From Science to Art

What happens when a chemist becomes an artist? Some things don’t change: Experimenting with materials Searching for connections Imagining the invisible Letting intuition be a guide. Some things are new: Letting go of tight control Allowing creativity to lead One thing is constant: Seeking the unknown. My art, like my science, seeks to make the unknown visible. Langley Spurlock Upcoming Show Secrets of the Elements2: The Unfinished Universe Studio Gallery Washington, DC October 1-25, 2008 A New Collaboration in Word and Image What happens when a chemist becomes an artist then meets an advertising copywriter become a poet? Secrets of the Elements is a collaboration of art and haiku in which Langley Spurlock and John Martin Tarrat tell a story as old as Hydrogen. As up to the minute as Roentgenium. In 118 thoroughly diverse ways. Science for the Senses When complete, Secrets of the Elements will cover the entire periodic table: 118 artworks incorporating 118 haiku. Element by element, from Arsenic to Zinc and Zirconium, Spurlock and Tarrat are taking chemistry out of the classroom and the lab and transforming it into a true science for the senses. Artist and poet see image and verse not as picture and caption, but as an integrated entity with a life and a voice singularly its own. The result is a lens through which to view the world and the universe and to better understand both. Secrets of the Elements October 5 – 30, 2005 The project’s first installment opened at Studio Gallery in Washington DC on October 5, 2005. On display were more than 20 artworks: painting, engraving, collage, assemblage, photography, digital prints and encaustic sculpture. And among the elements on display: Argon, Arsenic, Carbon, Copper, Cobalt, Neon, Iron, Flighty Helium. Stinging Iodine. Laughing Nitrogen. Chattering Potassium. Dancing Manganese. Unearthly Promethium. And the misbehaving Lanthanides. The Known Universe Signs In Accompanying the first Elements show was a unique project-within-a-project. To the uninitiated, the periodic table resembles a keyboard a very large keyboard. But to the chemically literate, it encodes the organizing principles of matter. It is a beautiful construction. And never more so than in Langley Spurlock’s The Known Universe. Contributors numbered as many people as there are elements: 118 friends, acquaintances, and absolute strangers participated. Given a range of black inks and a single five-by-four-inch tile of mulberry paper, each was invited to pick an element and to depict it however they chose. Spurlock’s contribution was to mount the paper tiles on board, cover each one with beeswax, then arrange them as a periodic table. Originally intended as a table of contents for the show, the finished piece became a magnificent display of spontaneous creativity as well, reflecting the diversity of the elements seen from 118 points of view. As references I’d like to direct you to two websites — mine, http://www.langleyspurlock.com and that of Studio Gallery, http://www.studiogallerydc.com www.studiogallerydc.com , where the show will be seen.?