Does the Dark Matter, Indeed?



Does the Dark Matter? October 2010
Kate Findlay
Size:130 cm square.
Materials: cotton, synthetics and silks.



Thank you HandEye magazine for your article on Kate Findlay and her art quilts inspired by the Hadron Particle Collider in Cern, Switzerland.  Please check out this article (click on "HandEye" above) for many more images of her work.  Kate is an art teacher who first saw pictures of the collider in 2008 and was inspired by the machine's patterns and colors.  The body of work that has resulted is so impressive that Symmetry Magazine, a physics magazine published by Fermilab, did an article about her as well.   

What I find so fascinating is how she talks about her process of quilting the images as leading her into a deeper investigation of physics, such as pondering string theory and dark matter.  As a weaver who gets caught up in such heady contemplation herself, I find this very validating.  I tend to wonder sometimes if maybe I am just playing around with these very deep concepts that are earnestly trying to explain our place in the universe; all my talk of string theory and light and dark and the sun, moon and stars is maybe just so much talk.  But after reading about how these concepts genuinely inspire another textile artist's work, I am tempted to say that we are on to something real here.  Just because theoretical physics has come into existence through equations on a blackboard doesn't mean that it is only the domain of scientists who work on those equations.  Those equations are just (well ok, not "just" - them some Equations!) the medium through which those scientists express their investigations.  As textile artists, quilting and weaving are the methods we choose to ply the same primal cord - where do we come from, where are we now, where are we going?  And, does the Dark Matter?