Isaac Newton and the Moon

 Back when I was much younger and more spontaneously creative man, I had the temerity to take a studio art class. It was in the last full year of college, in the Spring of 1988. It was a course on monoprinting. I saw it in the course catalog over Christmas break, I think when I staying in Oakland with some friends, one of whom had been an art major at Berkeley. The idea of taking a studio art class seemed outrageous to me, a Physics/English double major trying to wrap up my requirements for both degrees. 

My artist friend, who still lives in Oakland to this day, explained what monoprinting was, and from this I learned the important fact that it was a real thing, a real form of visual expression, and not a term that was made up. How was I supposed to know? As I always do, I wanted to do something real.

The course, to my surprise, had no prerequisites. I assumed there would be some basic year-long art sequence required to sign up for any advanced course. That was not the case. There were no prequisites. But would it then be a meaningful coure? I was so leary of the class before I took it that I signed up as "pass/fail." 

When my art class finally met, in the printing studio of the old art building on campus, I felt like a pretender sitting beside the art majors around me.  Surely I would be exposed. 

The instructor was a youthful man of relaxed disposition.  I thad old him my story, hoping he would take pity on me as a non-artist interloping in an advanced studio course).  He had seemed amused at how jumpy I was to be in his course.

To be quite honest, I do not think I lack artistic talent and I have never thought that. In fact I'm pretty cocky and egotistical about my talents and believe I could have succeeded at almost anything I set my mind to do, starting early enough with the right instruction. I knew artistic talent had to be cultivated by training and good technique, refined into a personal style that connects with people's standards but also says something original and meaningful. I hadn't been doing any of that. I lacked the prerequisites---the real prerequisites, I thought. I assumed I look like a rank amateur in the class. I dreaded the embarrassment.

Of course I was completely wrong about everything. One of my first piece delighted the entire class and blew the professor away. It was a print I had made with cutting out pieces of paper and cardboard to create figures on an otherwise smooth metal plate.It was called Isaac Newton and the Moon. It was meant to represent Newton from the chest upwards looking forward. It was based on a historical lithograph or painting, I'm sure. Over his shoulder was the full moon.  I can't remember if I used oil or acrylic. The colors were blue, green, and white. The instructor had told us to be cautious with use of too many colors at first, and limiting to these three worked out well in this case.

My classmates, who were all of them art majors and had never any one of them taken a physics class, were impressed at how I had used a physics subject in a such a composition. My work was a curiosity for them, because of my background.

I really liked the print when I made it, and carried it with me after I went to graduate school, hanging it on my wall and showing it to people for four years until it and most of my other prints disappeared during a move at the end of the summer of 1992.  I felt like maybe it was for the best that it disappeared, so I could put away my interest in artistic things in favor of serious scientific work in graduate school that demanded my full concentration. 

I'm thinking about all this today because I am about to do my second podcast in a row about...anti-gravity! Outrageous!

Update: Broadcast went well. (link) For once no sound disasters but on the other hand, the lighting was the all -ime worst and I looked like an animated corpse.   You can't have everything.  No slides at all this week, so really just me talking on an audio podcast only. Experience researching the subject matter has left me a little  off-kilter, so to speak, freaked out a bit in a good way.