What happens when a chemist becomes an artist…then meets
an advertising copywriter become a poet? Secrets of the Elements
is a collaboration of art and haiku in which Langley Spurlock and
John Martin Tarrat tell a story as old as Hydrogen. As up to the
minute as Copernicium. In 118 thoroughly diverse ways.
Science for the Senses
When complete, Secrets of the Elements will cover the entire periodic
table: 118 artworks incorporating 118 haiku.
Element by element, from Arsenic to Zinc and Zirconium, Spurlock
and Tarrat are taking chemistry out of the classroom and the lab
and transforming it into a true science for the senses.
Artist and poet see image and verse not as picture and caption,
but as an integrated entity — with a life and a voice singularly
its own. The result is a lens through which to view the world and
the universe — and to better understand both.
Secrets of the Elements October 5 - 30, 2005
The project’s first installment opened at Studio Gallery
in Washington DC on October 5, 2005. On display were
more than 20 artworks: painting, engraving, collage, assemblage,
photography, digital prints and encaustic sculpture. And among the
elements on display: Argon, Arsenic, Carbon, Copper, Cobalt, Neon,
Iron, Flighty Helium. Stinging Iodine. Laughing Nitrogen. Chattering
Potassium. Dancing Manganese. Unearthly Promethium. And the misbehaving
Lanthanides.
The Known Universe Signs In
Accompanying the first Elements show was a unique project-within-a-project.
To the uninitiated, the periodic table resembles a keyboard —
a very large keyboard. But to the chemically literate, it encodes
the organizing principles of matter. It is a beautiful construction.
And never more so than in Langley Spurlock’s The Known Universe.
Contributors numbered as many people as there are elements: 118 friends,
acquaintances, and absolute strangers participated. Given a range
of black inks and a single five-by-four-inch tile of mulberry paper,
each was invited to pick an element and to depict it however they
chose. Spurlock’s contribution was to mount the paper tiles
on board, cover each one with beeswax, then arrange them as a periodic
table.
Originally intended as a table of contents for the show, the finished
piece became a magnificent display of spontaneous creativity as
well, reflecting the diversity of the elements…seen from 118
points of view.
