Secrets of the Elements
What happens when a chemist becomes an artist, and meets an advertising copywriter become a poet? A unique fusion of art and haiku—in which artist Langley Spurlock and poet John Martin Tarrat tell a story as old as Hydrogen and as new as Nihonium and Tennesine. Using a wide range of forms and materials they capture the essence of entities as quirky as children. Sometimes playful, sometimes not,
they bring out the good, the bad and the inconceivably nasty. The result is alchemy—a five-part, 15-year collaboration that, when complete, will cover all 118 elements of the periodic table and reveal the building blocks of the universe in all their eccentric variety.
Promethium 61
Digital Photo Collage
13 x 13 inches
Unearthly metal
blue-green nightlight of heaven
Promethium steals
restores to Andromeda
his liver eagle-peckled
2005 Secrets of the Elements
When Elements 1 opened at Washington DC’s Studio Gallery in 2005, Nitrogen laughed and Manganese danced. Potassium chattered. Helium got flighty. Promethium, nightlight of the galaxy, went extraterrestrial. And all 15 Lanthanides behaved very badly. More than 20 artworks included painting, engraving, collage, assemblage, photography, digital print and encaustic sculpture. The American Chemical Society gave a big thumbs-up. Visitors and friends, not sure what to expect, left smiling.
The Lanthanides 57-71
Archival Pigment Print
13 x 19 inches
Unrare earths conceal
their true colors look alike
Lanthanides excite
easily and misbehave
übermagnetically
Magnesium 12
Archival Pigment Print, Gouache and Beeswax
24 x 31 inches
Harvester of light
Magnesium flares at the
heart of chlorophyll
Uranium 92
Archival Pigment Print
13 x 19 inches
Uranium rush
from core vecting continents
on tectonic plates
Beryllium 4
Watercolor and Pencil
26 x 20 inches
Sweeter than steel the
toxic lightness of being
is Beryllium
Manganese 25 (detail)
Archival Pigment Print Triptych
12 x 48 inches
In the night of a
million years Manganese
shadow dances in
the lightless deep transforming
great whites into darkest pearls
Nickel 28
Archival Pigment Print Mounted on Wood
8 x 12 inches
Shiny Nickel slick
and new five buffalo cents
extinction’s loose change
Helium 2
Archival Pigment Print, Wood and Metal Sculpture
70 x 19 x 14 inches
Flighty Helium
happy as a pair of clams
alone together