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Final Artist Statement - Blog 10

I was originally inspired by the Starshade project because I was fascinated in its function and in the idea of furthering discovery. The gold foil aluminum used on the Starshade definitely influence some of my material choices for the final including the silver mylar and orange vinyl. Even the idea of the Starshade as a two sided shape that acts as a barrier between the telescope and the star correlated to my decision to make the paintings two sided. The paintings are done with acrylic on wood panels shaped like ovals. The oval references space and time as well as voids and cosmic shapes. Solar systems operate in circular formations and I felt an oval would best reference solar landscape and imagery as well as telescopic perspective. The three paintings differ from each other and were inspired by research on exoplanets and looking at artist visualizations of what these planets may look like. One of my favorite things that the art department did at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were...
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BLOG 10

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I began my final research on a topic that struck my interest during our class trip to the Mount Wilson Observatory. While our hosts brought us through the 100 inch telescope dome in the last hour of our visit, the telescope operator named Tom Mason directed our class group to the control center of the telescope. The panel and table which contained all of the controls was no wider than two school desks and the buttons and knobs seemed to be straight out of a vintage science fiction movie. Tom began explaining what each of the buttons do and he even rotated the dome above us so that we could observe how he operates the mechanics. As he turned back to the control panel, looking at the blank computer screen, he explained how he goes about locating various objects in the night sky to study with the telescope. Tom spoke of the basic longitude and latitude calculations he has to make and how these coordinates can be picked out of the night sky, and he then explained how the sky is split up a...
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blog 10

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The medium I am most comfortable in, is photography. For my final project I decided to photograph optic illusions using mirrors. The majority of my work is usually colorful tending to focus more on portraiture or the human form. There is always some form of balance in my images, whether it is the picture itself or in post production. I enjoy a sort of rhythm within my images. I did a project similar to this a couple weeks before but, focused on using one mirror, by trying to confuse the audience as to where and what they were looking at. For this project I decided to work with multiple mirrors and use a different perspective while shooting these images. The idea behind my final project was to create photographs that formed a natural optical illusion by using mirrors. I added color by use of location and clothing that my model wore. The process behind the work varied throughout my time photographing this project. In one image you may notice that the model herself was holding the mirr...
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Blog #10

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The exploration of space has led to more discoveries that have just lead to more questions. Marie and I both throughout this class have both have been interested in learning more about our exploration. During the class, we have both gone through different forms of exploration and found different ends to a mean in these explorations. At first our bodies of work had seemed to be in completely separate categories until we looked at the main drivers behind the works. Exploration and space.    We decided to meld our two ways of expressing these interests into one. In Marie's project's she has focused on knowledge. What people know versus what they don't know and if they even know what they don't know. She has focused on the obvious and played with the hidden, and melded the two together in her previous projects. In my own work, I have focused on time and the shift in perspective on simple objects. I did this in several different ways, but the most succe...
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Optical Illusion: Anamorphosis

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An optical illusion is something that deceives the eye by appearing to be other than it is. Anamorphosis is a type optical illusion that utilizes distorted perspective. This type of illusion forces the viewer to stand at a certain point or to use special devices in order to reconstitute the image. There are two common forms of anamorphosis called “oblique” and “catoptric”. Oblique illusions the image must be viewed from a position that is very far from the usual in front and straight ahead position that we normally expect images to be looked at. A great example of an oblique illusion is Hans Holbein’s anamorphic skull that he painted in his painting The Ambassadors . This illusion is only able to be seen if the viewer is very close to the bottom lefthand corner of the pice looking upwards. He used this anamorphic skull to as a sort of visual puzzle that would engage the viewer and also was a symbol of death always being around. It is amazing to me that he was able to create such an ac...
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Blog #3

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The Cyanotype process is a photographic technique where a paper is sensitized in the dark (away from Ultra Violet Light) with a photo-sensitive emulsion. This emulsion is made up of two parts; part A being Potassium Ferricyanide mixed with distilled water and part B being Ferric Ammonium Citrate (green) mixed with distilled water. Part A and Part B are combined just before sensitizing the paper in order to maintain a long shelf life when the two parts are not in use. Once the sensitized paper is dry, it can be exposed to sunlight light and then thoroughly washed with regular water. Whatever bit of paper that was exposed to light will become blue, and any paper that was not exposed to light will remain white. This process was first introduced by an astronomer, chemist and mathematician named Sir John Frederick William Herschel around 1820 during his experimentation with Hyposulphite of soda, silver, and salts. Herschel was born in 1792 of British courtier Mary Pitt and astronomer Wil...
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blog post #6

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During our final trip to NASA I found it very interesting to hear how they will be handling the NISAR missions data. The NISAR mission is a collaborative project between the Indian space agency and NASA which is similar to how other missions and satellite launches are produced. The data for these collaborative missions is collected and shared with the world. This is different from the normal process where the data is collected, but not released to the entire public only to scientists and organizations that have been approved. Up until now the United States has been using Europe’s Sentinel 1A an 1B satellites as a part of an agreement to share the data that is collected. The NISAR satellite will be NASA’s version of the Sentinel 1A an 1B satellites. It will have a stronger radar than those two satellites and will also be able to capture two full images of the earth every 12 days.   I found it very interesting to hear about how political the release of collected data is. In India fo...
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