Celebration of the Great Red Spot (GRS 79)

videotape installation. Collaborative image processing revealed similar aesthetic senses and unity in our ideas about sources and themes. For example , we both exploit organic forms, irregular shapes and negative space to suggest human and animal forms in multilateral environments. T r i l o g y mixes our individual artworks in layered compositions of positive and negative shapes, utilizing bird, human and organic forms that interact and evolve into new relationships over time. Our first session in collaborative seeing provided the catalyst for reflecting more thoroughly on themes and sources in our individual work. It also generated many new opportunities for individual and collaborative expression in traditional media and contemporary imaging technologies (See Color Plate ANo.2). References and Notes 1. Edmond 0.Wilson. Eiophilia (Cambridge, MA. Harvard Univ. Press, 1984) p. 51. The term biophilia is defined by Wilson (p. 1) as the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes. 2. Mary Ross and Yvonne Robare Hobbs, “Presenting Sculpture on Video,” Maguetfe(May/June 1995). Bibliography Bates, Marston. TheForPst and the Sea: A Look at the Economy o f Nature and fheEcoIo[og): ofMan (NewYork: Random House, 1960). Fire,John/Lame Deer, and Erdoes, Richard. Lome Deer: Seeker of Visions (NewYork: Simon and Schuster, 1972). Rand, Ayn. rlflasShrugged (New York Signet Books, 1963). Manuscript received 7 December 1995. CELElBRATION OF THE GREAT RE0 SPOT (GRS 79) David Fricks, P.O. Box 812, Los Alamos, NM 87544, U.S.A. Acceptedfor publication by Rogerl? Malina. I first became interested in painting Jupiter after the two Pioneer flybys in the early 1970s.It is necessary for me to have a physical understanding of things in order to represent them-especially very abstract otherworldly processes. UnderstandingJupiter’s upwelling, counter-rotating, high-speed, multibanded atmosphere was a challenge . The planet almost seemed alive to me, with its white-and-brown organelles (the smaller organically tinted storms inJupiter’s different bands) and the huge nucleus of the Red Spot. During the year 1982,when I was working on the large multipanel painting Study ofJovian TurbulenceCJPT79),I decided to start another large painting ofJupiter focusing closer to the cloud tops. I was entranced by the huge, malevolentlooking Great Red Spot. I wanted the painting to depict a view unlike any of the video photos taken by Voyager One or Voyager Two. I decided that the Great Red Spot would be the central feature of this new work, but that the Terminator would cut across the painting , so that it would be night on the left side, with little bursts of lightning at the upwelling cloud chasms where the bands meet. Celebrationo f the Great Red Spot (GRS79) (Color Plate A No. 3) is the result. The Great Red Spot has been noted since Galileo. Below the Great Red Spot is a smaller feature, the size of the Earth, a white storm that has been seen for nearly a hundred years from telescopes . One of the hardest parts of creating this work was making the clouds appear more two-dimensional than they often do, since the depth of theJovian atmosphere is only 150miles or so, and the diameter ofJupiter is 88,000 miles, headed, freckled nude across the bottom of the painting, partially cut off by the edge of the canvas as if she were sleeping in front of an observational window in a craft orbitingJupiter. I painted her out for a totally purist abstract /realist portrait of the Great Red I originally had a sleeping, redspot . Manuscript received 7 December 1995. 158 Artists’ Statemelits ...