There is an image on the wall of the Coe and in the ‘seeing light’ book that is at the beginning (or is it the end, the middle or somewhere else framed on a wall, depending on where you wish to put it). The book is meant to be taken apart and seen differently every time. The image is of the moon. I didn’t draw it.
There are actually 5 images, as you see, but I want to choose one. It is difficult to know which one to choose. Do you look at all of them at the same time or focus your eyes? But this image means a lot. It has meaning. And it doesn’t matter who you are, young or old, artist or not. What does it mean?
It comes from a text published in 1610 called The Sidereal Messenger. I wrote a small explanation of it for the museum, and keep coming back to read it again. Every time it means something new. I see it again and again and it never grows old or stale.
Whether this particular image of the moon, Clair’s fern in resin, Carmella’s glass, Sally and James’ photos printed on glass, or Hunter’s foil next to colored sheets, red, blue, yellow, each of these artists and their works continually inspire me to see differently. “Light theory, traceable light” is the way Clair mentions this in the videos. I keep hearing her, talking about our visit to Corning. I sit and write this by the glow of the cone with its dull red glow in the most ‘intimate’ corner of the Coe. There are so many corners here. Every place is packed with details that I can spend hours enjoying and wondering about. But I keep returning to the sidereal messenger. I keep returning to this moon, this shadowy drawing of Galileo’s from a little more than 400 years ago. The conviction that I hold and that frames this exhibition is that art and science, right and left brain, nature and artificiality cannot entirely be split in two in an oversimplified way. I call this a magical way of seeing, that is, to be able to see the same image in multiple ways at the same time. Once I approach this picture of the moon as an astronomer, once as an artist, once as a teacher, once as a child. Each time builds on itself. It is like when you are a kid and you can be anything. And looking at it each time resurrects a little creative drop inside. I feel more alive and more capable. It is like meditation or mindfulness, finding a spiritual sense one forgot one had. And all this by looking at the moon, or an image of the moon. Call it moon-day. Claire’s Response to moon-day: I too, choose the moon. I choose the moon for inexplicable reasons. I choose it because though there have been years upon years of research on how the sun illuminates it and how that light bounces to our vision; to me it is unexplainable. And that is okay. It is a source of wonder; accepting and appreciating the unexplainable. Opening your heart to feel rather than explain. Feeling the light. Loving the shadow as it is and expecting nothing more.