LAB³

press release: September 8 through September 29, 2018

Opening: Saturday, September 8 from 6-9pm

Gallery Hours: Wednesday-Saturday 11am-3pm or by appointment

Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) will kick off the school year with a September exhibition featuring artworks inspired by scientific research done at the UW–Madison Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) and the Department of Physics at UW–Madison. The LAB³ project paired UW-Madison physicists and Madison-based artists and writers with 24 high school students from Madison East, Madison West, Middleton, Waunakee, Janesville, Wauwatosa, and Lake Mills high schools. Over the summer, six teams (each composed of one scientist, one visual/performing artist, one writer, and three-four high schoolers) explored current scientific research ranging from neutrinos to dark matter to cosmic rays. In response to these scientific topics, the teams have produced original visual, literary, and performance-based art (including two-dimensional art, installation, video art, sculpture, and poetry) which will be on display at ALL from September 8 through September 29, 2018. An opening reception will be held on Saturday, September 8 from 6-9pm. The exhibition and reception are FREE and open to the public.

LAB³ connects high school students with mentors in the sciences and arts, fosters multidisciplinary creativity, and promotes conversations among scientists, writers, artists, and students in order to connect scientific discoveries with artistic experimentation. LAB3 is a collaboration between Arts + Literature Laboratory (ALL) and the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC), with support from the American Physical Society (APS) and Dane Arts with additional funds from the Endres Mfg. Company Foundation, The Evjue Foundation, Inc., charitable arm of The Capital Times, the W. Jerome Frautschi Foundation, and the Pleasant T. Rowland Foundation.

Physicists include: Kim Paladino, Juan Carlos Diaz-Velez, Thomas Meures, John Kelley, Chris Wendt and Victor Brar. Visual/Performing artists include Rhea Ewing, Trevin Gay, Katherine Rosing, Hannah O'Hare Bennett, Matt Ambrosio and Leslie Iwai. Writers include Angie Vasquez, Ali Muldrow, Jenie Gao, Guy Thorvaldsen, Christine Holm and Katrin Talbot.

Saturday, September 22, 7 PM : Lab3 Reading: Poets, Quarks, and Dark Matter: LAB3 is a collaboration between Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center (WIPAC) and ALL to bring together artists, scientists and high school students in collaborative teams. The goal the promotion of conversations among scientists, writers, artists, and students, which will connect scientific thinking and discoveries with artistic research and experimentation. Three poets share work inspired by this project and share their experiences working with scientists and students to create a collaborative project. Visual work created by the teams will also be on display in the galleries during the reading.

About our readers:

Australian-born Katrin Talbot’s collection The Little Red Poem was recently released from dancing girl press. She has three other chapbooks, including noun’d, verb, from dancing girl press, Freeze-Dried Love from   Finishing Line Press, and St. Cecilia’s Daze, published by Parallel Press. She has recently been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes in Poetry and once received enough prize money from a national poetry contest to fund a Dairy Queen run.

Guy's poetry has appeared in Alembic, Alligator Juniper, Forge, Gulfstream, Zone 3, Poet Lore, and Verse Wisconsin. His first book of poetry, Going to Miss Myself When I’m Gone, comes out in October 2017 from Aldrich Press. Guy teaches writing at Madison College in Madison, Wisconsin, and is also a journeyman carpenter, husband, father, and contributing poet/essayist for public radio.

Angie Trudell Vasquez received her MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts in May 2017. In 2016, she was a poetry panelist at Split This Rock! Her poems have been published most recently in the Yellow Medicine Review, the San Diego Poetry Annual 2015-2016, Subtle Forces, and Return to the Gathering Place of the Waters. She has work forthcoming in the Raven Chronicles and Cloudthroat. She was nominated for a Pushcart in 2014 for her essay, "The Making of the Latina Monologues." Since 2005 she has worked for the ACLU of Wisconsin and developed their youth poetry program. Her work has been performed on stage in Portland, Oregon, and Wisconsin. Her op eds have reached millions. She has her own press, Art Night Books, and has self-published two collections of her own work, The Force Your Face Carries and Love in War Time. Art Night Books will resume publishing other’s work now that she is done with graduate school. 

$5 suggested donation but everyone welcome regardless of ability to pay