The title of this body of work by Lia Halloran – Your Body is a Space That Sees – goes like an arrow to the heart of what this website and blog is about: centerless perception and the closure of the gap between the observer and the observed. I was alerted to Halloran’s work by Maria Popova at brainpickings, however in spite of an extensive trawl of cyberspace, I have failed to find any commentary, from her or anyone else, on the reasoning behind her choice of these words to title her work. I can only assume she has arrived at the truth of this statement via her unique field of experience in science and the visual arts. Perhaps she’s a closet mystic as well. In any event the work is too beautiful not to be shared, and if you happen to live in the Wilmington area you can see it for yourself in ‘real’ rather than virtual space. (Details below.)
Your Body is a Space That Sees is series of cyanotype prints that sources historical imagery and narratives to trace contributions of women in astronomy since antiquity. The of series of large scale cyanotype prints will interpret a fragmented history and represent a female-centric astronomical catalog of craters, comets, galaxies and nebula drawing from narrative, imagery and historical accounts of Hypatia of Alexandria, Caroline Herschel, Helen Sawyer Hogg, and a group of women at Harvard in the late 1800’s known as Pickering’s Harem or the Harvard Computers.
Cyanotypes are printed from painted negatives that are based on the objects and narratives that were connected to these early astronomers. This process mimics early astronomical glass plates moving between transparent surfaces to a photograph without the use of a camera. The video below shows the process – and as Halloran comments, “Cyanotype printing done using our nearest star outside the studio in sunny Los Angeles, California.”
From craters to constellations, the images fuse a piercing intensity with an enigmatic subtlety that, like the universe itself, draw us into a beguiling mystery the full meaning of which remains enticingly beyond our reach.
This project is supported by the National Endowment of the Arts Art Works for Visual Arts. The series of photo/painting pieces will be accompanied by an exhibition catalog with written contributions about the night sky from women in literature, poetry and physics. Research of source imagery will include the extensive glass plate collection at the Harvard College Observatory (HCO).
Lia Halloran lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, and currently serves as Assistant Professor of Art as the Director of the Painting and Drawing Department at Chapman University in Orange, CA, where she teaches painting as well as courses that explore the intersection of art and science. See more of her immensely beautiful and thoughtful work at the intersection of art, science, and human life on her site.
This post has been cobbled together from Lia Halloran’s website and brainpickings – gratitude!
All images copyright Lia Halloran. See more work from this series at this page on her website.
Find information about cyanotype photographic printing at Wikipedia.
Exhibit Dates:
Mar 25, 2017 – Jun 26, 2017
Location:
The Delaware Contemporary
200 South Madison Street | Wilmington, DE 19801
Constance S. & Robert J. Hennessy Project Space
the awakened eye 