Review: Stellar Axis

Midnight blue, the color of a summer sky, wraps warmly around human emotions. Imagine that shade pulled from the sky to clothe a circular sphere. Then imagine returning that sphere to the sky as a celestial body. Blue as a deep ocean, but the sphere is not to be an earth-like planet. It is to be a star. Red and yellow plasma leaps out from the fiery furnaces that burn at the heart of stars; yet, from Earth they are merely points of bright white light. Imagine a multitude of these stars, the constellations, captured by humans and brought to our planet as blue balls settled into the cold snow of Antarctica. This is Stellar Axis.

Lita Albuquerque’s vision was to create a map of the stars at both the south and the north poles. With the help of a variety of financial backers, she achieved the first part of that goal on December 22, 2006, the date of the southern hemisphere’s summer solstice.

The 99 balls used in that map and corresponding paintings are for sale in galleries throughout the United States. In Des Moines, some of them can be found at Hentschel Art Gallery (835 42nd Street) through January 2, 2008. The orbs are displayed at the gallery on 800 pounds of salt laid on the floor. They can be mounted on a wall or placed on a stand. The north pole still awaits and sales of the spheres that graced the southern tip of the planet will help finance the second part of the artist’s vision. Albuquerque favors pure pigment which can easily rub off so these objects are strictly hands-off works of art.

Any single piece of the project, including the small 6-inch and 8-inch spheres that were not included in the south pole map, stands alone as an amazing work of art. Together, they are far better than a planetarium in creating a sense of being among stars. The power of the pieces grows even greater as the history of the installation art project is learned. For instance, since everything that is taken to Antarctica must be removed, the pigment that is now on the spheres could not be added until after the balls were brought back to the North American continent. The spheres had to be painted first with a medium that would not transfer onto the snow or blow off in strong winds.. Albuquerque was involved personally in setting up the display at the art gallery. Thus, a visitor can appreciate first-hand the artist’s installation vision.

     

If you can tear yourself away from Albuquerque’s work, go a bit deeper into the gallery and look at paintings by Larry Roots. Viewing his Causation Series No. 81 immediately after Albuquerque’s stars made me think of nebulas. Roots works mostly with oils but also uses acrylics. Most abstract work appeals to me on an emotional level; however, there is a form in Roots’s paintings that I find both surprising and entrancing.

M.R. Field is editor of Leading Voices: Iowa.