Art Meets Science in the Halls of Keck Center

The opening of Chapman University’s Keck Center of Science and Engineering draws praise
Article by Mary Platt, Director, Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University
 
There are many ways to explain science and, according to Kip Thorne, the CalTech emeritus astrophysicist whose work inspired the popular movie, Interstellar.

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Chapman mathematics professor Drew Moshier, Ph.D., spearheaded the drive to fill the Keck Center with topical contemporary art and was instrumental in selecting the pieces created by a number of celebrated artists, including Chapman associate professor of art Lia Halloran.

Now the Keck Center is committed to focusing on melding science and art.
“The interiors of the Keck Center — full of light and attention to design detail — communicate the intersection between art and science,” says Lindsay Shen, Ph.D., director of Chapman’s art collections. “It seemed natural to be inspired by that environment and to select work that came from artists who explore these interactions.”

Life force in action

The south entrance of Keck Center includes a floor-to-ceiling installation of glass, splashed with scores of swimming, tumbling, wriggling organic forms.  Titled “Life as We Know It,” this piece is acclaimed artist Peter Bynum’s welcoming note to the Keck Center. It surrounds the dean’s conference room, catching light from within the Center.

Bynum refers to his work as a light-infused sculptural painting.

“For the past ten years, I’ve been exploring the fact that paint, under certain conditions, has within it the innate organic ability to replicate the life force in action, the forms and rhythms of the living universe,” he said. “I’m fascinated with the branching structures that paint makes, more or less on its own, when it’s under pressure between two panels of glass. Similarly, nature has evolved this over a half-million years as the best design possible for the distribution of energy in living organisms.”

Equations of the infinite

Closer toward the center of the building is artist Elizabeth Turk’s silvery, ever-changing “Infinity Murals.” The large triptych is “an integrated vision of simultaneous and intertwined descriptions of reality through science, nature and art,” Turk says. The piece contains infinity symbology from varied world cultures, from Celtic to Tibetan to Native American, along with scientific equations and images of nature.

Turk’s artwork is also lenticular, meaning the subject matter shifts and changes as you pass by because of its ribbed lenses on top of brushed metal. This gives the artwork the feeling of ocean waves ebbing and surging, and the infinity symbols fade and reappear.

Bold pioneers in blue

Each floor of the Keck Center holds signature art, but the third floor is different — it contains history. On the south side, the complex lines, spirals and vortices depicted in intaglio prints by Chapman alumnus Kellan Shanahan are based on a variety of mathematical and scientific models, from cell growth in plants and tissues to bird-flocking behavior.

Lia Halloran’s eye-catching blue-and-white pieces – cyanotype prints, essentially the same process used to create architectural blueprints – adorn the central third-floor esplanade where windows look out over the Chapman football stadium. Above the field stands a serene gallery dedicated to the history of women in the sciences. A montage of photographs with text depicts these pioneering scientists, from the late 1800s to today.

“Art is a method by which to connect with science in utterly new ways,” says astrophysicist Thorne. “We have to have leaps of intuition to guess what direction we should be going, and those come from visualization, from pictures. Whether drawn by a human or a computer, these are very much part of the tools that we use. They’re our other language.”