(4.20) Join artist Diane Samuels in conversation with Jo-Ann Conklin, director of the Bell Gallery, Thursday at the Granoff Center. Samuels’ installation ‘Lines of Sight’ was commissioned in 2006 for Brown University’s Sidney Frank Hall for Life Sciences on Meeting Street.
The artwork is integrated into the glass curtain-wall of a high-traffic, two-story glass pedestrian bridge connecting the wings of the Sidney E. Frank Hall for Life Sciences, so you see through the artwork when you look into or out of the bridge.
Lines of Sight is made from and within 140 custom-manufactured, double-pane windows, totaling over 3800 square feet of window surface. Each window is completely filled with free-floating glass elements such as magnifying lenses, beads, prisms, and disks. Over 750,000 of these elements were hand-placed into the windows by the artist and her assistant, Maggie Haas. Interspersed throughout are 7,500 small glass rectangles, hand-engraved by the artist with excerpts of poetry or prose along with the author’s name and birth date. The quotations span centuries and were submitted by hundreds of Brown students, faculty, administration, staff, friends, and alums, as well as the artist herself. They speak to the theme of observing the world, paying attention, and looking closely—activities common to artists and scientists.
The conversation is part of Inspiring Women in Science.
11:20am to 12:10pm, Thursday, April 20, Martinos Auditorium, Granoff Center, 154 Angell Street, (directions)