Continuing through January 5, 2014
A number of artists try to bridge the gap between art and science – recently, there was a whole show on the subject at the Williamson Gallery at Art Center. However, few have done it with the flair and imagination of Boston-based Nathalie Miebach. Over the years she has been collecting data and folk histories from storms and shipwrecks in the Gulf of Maine, and this forms the basis of “Nathalie Miebach: Changing Waters.” The products of her thinking are sculptures that look like wildly colorful carousels and roller coasters, some sitting on pedestals and some spreading riotously across the wall. The wall sculpture “Changing Waters” (2011) spans nearly 20 feet.
Miebach starts with a basic basket weaving system, producing a base and then using markers (colors, beads, pieces of paper, small signs) on spiraling reed and plastic tubing to record the data she’s decided to work with. Once in awhile, she’ll include a visual facsimile – such as Boston Harbor's tall ships in silhouette in the large work that sits in the middle of the gallery, “To Hear an Ocean in a Whisper” (2013). “The Andrea Gail” (2012) fancifully records the infamous “The Perfect Storm” of 1991. (Yes, it was later a movie, based on the book of the same title.) The assemblage pays homage to the Andrea Gail, the fishing boat which sunk during that storm, and displays the disastrous confluence of meteorological forces. They come together in swirling spirals, with small signs attached to each – one marks, for example, when the vessel sunk. While her codes may be hard to de-code, we glean the force, chaos and furious beauty of the storm from her sculpture. Perhaps that’s all we really need.
