Fusion of Image and Verse

Flighty Helium, Arsenic the Poisoner, the Nickel Buffalo. Chattering Potassium. Dancing Manganese, the misbehaving Lanthanides, and unearthly Promethium. That is how poet John Martin Tarrat views the elements. For chemist-artist Langley Spurlock, the elements emerge as sculpture, engraving, collage, photography, pastel, watercolor, ink, and digital print. Unlike Dmitry Mendeleyev's periodic table, Spurlock and Tarrat's collaborative interpretation is not arranged by atomic number.

On Oct. 5, Spurlock and Tarrat will unveil their art and poetry representing 20 elements to the public in Washington, D.C. Eventually, they hope to complete works for all 118.

The artist and poet view their project as not just picture and caption, but integrated entities with a life and voice: "true science for the senses." One sculpture will sit on the floor; other pieces will hang from the walls. Bromine, which can be red, blue, or purple, ended up as three separate pieces. The collaborators describe the result of their work as a lens through which to view and understand the universe.

Their goal is to be inspiring and accessible. "The audience certainly is chemists," Spurlock says, "because I hear that a lot of chemists are like me in that they are specialists in the field and may not be aware of the broad range of elements." He hopes the exhibit will give them another chance to learn. The collaborators also want to draw the general, educated public and spark student interest.

"The funny thing about these people is that you start to explain this project to them, and they get it," Spurlock adds. "Not only do they get it, but they don't glaze over, and they start asking questions." He thinks that nontechnical viewers will feel more comfortable with this presentation of the elements because it goes beyond the scientific behavior to encompass the history of the element, origin of the name, and in some cases, mythology.

The names of the elements, for example, are derived in large part from ancient languages such as Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit. Or the names “celebrate earthly beings and heavenly bodies, smells, and colors-and some very, very odd behaviors," Tarrat says. At the show, each element will have its own "business card"-a colorful card with poetry on one side and a little more information about the element on the other.

Spurlock spent several years each as a researcher, professor, and federal administrator while doing art for shows in his spare time. Shortly after taking early retirement from the Chemical Manufacturers Association (now the American Chemistry Council), he wanted to delve into art based on science.

"The elements were kind of a natural focal point because there are lots of them, and frankly, as an organic chemist, I knew about seven of them: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, bromine, and chlorine," he says. "The rest was kind of an interesting part of the past when I took general chemistry."

Around the same time that the idea came to fruition, Spurlock became reacquainted by chance with British-born Tarrat at a party. They had met for the first time in the 1980s. Tarrat, too, had taken early retirement, in his case from TimeLife, to pursue a nonfiction book. As an advertising copywriter, he found "success is getting your attention and holding it with, say, a dozen words." At first, Tarrat hesitated over Spurlock's invitation to create haiku for each element. "Chemistry was always something I avoided almost as much as physics, but I was so flattered by the invitation."

Although the duo realized a creative rapport early in the process, they stumbled against creative roadblocks and each other once in a while. Humor turned out to be a wonderful aid.

The first element they tackled was promethium because its origins and history easily adapted to storytelling. Ironically, Tarrat notes, the elements they thought would be easy to do are not done yet. So which comes first: the words or the pictures? How do they decide what media to use? Spurlock says they decided there was “no reason why we have to be consistent.”

After systematically brainstorming themes for each element, including reading information in C&EN's 80th anniversary issue on the periodic table (Sept. 8, 2003), they decided to let inspiration lead the way to the final project. Spurlock notes that he has had to learn how to incorporate the lettering into designs and to collaborate with other artists in media he was not familiar with. "I get some of these professionals to execute what I design, and then I do the finish," he says.

Secrets Of The Elements

Oct. 5-30 at the Studio Gallery, 2108 R St., N.W., Washington DC 20008, www.studiogallerydc.com

The American Chemical Society will host a reception for the show to benefit Project SEED, a program for disadvantaged high school students to pursue careers in the chemical sciences..

In terms of his style, Tarrat writes both on paper and on computers. "Sometimes poems take 15 months, and sometimes they take 15 minutes," he says. But Tarrat tends to be mistrustful of the poems that take only minutes because there is so much information to consider. Then again, he adds, excessive research can be a pitfall.

Accompanying the first show is a project-within-a-project called the Known Universe Signs. Spurlock and Tarrat asked 118 friends, acquaintances, and total strangers-most were neither scientists nor artists-to use black ink to spontaneously represent each element on a five-by-four-inch piece of mulberry paper. The pieces were mounted on a board, coated with beeswax, and arranged in a Mendeleyev-style periodic table. Spurlock and Tarrat originally thought the finished piece would be a good "table of contents" for the show, but were instead delighted with the way it reflects the diversity of the elements.