Christine Tarkowskithe old Moon in the new Moon's arms

Earthlight is sunlight that reflects off Earth’s surface and reaches beyond the clouds and atmosphere. When this light indirectly illuminates the otherwise unilluminated portion of the Moon, it’s known as Earthshine, or the Moon’s ashen glow. “The old Moon in the new Moon’s arms” is a term used when the diffuse diaphanous glow of Earthlight is captured on the otherwise un-visible portion of a waxing crescent Moon.

The soft sunlight (Earthlight) visible on the dim portion of the Moon has been twice reflected. Sun…Earth…Moon…and depending on whether observed from the Earth, the Northern or Southern Hemisphere, there will be a soft glow following or leading, waxing or waning a crescent moon…starlight bouncing off our planet and softly caught on the Moon at sunset or sunrise.

The work at The Arts Club of Chicago is a sweep of suspended, levitating entanglements– not defying gravity but caught up in the physics of our planet. Each piece is an individually hand-drawn contour line using molten glass as the drawing material. The drawing requires a quick action to articulate. Time, gravity, temperature, physicality, and physics are deployed to register a line which was, seconds before, a viscous molten mass–not unlike the molten mass at the core of our planet.

To wrestle a shape into being requires only seconds to fashion, but each motion is one of resistance. That instance of drawing is consumed with an effort to defy expectations of the motion– to not repeat a move, to resist reference to language, symbol, or culture, or to refuse to shape the known.

The sweep of gestures as a whole and the singular drawing wrangle with time on two separate points of measure: warm stellar light reflecting off of us and landing on our Moon, and the Moon’s dark side that we’re never able to see but know is there.

Christine Tarkowski is an artist working in a variety of mediums, formats and collaborative conditions. Her artistic output includes; sculpture, architecture, printed matter, photography and song and ranges in scale from the ordinary to the monumental. Equally variable is the scope of production, incorporating the making of permanent public structures, propositional drawings, cast glass models, textile yardage, temporary printed ephemera, and musical choirs. Many of her works point toward the flotsam of western culture relative to systems of democracy, religion and capitalism. Those systems often intersect with or concern themes of conversion, salvation, and belief and are malleable systems relative to a believer’s desires.

Her solo exhibitions include Chthonic Void at Devening Projects in Chicago, Whale Oil, Slave Ships & Burning Martyrs at Priska Juschka Fine Art in New York, Imitatio Dei at the Museum of Contemporary in Chicago and Last Things Will Be First and First Things Will Be Last at the Chicago Cultural Center. She has created commissioned projects for; Millennium Park Foundation, Manilow Sculpture Park at Governor’s State University, Mass MoCA, DCASE and Public Art in the City of Chicago, Franconia Sculpture Park, Socrates Sculpture Park, J.M. Kohler Arts in Industry Kohler WI, OxBow Saugatuck MI, Roger Brown Studio New Buffalo MI, and Cite´ Internationale des Arts in Paris France.

Christine is a Professor in the Fiber and Material Studies Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.