Thelma Smith
Green Valley, AZ

Resume - Newly Update!
Email: thelmasmith@hotmail.com
www.thelmasmith.com

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Changing the World One Thread at a Time

A Curated Exhibition
February 17-March 26, 2006

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Mandala #8
Solar Flare
87” wide X 41” high

Hand dyed cotton twill. Machine pieced. Backed with hand
dyed cotton muslin. Batted with 80% cotton. Machine quilted
with cotton, rayon, polyester, and metallic threads. Hand beaded

(detail)

The Smithsonian’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory at Mount Hopkins is the site of an array of mirrors. These capture the minute bursts of light from the gamma rays that solar flares bombard the universe and earth with. No radiation reaches earth, it is destroyed giving us these brief glimpses. A newer research facility is being built in a dark canyon where the sun never reaches, astronomers want more than a brief glimpse to continue their study.

Solar Flare is a glimpse of the power that runs the universe. It impinges on our daily lives even when we don’t notice.

Mandala #9
Deep Space
36” high X 88” wide

 Hand Dyed Cotton Muslin, machine pieced and backed
with commercial cotton. Batted with 80% Cotton. Machine
quilted with cotton, rayon, polyester, and metallic threads


(detail)

During the rededication of the 6.5 meter mirror at the Whipple Observatory, Irwin Shapiro, Director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, used the words gravity and repel in the same sentence. My mind leapt to the analogy of the poles of a magnet. When asked, Dennis O’Connor, Smithsonian Under Secretary for Science, likened the expansion of the universe to a balloon that, as it inflates, gathers the impetus to continue to self inflate.


Then, a Tom Robbins quote, “ . . . by the increasing evidence that the interplay of opposites is the engine that runs the universe, . . .”


Instinct and intuition knew more than I. Deep Space went on the wall.

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