Universe
Baby Picture
– Planck #1
(2013). 24” x
36.” Archival
giclée print on
Hahnemühle
museum etching paper. Image courtesy of
the artist.
AT: When telling that story, you said that
physics wasn’t giving you the answers you were
looking for. What were you, or are you, looking
for?
JF: What are the questions, in other words.
I guess the questions are more metaphysical
ones. What does it mean to be alive? What is
our purpose? What can we express or share
about the fundamental questions of how we
live as human beings? To me those are humanist
questions, and the questions of the Grand
Unified Theory and the ultimate structure of
matter are fascinating ones, but I felt like I
personally didn’t want to spend my life working
exclusively on them.
AT: When you first became an artist, did you
imagine that you would end up painting about
science?
JF: No, I didn’t. I started out as an abstract
painter. At the start, it really felt like I had
to choose one path. Clearly science was only
viable if I were willing to devote myself to it
completely, and art seemed to be indifferent to
science, so there didn’t seem to be a possibility
of reconciling those two worlds—C.P. Snow’s
“Two Cultures” idea. I threw myself into art
with all my energies, but I think as an artist,
you have to make work that’s authentic to you
and comes from your way of seeing the world.
Clearly science shapes the way that I see the
SciArt in America December 2013
world, and that viewpoint is something that
I came to see as relatively unusual in the art
world. My engagement with these projects of
big science is a particular thing that I have to
offer, and it just came to be clear that was what
my work should be about.
My interests as a painter seemed to