of scientific themes.
She has received grants from both the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
You can see a list of exhibitions on her website.
Frankel has a degree in biology from Brooklyn College.
She's featured by Apple on their website, and has been covered by the New York Times.
In her interview in Massive Change, Frankel talks about how NASA is bringing attention to the earth through satellite images. She states "Chemists and physicists need to do the same for the micro and the subatomic world. It is just as exciting and beautiful as the cosmos."

I've been noticing this for awhile, that most art/science combinations focus on technology, engineering, chemistry and physics. Biology is prevalent in it's own, broad way, since biophilia is rampent among artists. But you don't find much about geology and art. There also doesn't seem to to be any crossovers between geology and the design movement. The science of design seems centered around climate change, sustainability, and advancing technology. All of these things are starting to move forward together and the geosciences seem to be off on their own. Why is this? Is it because we're trying to get to the future by studying the past?
The most publisized science these days revolves around trying to save ourselves and our future. The design movement is all about the future. Is there a way to get to the future though the past? Is there a way to a viable future of our field through our past tradition?