[photo credit: Mount Wilson Institute]
The centerpiece Terra Cosmica, a 43-minute film by Rebeca Méndez and Stephen Nowlin with music by Drew Schnurr is projected onto a 300-inch circular screen wrapped around the historic telescope.
The work extends Méndez’s global walking project, weaving sound and imagery to invite viewers to experience landscapes as both grounded place and infinite space.
Méndez, a UCLA Design Media Arts professor, received the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in 2012 and the AIGA Medal in 2017.
Nowlin operates Chapel Studio in Altadena, exploring astronomy through art, while Schnurr, a University of North Texas professor, has exhibited internationally.
Complementing the film are James Griffith’s “Small Paintings of Infinity,” tar-based celestial landscapes using raw tar from the La Brea Tar Pits.
Griffith uses tar instead of paint to draw viewers into a sepia-colored world suggestive of the primordial origins of life.
After meeting the artists, attendees will observe through the 100-inch telescope itself the instrument that saw first light on November 2 and remained the world’s largest until 1949.
Tickets are $200, limited to 40 people.
Note: The 53-step staircase is the only access there is no ADA-compliant entry.
Cosmic Art Night: Terra Cosmica will run on Sunday, October 12, at 7 p.m. Mount Wilson Observatory, 100 Mt. Wilson Circle Rd., Mount Wilson. For more call (626) 214-8030 or visit https://www.mtwilson.edu/events/cosmic-art-night-terracosmica/. Tickets: $200.
