Mark Peiser, Sanctuary (from the "Palomar Project"), 2009. Cast opal glass, stell, chrome. H 16 3/4, W 10 1/4 in.
In a bold new body of work, North Carolina-based Mark Peiser honors the technological breakthroughs of Corning engineers who created the largest cast-glass object ever made in the 1930s. His new sculpture Sanctuary (2009) is also a meditation on the literal and figurative concepts of negative space and the quest for knowledge.
The awe-inspiring story of George Ellery Hale’s decades-long quest to create a 200-inch mirror to look farther into the universe than ever before is a parable about the hunger for knowledge realized through American engineering and ambition. The Hale Telescope, which unlocked many mysteries of the universe when it went into operation at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) in Pasadena, California, in 1948, continues to operate.
The task of producing the giant mirror blank—then the largest single piece of glass ever made—was entrusted to Dr. George V. McCauley, a physicist in Corning’s research laboratory.
“By allowing for the development of astrophysical theories of outer space, the mirror itself would give structure and form to the unknown void—it would transform the negative into positive space,” says Peiser. “At the time, many worried that this transformation would reveal too much, that seeing closer to the origin of time would devalue the human experience, taking mystery away from the cosmos.”
Mark Peiser, Sanctuary (from the "Palomar Project"), 2009. Cast opal glass, stell, chrome. H 16 3/4, W 10 1/4 in.
But the result is often the opposite; new knowledge opens new questions. For Peiser, the known world is represented by solid space, while the unknown is empty.
“The negative space—the void—is the place of our dreams, our imagination, and adventures,” he says. “And it is the union of both which adds beauty, awe and mystery to all things.”
—Andrew Page