“Of Sea and Sky” exhibition at the Mount Wilson Observatory
The Of Sea and Sky exhibition at the Mount Wilson Observatory, open 1:00 – 5:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday, inspires wonder.
By Garrett Rowlan
Initially, this feeling of wonder is due to the huge telescope at the center of the dome — whose top opened for a group of tourists while I was there, letting in a blast of celestial light — and is complemented by photos that suggests the immensity of the universe, and yet plants the idea that we share, however tangentially, this vast cosmic place.
The exhibition is curated Stephen Nowlin, whose 2020 Sky exhibit at ArtCenter explored the same nexus of art and science. This thematic reworking seems larger, encompassing multitudes. A dozen or so of his photos and prints are on one side of the curving interior wall and read from the left they suggest an ignorance and fear of the spaces beyond our planet. However, as we move rightward past the photos and text — the print in a whirlpool design — the idea is planted that the ignorance has yielded over time to knowledge, the realization that our world and other worlds, other planets, share the same rocky DNA. This is the theme underlying This Land, a series of photos that Nowlin edits to juxtapose the topography of Earth landscapes with those of other planets, to say we are a distant relative to those distant, cold places whether we like it or not.
Indeed, the exhibit gives off a faint whiff of menace. “Scary,” I overheard one youngster say, and indeed the Observatory’s darkness (before the dome was opened), the huge telescope in the room’s center, the droning, almost groaning ambient soundscape that accompanies Rebeca Mendez’s short film Migration 1 — showing a bird’s flight projected as a circle on the wall opposite Newlin’s pictures—and even the way the outside plank of the enormous room rotates at the press of a button, creates a passing sense of dislocation.
Perhaps a healthy dislocation, one that creates questions. It brings to mind President Bill Clinton’s words when a piece of rock was found on Antarctica and was determined to be part of the original crust of Mars. “Its implications are as far-reaching and awe-inspiring as can be imagined,” Clinton said of the discovery. “Even as it promises answers to some of our oldest questions, it poses still others even more fundamental.”
Some of that awe and some of those questions are captured in Of Sea and Sky, which is on exhibit at the Mt. Wilson Observatory on weekend afternoons through October.
Of Sea and Sky Until October 20, 2024 Open to the public Saturdays/Sundays 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm (except concert dates: Sept. 8, Oct. 6) Location Mount Wilson Observatory
Exhibition at Mount Wilson Observatory
Opening of the dome (Photo – Garrett Rowlan)
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