June 22, 2018
Hi Stephanie,
I had the first meeting with Alex, who I invited to my studio and we met for a little over an hour. I had a kiln coming out and so we opened it and looked at the results together. I showed him my artwork and we discussed materials I work with, and the chemistry of some of it. I invited him to bend a piece of glass using only a candle and so he got to feel when the glass started to get soft, and then its subsequent hardening upon cooling. This is the scientific basis of my art. We also talked about his research. Of course I thought an astrophysicist looks through telescopes to see the stars. But I was both surprised and delighted to find out that he actually does a lot of programming. I am also a web designer and know a few coding languages as well so I found this interesting and we talked about our love of good design and elegant solutions. In fact, the thing we had the most in common was that we both are very interested in finding solutions.
I had a million questions and most of them are just understanding the definition of what he does. I still am unclear on the difference between astro physics and particle physics. I figure we’ll have plenty of time to discuss those things. In my artwork the images I like to work with are of horizon lines in landscape. After all, there is no horizon line, as the separation between land and sky doesn’t exist in a parallel line. It is an illusion. And I find this illusion to be entirely fascinating because you know what lies beyond, you just can’t see it. This made me think of the corollary between dark matter and my horizon line. We suspect it is there, but we just can’t see it. I hope to learn much more about dark matter. Alex is a nice guy, explains things very well and I am going to enjoy chit chatting with him and making art. I think we are going to use google docs to store our writings and photos. But I wanted to send this to you and thank you for the opportunity!
~ Randie
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