We Share the Ancient Skies

An Arts & Inquiry Mail Art Project

Concept:

We share our night skies with ancient astronomers, who gazed intently at the stars and strived to reach as high above the earth as their technology would allow.  Inspired by creatures “designed by nature” for flight, Chinese kite makers created flying objects in the forms of birds and insects.  Based upon the kite archetype, our project piece will be mailed from artist to artist, changing in form and appearance as each adds an inventive  modification.

Media: Mixed media on paper

Construct:

The base shape of the mailed piece will be a black quadrilateral of Stonehenge paper, approx. 24” x 32”.  As the piece is modified, the dimensions will become varied.

Process:
The participating artists will be invited to create and add a work-on-paper in one of the regions of the main piece. The artists may create a 2 or 3-D modification. Three-D additions may cross boundaries on the surface of the quadrilateral as long, as they are re-foldable for mailing.

Timetable: Each artist will  have 1-2 weeks to complete his/her piece and mail it to the next artist in closest proximity internationally. The piece will leave New York in December of 2014 and reach the final destination with Magdalena in Poland by April of 2015.

Participating Artists:
Cynthia Willett, Joel Kahn, Mary Adam, Sharon Lemay, Margot Teusner, Kate Tyrwhitt, Magdalena Brzezinska, Roni Feldman

The documentation process:
Each artist will take two photographs related to their contribution. A video will be produced after all documentation has been collected.

Final destination:

1. Mail Art Group at Tate Modern’s BP Art Exchange http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/bpartexchange

2. Possible gallery display in Poland

More background: Thanks to Magdalena Brzezinska, who suggested the project and who participated in a similar project last year entitled Passport.  Magdalena wrote: “The idea that the kite may go back to 5th century BC Chinese philosophers seems very appealing.” 

 

We Share the Ancient Skies

November 30, 2014

To Begin
The parallelogram is complete. Cynthia begins the project by selecting the region indicated by a red triangle. Joel Kahn’s piece will be mounted to the shape in the region indicated by the blue triangle.

 

 
December 6, 2014

Cynthia mounts a paper assemblage of the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) and Joel Kahn’s Untitled.

Cynthia Willett   Cygnus (the Swan)   details

prism folded and closed

prism partially open

looking into the prism

Visualizing Cygnus

 Joel Kahn  Untitled 2012  details

folded graphic opened

graphic partially closed

A poem from Joel

When I heard the Learn’d Astronomer

 WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer 

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;

When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;

When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;

Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

--Walt Whitman (1819–1892).  Leaves of Grass.  1900

Now the piece will be mailed to Sharon Lemay in Canada.  Check in again for Sharon's addition!

January, 2015

  

The field around the stars is activated with a swirl, suggesting the bright halo members that "...comefrom the Milky Way's oldest and wisest stars—those in the stellar halo, the galactic component that envelops the bright disk housing the sun.” Scientific American, 10/2014

Mary Adam receives the piece in her Trinidad studio, and transforms it once again.  

It's a hummingbird!

Mary’s painterly hand shows in her execution....

contrasting with Sharon’s assemblage, Joel’s faceted geometry and my own colored dust.

The hummingbird is richly symbolic.

From hummingbirdworld.com, we learned this:

—To the Chayna people of Trinidad, hummers are dead ancestors, so there is taboo against harming them.  An extinct Caribbean tribe called the Arawacs thought is was Hummingbird who brought tobacco. They called him the Doctor Bird.

  

So now the hummingbird joins the swan and shooting star, and travels to ancient skies to Australia.

Bon voyage!

March 1, 2015

From Kate Tyrwhitt in Australia:

"My Stingray addition to the collage is related to a sculpture I made, based on a Smooth Stingray found off the coast of Brighton and Seacliff,.."

Kate's Stingray sculpture was carved from local Cyprus and exhibited at the Brighton Jetty Classic sculptures 2015.

...and this relates to the Aboriginal interpretation of the skies in the Coorong area in South Australia. The background was edited in You Doodle an app I use with my students. 

Paul Curnow's astronomy is what influenced the Stingray and the Torres Strait Island legends of how the Milky Way was formed. The movement of the Shovel Nosed Shark stirred up the sand to reflect to the heavens to create the Milky Way. 

http://sa.apana.org.au/~paulc/loreaussie03.html 

  

The piece is now in the capable hands of Margot Teusner in Perth. 

We look forward to her modifications!

April 29, 2015

 Margot has added a collage with several flaps that fold back to reveal layers underneath, and to each one there is a separate image of the Black Swan as it flies in the skies, far above the rivers and landscape of Australia. She has recorded her process in the photos below:

We Share The Ancient Skies

Margot Teusner

Through the stars that we see in them, through the stories we tell of them, and through the birds that fly in them, we stand on the earth and share the ancient skies.

The Waugal

For more than 40,000 thousand years before Europeans arrived, the Swan River, the Derbal Yerrigan, remained at the heart of the culture of the traditional owners and custodians - the Noongar people. Seasonally they travelled along its banks fishing, hunting, camping and gathering.

Noongar spirituality lies in the belief of the connection between the human and spiritual realms. The Creation time is the time before time when spirits rose from the earth and descended from the sky to create the landforms and all living things. For Noongar people, the Waugal is a snake-like creature that was responsible for the creation of the Swan and Canning Rivers, and landforms around Perth.

I have included the image of a snake layered over some of the significant sites associated with the Waugal. I have represented it with a dotted outline as a way to acknowledge it’s significance however this is not intended as a traditional representation. 

The Black Swan

 The river is home to a large variety of birds and marine animals including dolphins, turtles and the distinctive Black Swan (Cygnus atratus), after which the river is named. The Black Swan has been associated with Australian identity: the contrast to the white swan of the northern hemisphere indicating “Australianness”.  A significant emblem in Western Australia, it is featured on the flag and is both the state bird and state emblem of Western Australia. 

The Southern Cross (Crux)

Visible in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Cross is the most famous constellation and can be seen all year round. With the two pointers (which belong to the constellation of Centaurus) it can be used as a navigational tool to find the South Pole. The five stars that make up the Southern Cross - Alpha, Beta (also known as Mimosa), Delta, Gamma and Epsilon Crucis - are 10 to 20 million years old.

The many stories and interpretations of the Southern Cross include a sting ray and an eagle’s claw. The Southern Cross is an important Australian emblem, appearing on the Australian Flag.

Thank you Margot! All are beautiful! 

By now the piece has crossed several rivers and an ocean to find the studio of
Magdalena Brezinska in Poland. We eagerly await her addition!

May 22, 2015

Magdalena’s Statement

       In completing my piece, I used black Bristol paper, a silver metallic marker and acrylics (including structure acrylic colors). I created two supplementary forms. The first one was a 2D Nicolaus Copernicus outline portrait, which was attached to the empty triangle under Sharon’s art, as if contemplating the Milky Way she had so gracefully rendered.

      Around the portrait, I splattered white acrylic paint to create an interesting contrast and a connection to Cynthia’s and Margot’s art. In the central part of the collective artwork, I attached a 3D Copernicus’ astrolabe, painted in colors including silver (to correspond to the pieces of Sharon and Cynthia my own 2D piece), structure white, and dark green and ultramarine blue (Daler Rowney), to correspond to the pieces of Mary, Kate and Joel. The circular form was also selected to reflect the same form in Joel’s and Sharon’s art. 

      The idea behind my artwork was to address the Sharing the Skies project with a portrait of the renowned Polish astronomer who “stopped the Sun and moved the Earth”, creating a heliocentric representation of the heavens (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/136591/Nicolaus-Copernicus ). This amazing individual has fascinated me for a very long time, as I come from the small city of Olsztyn, situated in the North-Eastern Poland, where Copernicus, who was also an administrator of the Olsztyn castle, directed the defense of the castle when Olsztyn was besieged by the Teutonic Knights (”He also represented the Polish side in the ensuing peace negotiations.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus) I decided to supplement my addition with a 3D Copernicus’ astrolabe, ”a very ancient astronomical computer for solving problems relating to time and the position of the Sun and stars in the sky.” (http://www.astrolabes.org)

       Initially, when I was only able to trace our project online, following Cynthia’s excellent WSTAS blog, I prepared my first draft: a 2D watercolor painting of Copernicus, his astrolabe and the wall in the Olsztyn castle with an astronomical chart made by Copernicus, who used it to establish the spring equinox.

(http://www.szlak.zamkigotyckie.org.pl/olsztyn-ang.htm) However, the watercolor proved unsatisfactory when I saw the project in real life, hence all the changes. 

Magdalena's Intent

The why of my piece is: we all share the ancient skies, at which 5th century Chinese astronomers gazed and which Nicolaus Copernicus examined not only with awe and admiration, but also with the courage to change the common perspective. I feel privileged to be a part of this collaborative effort, and also to be an heir to that outstanding mind. I would like my audience to feel this while observing our collective artwork. 

Interesting, thoughtfully considered and beautifully rendered, Magdalena! Thank you!

From Magdalena in Poland, our piece will travel to Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, to be finalized by Roni Feldman. We eagerly await his ideas!

Roni's Statement



        I attached my finished painting on June 30, 2015, which saw the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in the night sky that some astronomers account for the Star of Bethlehem seen some two thousand years ago.  We connect to each other across the earth and its history, sharing the ancient skies. 

        My latest body of work is called The Age of Exploration.  Each painting depicts a famous explorer, a place that I have been to, or one that I intent to go.  They also include metallic and iridescent paints alongside inventive explorations of materials, inviting close attention to detail and the shifting effects of light.  Viewers must become engaged visual explorers themselves.  The act of contemplative looking is the destination itself, revealing hidden gems locked in the treasure chest of heightened attention.

        This body of work came out of a series of career, creative, and personal crises that incited me to change what I was doing.  Like any explorer, stepping out into the wild carries inherent risk.  Not all of my subjects returned from their travels, and not all of my paintings survive their inception.  I have similarly found that it is helpful to do collaborative projects and commissions a couple times per year as it forces me out of my comfort zone to try new things.  The inspiration for this piece stemmed in part from the colors and techniques of the collaborating artists.  My contribution follows their paths, connecting us on our travels. 

And the artwork as it looks in completion:

Thank you Roni for this ending piece, so beautifully conceived and described above! Now the piece will travel back to its point of origin in New York.

To all contributors:

It has been a journey of friendship and inspiration, as we have connected to one another in thought and deed while sharing space on the surface of this humble sheet of folded paper. Thanks for your efforts and your dedication to the project!