Wilkinson College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences is excited to announce that Art Professor Lia Halloran has been awarded a NEA Art Works Grant for her project, “Your Body Is a Space That Sees.”

The project is based on the research and creation of a body of artwork and a female-centric astronomical catalog that traces major discoveries of women in astronomy since antiquity. The 40-work collection will use the experimental photo-painting process of Cliché Verre to mimic early astronomical glass plates, reinterpreting innovations of Hypatia of Alexandria, a group of women known as the ‘Harvard Computers,’ and others. Source imagery will include Harvard College Observatory’s extensive glass plate collection of astronomical images. This project will culminate with public lectures and a publication pairing artwork drawn from historical narratives with accompanying written pieces from contemporary female authors in literature, poetry and physics in order to offer an interdisciplinary re-visualization of the sky to the art and science community. Public programming will include exhibitions at the Chapman Guggenheim Gallery and Cahill Center at Caltech.

You will be able to see “Your Body Is a Space That Sees” in January 2016 in the Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman University.

Congrats, Professor Halloran and all those involved!

Contributors include Claudine Jaenichen, Chair of the Art Dept. and Dr. Anna Leahy, Director of OURCA (Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity).

Project process imagery (tons more info)