artist statement ~ steve scheibe
macroscape slides
on three floors of the Margaret Murie Building
Life Sciences Research and Learning Facility
University of Alaska, Fairbanks
short statement
My intent in creating the glass artwork series entitled Macroscape Slides for UAF’s life sciences building, is to celebrate the similarities and tension of two different kinds of knowing—through science and through art.
partial statement
My intent in creating the glass artwork series entitled Macroscape Slides is to celebrate the similarities and tension of two different kinds of knowing—through science and through art. Glass artworks resembling oversized microscope slides, poetically present three areas where life is studied in Alaska, UAF’s immense outdoor laboratory. The three areas are streambeds, Arctic tundra, and sea ice. The artworks grace the entrances of three laboratories, one on each floor of the Murie Building – UAF’s life sciences research and learning facility.
full statement
My intent in creating the glass artwork series entitled Macroscape Slides is to celebrate the similarities and tension of two different kinds of knowing—through science and through art.
Macroscape Slides are three over-sized microscope slides in dichroic and mouth-blown art glass. These artworks grace the entrances of three laboratories, one on each floor of the Murie Building – UAF’s life sciences research and learning facility. Each six-foot “slide” base is made of laminated dichroic glass which subtly shifts in color as the viewing angle changes. This shape represents a classic means of scientific study with a sense of changing technology (the dichroic effect). Like a specimen placed under a coverslip, the center of each artwork features a back-lit bio-scape. In colorful and fluid, mouth-blown glass, each square centerpiece poetically depicts a unique area of Alaska where life science is studied. The three areas are streambeds, Arctic tundra, and sea ice.
The materials, shape, and proportions of a microscope slide are to be at once recognizable to the viewer, while abstract imagery and color is used to invite the viewer beyond illustration to “essence.”
These artworks invite viewers to step back from close laboratory inspection of life science, to recall and celebrate a sense of the wonder and beauty of living things and their habitats. The role of the arts here is to perhaps assist in helping the scientist to transition between micro to macro, and from left brain analysis to a right brain encounter with “life.”
Another way to say this…perhaps the art helps us remember the fragrance and color and sounds of the forest when we camped there as a child, now after also studying the chemistry happening within one cell. Or maybe it’s the difference between knowing a person’s blood type and knowing the person.
And so my artistic aim for Macroscape Slides is to bring balance to the rich, scientific environment of UAF, by fostering two differing aspects of knowing—one being more evaluative, the other more visceral.
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