Large Hadron Collider
#24 (2009).
36” x 84”.
Pencil and
acrylic on
mylar. Image
courtesy of
the artist.
way so that the pigment and the binder separate
and create unstable patterns. And all those
formal or technical means show up in the two
series I’m working on now, one being the Large
Hadron Collider and the other being the images
of the universe from the Planck Satellite.
AT: Could you talk a little bit about how you
made your "Large Hadron Collider" paintings?
JF: In the "Large Hadron Collider" series, I’m
using transparent mylar as the surface support.
I’m making a pretty realistic architectural
rendering of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
on the front of the mylar. On the back of the
SciArt in America December 2013
mylar, to show through, I’m making a very
spontaneous action painting that represents the
events the collider is allowing us to see in a very
schematic or conceptual way—clearly there
isn’t an obvious representation of the Higgs
boson or anything else that’s built into these
depictions; what they’re showing is just the
pure force of the collisions.
AT: Did you actually throw the paint?
JF: Yeah, I do pretty much throw the paint.
Typically the process is first I’ll make the
drawing, and then I’ll paint a little bit of the
structure, and then I’ll turn it over to the back
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