In the early 1980s in Boston, the Museum of Science approached Austine Wood Comarow, an artist resident in Southern California, to create an original work of art. It was to be placed in an wing with the planetarium as well as exhibits that focused on the science behind light. The museum was looking for something large and stunning and Comarow seemed to be a perfect fit. In the late 1960s, until her death in the year 2020, Comarow created what she called “Polage art,” vibrant installations that elicit the metallic, rich colors of white light that shines through everyday materials such as cellophane and certain kinds made of transparent tape.
The artist Austine Wood Comarow created Human Connections for the Museum of Science, Boston. Thirty-eight hexagonal boxes of light, each with a 5 foot width are designed to reveal the story of communication between humans, beginning at the time of cave paintings. The kaleidoscopes in the sculpture only come to life when viewed through polarized lens which are hung in an array on the front of the piece. Image source: Austine Wood Comarow (artist).
OPEN IN VIEWER Comarow’s kaleidoscopes are part of the sculpture, known as Human Connections The light boxes only come to life when seen through the lens of a polarized. The exhibit, which is present after over 30 years, comprises a sprawling array of hexagonal lights each one measuring 5 feet wide with a variety of polarized round lenses hanging in front of. The lenses show images that are hidden within the artwork. The space also has moving polarizers through which viewers can view the whole image’s transformation in form in shape and color.Decades after Comarow began to create her distinctive backlit artwork engineers utilized the effect to create the LCDs we see nowadays in televisions with bright colors or computer displays. Structure biologists utilize it in their polarized light microscopy research to examine the inner structure of the materials. In recent years, it’s enticed engineers, physicists and scientists working with crystals to pursue artistic endeavors. The vibrant possibilities appeal to people with artistic talents and those with basic experience in optics and fascinate people who love both.
Sign up to receive PNAS alerts.
Receive alerts about new articles or receive a warning whenever an article is referenced.
MANAGE ALERTS: ALERTSThe artist Vance Williams created this piece inspired by how isoniazid works, an antibiotic used to treat tuberculosis. Williams mother had been diagnosed with tuberculosis during her early years and benefited from isoniazid treatment in the 1950s. Image source: Vance Williams (artist).
Special Effects
Scientists refer to it as “birefringence.” Light passing through birefringent material travels at different speeds. Polarizing filters, which restrict the amount of light that passes through specific spatial planes, make it possible to create dazzling colors that exhibit birefringence. The phenomenon was first described in a treatise published in 1669 about crystals by Danish mathematician Erasmus Bartholin. He observed that images seen through a crystal made of Iceland spar, also known as calcium carbonate, would double. The author also observed that turning the crystal around an axis causes one image to rotate around the other, laying the foundation to suggest the light’s angle is a crucial part of the resulting visuals.
In the years since the discovery of Bartholin, researchers have realized that birefringence is a characteristic of substances with anisotropic structure, meaning that their molecules don’t well-organized in symmetric patterns across the crystal. They’ve also discovered methods to make crystals of compounds, like citric acid and caffeine, which have this property and have observed birefringence within a wide variety of types of crystals of ice. Birefringent effects have been observed within the corneas of the eyes. Additionally, specific living cells show birefringence right before dividing ( 1 ). Birefringence is also present in a variety of minerals, too geologists have been using it to study tiny slices of minerals to better understand their molecular composition.
Painting with Light
Comarow discovered the method to achieve birefringence using science, but she did not do it directly. The artist played with a new way of conveying light and color in her first paintings, which went far beyond palettes and paints. “This was the 1960s; you wanted to find something different,” says David Comarow, a retired patent lawyer and Austine’s widower. “She was working with all these materials, wanted to see what she could do with them.”
A few days ago, her previous husband, an astronomer, crushed up a piece of cellophane and slid it into films that polarized and displayed the kaleidoscopic glow. She was fascinated. The phenomenon was well-known to astronomers who use filters made from similar materials to study the narrow wavelength ranges of light from space. Comarow was inspired to apply the technique to light-based artistic works. More recently, using materials to produce vibrant colors has caught the eye of scientist Aaron Slepkov at Trent University, Peterborough, Canada, who utilizes the polarized microscopy technique. At the start of the COVID-19 epidemic, Slepkov, a long-time admirer of the work of Comarow, began to define the guidelines that determine the exact way that colors are created from polarized light that flows through the materials such as film and cellophane.”I’ve been a fan of art all my existence,” Slepkov says, “but I don’t have talent.” However, Slepkov is a master at captivating viewers.