Nature Memorial: Water Triptych
Artist
Elizabeth Turk
(American, born 1961)
Date1998-2004
MediumVermont marble
Dimensions36 × 20 × 6 in. (91.4 × 50.8 × 15.2 cm)
ClassificationsSculpture
Credit LineGift of Jeannie Denholm
Object number2020.7.1a
Label TextNature Memorial is sculptor Elizabeth Turk’s homage in marble to engineering feats allowing us to expand the perimeters of our instinctive assumptions. Knowledge of the mechanics of nature change our sensory perceptions. Harold Edgerton (1903 –1990), a professor of electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, endeavored for two decades to capture a crisp color image of a drop of milk hitting a red surface. He succeeded in 1957, using a stroboscopic flash to render a moment undetectable to the human eye, visible. His experiments with bullets hitting an apple, hummingbirds in flight, and athletes in motion mark the beginning of the high-speed photography we are familiar with today. Edgerton chose milk because of its opacity and potential to look solid. Turk astutely responds with marble – a dense, opaque medium that she carves to appear like liquid. Her Nature Memorial is also a memorial to a watershed moment in the way we think about light and time. Edgerton was known as “the man who made time stand still,” whereas Turk’s marbles remind us that in our quantum world everything, including stone, is energy and remains in flux.Status
On viewLocation
- Keck Center for Science and Engineering (1 University Dr), Fowler School of Engineering, Floor 1
Collections
