Black Hole by Nathaniel Russell

Untitled (stratified) by Maria Gamboa

Benders (installation view)

Steel Wire 2 by Calvin Ross Carl

I Have A Lot Of Faith In This Model by Lee Piechocki

I Have A Lot Of Faith In This Model(installation detail) by Lee Piechocki

Corporeal Dive Bell (6500BC/2342AD fstLp)
Cybernetic Medusan Extender with Spitfire trumdrone Emitter (1999AD/1432AD fstLp)
Quadragularis Reversum ParallAX (17,340CE sndLp)
by Future Rapper demonstrated by Rodrigo Valenzuela

Corporeal Dive Bell and Cybernetic Medusan Extender with Spitfire trumdrone Emitter (detail)
by Future Rapper

manifestation by Molly Epstein

Objects (monograph) by Solomon Branch Bent
All photos by Zack Bent
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Benders – an essay by Gala Bent

“Everything that falls upon the eye is apparition, a sheet dropped over the world’s true workings. The nerves and the brain are tricked, and one is left with dreams that these specters loose their hands from ours and walk away, the curve of the back and the swing of the coat so familiar as to imply that they should be permanent fixtures of the world, when in fact nothing is more perishable.”

– Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Aang: “I’m… AA- AA- AA- AAAHHH-CHOO!!!!!” (Aang flies upwards and slides down the iceberg on landing) I’m Aang.
Sokka (shocked): “You just sneezed, and flew ten feet in the air…”
Aang: “Really? It felt higher than that.”
Katara: “You’re an Airbender!”

– From Avatar: The Last Airbender (Book One: Water)

I will not claim to have wrapped my mind around the thought model of Schrödinger’s cat, but I do remember sitting in a Greek breakfast diner in Buffalo, New York–all white and blue and chrome, greasy hash browns with crumbled feta, fresh-squeezed orange juice–and having a friend explain it to me for the first time.* Suffice it to say only that it blew my Newtonian-physics-programmed mind, and introduced to me the concept of parallel universes, and to some of the contradictions quantum physicists face. I left the diner under the spell of new knowledge, and walked for days with every action and choice seeming to leave behind it an onionskin peel of varying outcomes, branching into infinite origami spirals. The exquisite pleasure I get from having the rug pulled out from under my concept of reality is alarming. It must be, in some sense, a relief, a revelation that helps explain the madness of the humdrum–the hope that whatever we have nailed down as proper mundanity is underscored and penetrated by another world of possibilities.

Erwin Schrödinger himself declared, “There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks,” cautioning against “so naively accepting as valid a ‘blurred model’ for representing reality.” Well, then. It is clear that I am not a hard scientist. Science-wise, I cannot tell the difference between a blurry photo and a photo of fog, and it is probably telling that I am as romanced by the word picture as by the quantum predicament. I am making drawings of a dead cat in a box, and the hairs of that cat are reconvening on the outside of the box as a ghost cat, more perfectly formed, as if the wind has become cat-shaped, sighing out an endless sigh of bereavement. Those hairs are peeling off in a radial curl–each one–and extending in innumerable waves toward the skin of a black hole, which records them and plays them back. An astronaut hears a distinct purr in his headset. What do I know? Only that I am fascinated from my armchair by the arguments about the structure behind all that we know. It grows ever more mysterious, and our perceptions bend in order to make sense of new information.

A while ago, Zack and I were catching Nova’s “The Fabric of the Cosmos” on PBS (ol’ Schrödinger’s cat plays a part), while our kids were obsessed with “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” an animated series within which some characters have an ability to control certain elements (fire, water, earth, air), somehow able to work outside of the usual limits of physics. Both shows popularize the Big Ideas with which physicists grapple–Nova by leading adults through step-by-step illustrations, and Avatar by creating a compelling mythology that appeals as much to our imaginations as our pragmatic intellects. And that brings us to this exhibition. We gathered these pieces together for a variety of reasons that all hinge on the perception of space-time, and our tragicomic relationship to the physical matter of the universe. Some pieces are mathematical, while other pieces take a mythological turn. Some giggle at the edge of the abyss, and others glance sidelong at it. Some are busy calculating its redundancies and others are celebrating its flourishes.

Gala Bent

*From what I understand, it’s an illustration designed to explain the problematic implications that new discoveries in quantum physics were presenting–that of sub-atomic particles behaving contrary to “classical” physics. They behave at one moment like particles, and another like waves, changing qualities according to their measurement. Or, in a sense, they seem to respond to the observation itself. This makes it seem as if a physical system might exist in all its theoretically possible states simultaneously. Schrödinger was unsatisfied by the suggestion, and set up an illustration to show its absurdity: “One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.”

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NEPO Little Treats show: January 7 – 28, 2012

Sharon Horvath: Afterlife, 2002-09, pigment, polymer and collage on canvas, 68 by 76 inches; at Lori Bookstein.

…[T]he artist deals differently with space in the scale-shifting Nightbed(70 by 76 inches), 2002-09. Irregular, undulating, finely wrought black lines enmesh regions of grassy green and fleshy pink, and are anchored by white-spangled blocks of blue-black. The homey cradle of the title can also be read as an elevated view of a baseball stadium during a night game. The frame of reference leaps from intimate to public, domestic to civic, bassinet to coliseum. (Art in America)

Artist’s website here.

Nightbed

Encroachment (of the Gray Rabbit) Matthew Dennison

We’re having a very unusual snow storm in Seattle… Many days, lots of it, lots of missed school. I walked across the street to my neighbor’s house last night and had the exquisite pleasure of stepping through crackling ice covering the softer snow underneath. A crème brûlée effect. For those of you in more wintery locations, this is nothing, but it’s been so long!

This image has been in the back of my mind often when I am drawing architectural spin-offs. It’s strange to look back at it and see how deeply in got under my skin. I always loved how profoundly non-functional it was– but how beautiful– these geometric abstract-ideal intrusions into a living space. A rich article on Schwitters’ life-long project of Merzbau here.

And I also want to share this interview with friend and fellow mother-artist Counsel Langley, Painting Like Freddie Mercury Sang.

(Lee Piechocki)

Zack and I had the privilege of curating a show for NEPO House, based around our family’s shared fascination with the bending of time and space and matter (yes!). The press release follows…

Benders

an exhibition curated by Zack and Gala Bent

Calvin Ross Carl 
Lee Piechocki
Maria Gamboa
Molly Epstein
Nathaniel Russell

January 7- 21, 2011

Opening: Saturday January 7th, 6-9pm

Benders was triggered while Gala and Zack observed their sons obsessively entrenched in the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender– an epic story within which characters have an ability to manipulate earth elements (fire, water, earth, air). One evening, after watching a Nova segment on The Fabric of the Cosmos, it registered that their own interests and those of their sons struck an uncanny parallel between mind-bending scientific revelations and fictitious beings harnessing natural phenomena. In this spirit, Benders brings together works that toy with the perception of space or the limits of matter. The exhibit includes works by local and national artists: Calvin Ross Carl (Portland), Lee Piechocki (Kansas City), Maria Gamboa (Seattle), Molly Epstein (Seattle), Nathaniel Russell (Oakland/Indianapolis). The exhibit will also include artifacts from the Bent household, an essay by Gala Bent and homemade pretzels made by Zack Bent and guests.

You are cordially invited to join Zack Bent in an exercise of chemistry and bending, making handmade lye dipped pretzels at 4pm as a prelude to the opening.

Happy New Year!

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Snow is rare here in the coastal Pacific Northwest. It is, perhaps, the thing I miss most about the Midwestern landscape within which I lived most of my life. I’ll daydream through these documents today, as I wait for the turning of the new year. But I will also enjoy the windy sea air that sweeps up from the Sound, and the green that stays vibrant in the soggy ground.

LIKE SNOW

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly,
leaving nothing out.

– Wendell Berry, Leavings

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(Photographs by Wilson Bentley)

(Laura Gurton)

Well, we just passed the official shortest day of the year, and so I am in mind of planetary patterns. The video below is a lovely and haunting meditation for me on the day-to-day rhythms that are presided over by the sun, moon, water, breath, even the patterns you make inside your relationships. It was made by Seattle animator/artist Britta Johnson:

(Click the “full size” icon for best viewing)

(images: Anish Kapoor)

This mountain that we hide inside
is dark with knowledge of itself.

I’ve scaled its sides
picking through ferns and soft moss
and taking in the ornaments of its anthesis

With my eyes, and my fingers.
But still the mass of it is out of my reach
so I take it in my mouth

And press my cheek to the soft ground,
sniff at its corners and edges
until I remember the secret of its penetralia,

Which is this: my center is its center
and both are unknowable and familiar.
As close as a hand is to an arm.