2006-2012

[et_pb_section bb_built="1"][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type="4_4"][et_pb_text]As Above, So Below"My interest lies in discovering a visual language and image-worthy mapping process that explores humanity’s connection to the cosmos...."StatementTHE VASTNESS OF THE MILKY WAY GALAXY STRETCHING IN A CLOUDY ARC across the night sky is the embodiment of living in the West. In this place, one can look both outward and inward, and contemplate the reciprocal relationship between oneself and the universe. In my paintings, I map that distant terrain between cosmos and psyche, exploring what is both human and more than human, what is as knowable and intimate as our own skin and as unknowable and invisible to the unaided eye as our body’s interior or the outer edge of the solar system.I am particularly curious about the relationship between our own bodies and the body of the universe and what role the stars have played in our own biological development. The wax used in my work is an ancient painting medium. As a vehicle for pure pigments, its translucent yet dense materiality references our own flesh, yet dissolves into particles that vibrate and buzz, harkening back to the bees and echoing the constant flux of all matter. As David Darling states in his book Life Everywhere: The Maverick Science of Astrobiology:"In a sense, we’re all extraterrestrial. The particles in our bodies were once scattered across many light years, and we’re literally made of stardust. Every atom heavier than hydrogen of which we’re composed was forged in the deep interior of a star now long dead. That is perhaps the most awe-inspiring truth that science has ever revealed, as wonderful as anything ever dreamed up in fiction."Through study of the most current astronomical data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other satellite and spacecraft observations, alongside my research into the cosmologies of ancient cultures that reflect our earliest technologies, I invent my own imagined equivalents for the evolution of scientific theories about the nature of creation and our place in it. My interest lies in discovering a visual language and image-worthy mapping process that explores humanity’s connection to the cosmos, and is resonant with what we currently know.Mythologist Joseph Campbell’s passionate argument in the last book of his life, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, was that what our society most desperately needs is a new story of reality. For Campbell, myth is not what is often considered a quaint fiction in our post-modern worldview, but is rather the explanation of the highest order that people communally use to explain the larger reality and their place in it. For Campbell, myth does not just represent a reality people already know, but defines reality itself. Astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan believed that our best hope of preserving the fabric of life of which we are an integral part is to take the revelations of science to heart, to actually see ourselves as “starstuff pondering the stars.” By creating works that contemplate our relationship to our biological origin in the stars, I am attempting to generate images that overlay our primal mythologies with current scientific research in order to generate 21st century images that encompass our new level of understanding.—Sara Mast[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]