What’s it going to feel like for you to experience this piece of science?
That’s this moment of science I really love, because people were like, “Wow, look how the world works. Check it out.”
You have to sort of put it together yourself. And my job is to make it so apparent that you’ll put it together pretty much the right way, though you may draw different conclusions. But you won’t walk away going, “What was that about?”
Calendar of Rain is the ongoing visual record of precipitation at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. A funnel outside the building collects water in a bottle labeled with the date. Every 24 hours the bottle is capped and a new bottle is placed under the funnel. The collection of these bottles, as seen in CHF’s Hach Gallery, creates a bar graph of precipitation for the year.
Stacy Levy is a sculptor whose work translates and visualizes the often unseen processes and patterns of the natural world through science and art. Levy’s site-specific work is often done in partnership with scientists, engineers, and architects. In an interview with CHF staff Levy spoke about Calendar of Rain, the ways observing common items around us can help elucidate important facts about our environment, and how we might better understand the concept of urban nature. Watch the clips above to hear about and see the ways in which Levy tells ecological stories through her work.
More information about Stacy Levy, who is based in rural Pennsylvania, can be found at stacylevy.com.
Watch the four videos above: Stacy Levy discusses why art should “work”; what stories nature has to offer and how we might see those stories; how Calendar of Rain and other works of art can be forms of experimentation that explain daily phenomena; and how Levy is inspired to continue diagramming simplified science. Use the arrows to navigate through the video and images.