Story Time, Part Two: Listening to Art

This is the second of three “story” posts, all of which happened within a three hour span of time last winter when Visual Art was EVERYWHERE.

It began with tires and art, and then continued an hour later, as I was driving home, back from the Tire Wearhouse.

I was listening to NPR, which is a small miracle because the car that I drove before this one had no working radio. At the same time, I’m crawling along roads covered in wet snow, with flakes the size of a child’s palm floating down in slow motion. The woods on both sides of me ache with the cold beauty of…monochromatic shades of white nestled into grey branches, and the whole world is alive with winter’s skimpy clothes.

But my studded snow tiers give me the luxury of driving past landscapes of winter beauty without fear.

NPR is interviewing a scientist who has discovered that Medieval Islamic artists pre-empted the 20^th Century by some 500 years when they artistically rendered quasicrystalline design, a phenomenon that the West first described just 30 years ago.

I contemplate the patterns of snowflakes and stars, and listen in wonder as science and art rendezvous in my car.

The complex and advanced mathematical patterns of tiles in a Turkish mosque (on the left) are reconstructed by a computer graphic (on the right).

Pattern in the archway of a Turkish mosque circa 1400s

A computer reconstruction showing complex & advanced mathematical patterns of quasicrystalline design

It’s pretty much the end of the day, and I’m up to 2 fantastic art encounters. Little do I know I’m on an art ride and it ain’t over yet! Next week, I’ll post Part III.

Meanwhile, I know an artist who was a former biology major. She looks at each plant she draws from that perspective. So I’m really curious, where do art and science intersect for you?