Backbone > Lucid Dreaming
Beautiful Minds
by Beth Elaine Wilson

The only real elegance is in the mind;
if you’ve got that, the rest really comes from it.
—Diana Vreeland, 1962

Scientists are usually thought of as people who dispassionately assemble data, organizing theories and hypotheses based on observation of various natural events, re-creating and measuring elements of such phenomena in their laboratories or under similarly controlled conditions. The lab coat crowd seeking sound, reproducible results is not normally associated with the unpredictable, culturally relative melee that defines the art world.

Yet in describing a particularly effective experiment or theorem, scientists will often describe each other’s work as “elegant”. What a surprising concept in such a context! This most aesthetic of adjectives seems oddly out of place, and quite a strange way to characterize the efficient business of sorting and categorizing the basic facts of the natural world. Yet it calls attention to the actuality that in creating a body of knowledge, the “facts” themselves do not determine their own order; rather, it is the imposition of human consciousness that assembles the “picture” of how the parts all fit together. Ask a daisy about its role in the meadow, and it will gaily respond by simply tossing its head gently back and forth in the wind. Ask a naturalist, and you’ll get a dissertation on the contribution of the plant’s root system to the soil, its pollen to the bees, its potential food value to grazing deer, and so on.

So while science would seem to be all about the creation of information based on purely objective observation, in reality the formation of these observations into knowledge—that is, the organization of a larger idea reflecting an understanding of how the world works—is crucially dependent on a fundamentally aesthetic process. The “elegant” theory simultaneously proves the subjective beauty of science, and the objective economy of art.

This makes a lot of sense, actually, if you think about how basic science is actually conducted—the element iodine, for example, was named by the Greek word for “purple”. Simple visual observation of the element and one of its primary characteristics (the color purple) led to its name…isn’t that a fundamentally aesthetic process? Similarly, mercury, the only metal that occurs in a liquid state at room temperature, was named for the fleet-footed, ever-on-the-move messenger god of Greek mythology. Now that’s a kind of metaphor, isn’t it?

This unexpectedly aesthetic side of science is explored in a cycle of encaustics by Nash Hyon, some of which are now on view at The Gallery at R&F in Kingston. Hyon’s early work developed in a scientific/medical bent following the death of her husband to cancer. As might be predicted in such a case, the work immediately inspired by this event was almost clinical, serious, with something of an astringent mood reflecting her experience of modern medicine.

But in the new work, she has moved beyond her grief to find beauty and delight in another scientifically-based subject. The Elements is a cycle of artistic “portraits” of individual chemical elements—Hyon’s aim is to complete a full cycle of 12”x12” studies for all the naturally-occurring elements, and finished, full-size 36”x36” paintings of at least 28 of them. She incorporates into her abstract compositions various references to the elements’ respective qualities, as drawn from the periodic table. For example, “Iodine”, in addition to carrying a purplish haze under the wax (from real iodine incorporated into the paint), includes 53 small rectangular bars, floating near the edges of the frame, reflecting the element’s atomic number.

The richly textured encaustic surfaces of the paintings endow them with a tactile, material quality that underscores the truly elemental nature of their subject. By definition pure substances, elements stand always at the ready to combine with others (excepting the noble gases). The painting “Copper” includes a narrow inner border stripe of bright blue-green, which of course represents the oxidized state of the metal. Through the dynamism of the paintings’ surfaces, one gets the sense of the elements as always in transition, both chemically and alchemically. In fact, the artist states her interest in exploring how “the elements connect the body with the universe,” taking the leap of imagination that brings her scientific subject matter back into the artistic realm.

For Hyon, the basic activities of science—research, experimentation, observation—are remarkably similar to the way that artists work. And she’s quite right. Just as the insights and techniques developed by science can serve to launch us into radically new territory (think of the ramifications of splitting the atom, for example), so can the process of artistic creation take us to startling new places.

A prime example of this is on view at the Time and Space Limited gallery in Hudson, with an exhibition of a new body of work by La Wilson. Now 76 years old, the artist proves that you really are never too old to explore new ideas. Her earlier work featured boxed assemblages reminiscent of Joseph Cornell, but often with an edgy, dark side to them. These new works are composed of sparkling new materials—embroidery floss, beads, sequins, faux pearls, cellophane, cloth, and a million other little doodads—assembled in clear glass bottles, ranging from one to 20 inches in height. While the bright palette of colors and the sheer, glittering abundance of stuff lends the work an almost happy-go-lucky air, the apparent energy expended through the obsessive collection and classification of the various and sundry objects brings this new work back into contact with a bit of the darker undertow felt earlier, but in a way that ultimately grounds rather than undermines the new spirit.

The eccentric “system” of classification employed here might read something like: “things that are pink,” “things that are round,” “things that are straight,” and so on, which of course is an entirely aesthetic way of putting the question. Form fundamentally displaces function in the process, and Wilson then deploys the resulting components to create larger structures, whether layers of color in one of the large bottles, or a grid-like field of contrasting elements in boxes of the smaller ones. What shines through in the end is the elemental beauty of the thought process itself, the very thing that a scientist might call “elegant”.

“Nash Hyon: The Elements,” through Nov. 30 at The Gallery at R&F, 506 Broadway, Kingston. 331-3112, www.rfpaints.com.

“La Wilson: New Work,” opening Nov. 2 (6-8pm) through November 30 at TSL Gallery Space, 434 Columbia Street, Hudson. (518) 822-8448, www.timeandspace.org.