“The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore.” So says Douglas Adams as he introduces, in a sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the concept of the Total Perspective Vortex: a machine that accurately conveys one’s relative scale and importance within the infinity of the universe and thus drives just about anyone instantly insane.
The newly formed Mad 802 Arts Collective is offering visitors something similar, minus the mental anguish, with “Stardust,” an exhibition at Mad River Valley Arts in Waitsfield, on view through October. The show’s works are distinct but largely created in collaboration by collective founders John Anderson, Julie Parker and Sam Talbot-Kelly (who is also Mad River Valley Arts’ executive director), along with Larry Guild and Parker’s husband and son, Bill and Ray Parker, respectively.
The project arose from conversations Talbot-Kelly had with Anderson and Julie Parker over the course of about a year, beginning with the question: “Where are we going?” “We decided, let’s interpret that on three different scales: cosmic, human and quantum,” Talbot-Kelly said.
Warren architect Anderson, 82, takes on the cosmic, mapping the universe through 11 charts in “The Big Breath” and in the wall drawing “The Wave.” It’s hard to know where to start with a show that addresses life, the universe and everything, and the artists have cleverly chosen as an entry point the idea of breath: expansion and contraction, repeated through all of time and space.
“The Big Breath” is a series of 24-by-24-inch watercolor and colored pencil charts that place time on one axis and space on the other. Though they don’t convey actual data, they’re convincingly science-y. Each drawing is a neat grid populated by maplike symbols: floating cubes, red and blue geometric shapes, dotted lines signifying gravity waves, and jagged forms representing clouds of radiation known as “Valkyries.”
Each composition has a square in the middle, drawn in perspective — looking into them is like looking down a square shaft. The legend, which illuminates but doesn’t fully explain the symbols Anderson uses, describes these central squares as “light cones,” defined as “everything in one’s past cone that brings into being a single present moment, and everything in one’s future cone that happens there.” The drawings also contain “everything that one will never see and can never know.” Floating cubes, some arranged into larger shapes, represent particles of mass and dark matter and their evolving complexity. The drawings look like 3D Tetris from the late 1990s, if it were beautifully hand-drafted.
Anderson’s charts are not framed but instead rest, as though on easels, within woodworker Guild’s “Tetradecagon,” an elegant and spare wooden structure that arches to a circular opening just under the gallery’s ceiling. A single visitor can enter into it and be surrounded by “The Big Breath.” As you turn your body to look from one drawing to the next, they seem to expand and contract as the central “light cones” get larger or smaller in each successive chart; you are made aware of your own breathing within the contemplative space. Its architecture is reminiscent of both a Gothic church and a UFO.
Though “Stardust” was conceived as a science-fictional exploration, religiosity resounds through it. Talbot-Kelly, 56, wrote several wall texts that introduce Chronos as a kind of proto-god who “set the rhythm for stars to form and galaxies to spiral.” She contrasts Chronos’ understanding of time with linear human perception in her poem “You,” which accompanies a sculpture of the same name. Both are located in the “Quantum Room,” a video projection installation created by the Parker family.
The room has a Blade Runner vibe. Talbot-Kelly’s sculpture, a life-size female mannequin posed mid-run, is bathed in the projection’s changing red and blue light. Mirrors, bits of colorful mesh and patterned fabric, squares of colored vinyl tape, and sequins adorn the figure, who seems to sprout antennae from her face. Tiny spotlights illuminate points on the body, and a pile of rope lights gives her a futuristic neon glow.
The “Quantum Room” projection, meanwhile, loops with abstract shapes and colors over the course of about eight minutes. A dot, representing a single photon, crosses the space; static blankets the walls; constellations form; and shapes contract into a floating blue cube and expand into a red wash. Julie and Bill Parker are optical engineers, working with lenses, holography and augmented-reality technologies at Creative Micro, which they founded in Waitsfield under another name in 1989. Their son Ray, 31, is a PhD student at the University of Rochester studying quantum physics and computing.
The piece carries over some elements of Anderson’s drawings — especially its red and blue shorthand for expansion and contraction — while adding techno-tinged dramatic effects and poetic wall text that references quantum theory: “Life is particle and wave, path and potential, truth and uncertainty.”
Watching the animation is mesmerizing and suitably nebulous, representing the uncertainty of the quantum as it does. The single photon speaks to the idea of potentialities, and the expansive nature of the installation gives the impression of seeing a universe unfold. But watching the animations repeat made me wish the Parkers had brought more randomness and unpredictability into the looping display. “Quantum” has become such a science-y pop-culture buzzword — thanks, Marvel Cinematic Universe — that it’s hard to distinguish a specific meaning for it, even in a “Quantum Room.”
Still, the show is successful in how it ties together concepts of scale — from the infinitesimal to the infinite — with the simple concept of human breath. That basic idea seems like an answer, though it doesn’t directly address where humanity is headed. I look forward to seeing what the collective does next. It might take a whole other project — a rather larger one, if we follow Douglas Adams’ lead — to come up with the right question.
“Stardust,” on view through October 31 at Mad River Valley Arts in Waitsfield. madrivervalleyarts.org
The original print version of this article was headlined “Total Perspective Vortex | ‘Stardust’ in Waitsfield considers the cosmic, human and quantum”
This article appears in The Tech Issue 2025.
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