Schools

New Art at Stockton Mixes Science and Sunlight

Check out the new glass installations at Stockton's Unified Science Center.

Artist Ray King turns scientific phenomena into art at The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey’s new $39.5 million Unified Science Center, through two large-scale glass installations.

Using the sun and glass, Ray King created two masterpieces, the Stockton Wave and Sun Sails, which bring the science of optics to light in a public space. King, who splits his time between his Philadelphia studio and his Stockton, New Jersey farm, works with glass, metals and cable constructions, but light is the key element that infuses life into his art.

“I’m playing with the sun as a partner,” he said.

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To create the Stockton Wave, King suspended thousands of small glass squares from the lobby ceiling using thin wires. The glass pieces work together to catch the sunlight from all directions as the installation collectively “twists in space and flies back up to the ceiling,” explained King.

“It’s intended to animate the lobby when the sunlight comes in in the morning,” he added.

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King’s Sun Sails installation is a series of glass sails that are mounted to the outside of the building using a cable structure that mimics the techniques American architect and author Buckminster Fuller used to build his inventive structures. The cables King used were originally developed by the Roebling brothers to engineer the Brooklyn Bridge.                                    

When viewing King’s art, the physical laws of light become visible in the form of colorful reflections, but beyond what the eye can see are the scientific and historic connections to the South Jersey and Philadelphia region that his art celebrates.                                                 
“The Sun Sails uses diffraction of light: that is taking white light from the sun and via a very microscopic series of mico-grooves in an aluminized film, diffracts or splits the light into color,” said King.                                                                      

In the 1780s, American astronomer, mathematician and inventor David Rittenhouse, who would have been a contemporary of Richard Stockton, became the first to create a diffraction grading, which splits light into beams that travel in different directions. “[Stockton, the signer of the Declaration of Independence for whom the college is named, and Rittenhouse] may have crossed the same pathways in Philadelphia in that time when politics and science were active,” said King.

“I’m using the same phenomenon of diffraction—just using more technical materials and using it as an artistic form,” said King.

Glass is one of the primary materials King uses for both pieces, creating a strong connection to the Pinelands’ sandy soils. “New Jersey was the place where glass was first made in the colonies because of the predominance of sand to melt glass,” said King. 

In Philadelphia, King has a project installed as the gateway to the one-mile Avenue of the Arts, a centerpiece for the performing arts venues along Broad Street promoting the city as an arts mecca. Outside his Philadelphia studio is a 30-foot-high lens, called “Hello David,” which is a tribute to David Rittenhouse. This year, King has installed artwork internationally with a piece for The White House in Taipei, Taiwan. New projects are underway for the Metropolitan Transit Authority in NYC, the Washington Metro, Oregon State University and the Ministry of Culture in Taiwan. More of his work can be viewed on his website, www.rayking.nu.

King says he was born an artist, always making creations as a child, but he was rejected from art school. He moved on to study in England with Patrick Reyntiens and has since become an internationally acclaimed artist known for his scientific and mathematical visions. 

The artwork at Stockton was part of a mandate by New Jersey’s Public Buildings Arts Inclusion Act of 1978 that up to 1.5 percent of state-financed construction budgets be allocated for public art. The Stockton Wave and Sun Sails totaled $125,000 and $200,000 respectively, with a water molecule sculpture by artist Larry Kirkland of Washington, D.C. totaling $200,000.

The water molecule sculpture was a collaborative effort between Kirkland and faculty members within Stockton’s School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. A 5’9’’ bronze oxygen atom is fused to two hydrogen atoms resting atop a polished granite base etched with questions about Earth’s most abundant compound.

— News release from The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey


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