Martha Glowacki’s Natural History, Observations and Reflections Martha Glowacki’s Natural History | Page 21

Figure 2. Martha Glowacki (American b. 1950),
Growing Towards the Light (detail), 2015–2016, steel,
bronze, cast iron, wood, pigments, inkjet prints,
size varies. Photos Mike Rebholz.
the Light (2015–2016). 3 While it had been a long-held
belief through observation and intuition that plants grow
towards the sun, in the eighteenth century scientists
worked to quantify this through a series of experiments.
The three plant tables—scaled so that viewers can imagine
themselves in the position of a scientist examining the
specimens under consideration in their own lab space—
present three different views of cast and fabricated
polychrome bronze plants. Glowacki positioned the
experiments atop century-old sheet steel tables that she
treated to look like wood. The sculptures continue the
aesthetic of the scientific engravings that inspired them,
formed in clear lines in metal. This sets up relationships
between the metal of the sculptures and the metal of the
copper plates into which the images were inscribed.
In plant table one, metal flowers are in a glass vase in
a wooden case and stretch out of its open side towards
a light source. They are to be compared to identical
flowers, positioned outside the shade of any box, grow-
ing straight up and in all directions. In this case, the
sculpture represents two different moments in time, two
different situations for the vase of flowers (Figure 2).
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