Artist Ana Vizcarra explores a sense of being from a personal perspective and scientific observations – LancasterOnline

The artist Ana Vizcarra Rankin is sitting under a blanket of stars. From her vantage point, she can see both Orion and the Southern Cross. Polaris shines from its position in Ursa Minor and in the distance, there are the twinkling lights of Mexico City.

The Philadelphia-based artist, who was born in Uruguay, can almost hear the constant fireworks exploding in the night sky from the festival celebrating the Lady of Guadalupe from her spot on a floor pillow in the upper-level of the gallery at Pennsylvania College of Art & Design.

The blanket of stars above her is her piece Untitled Starmap (Mexico), which is part of Holding Space, an interactive installation, a mediation room with star art and pillows. Holding Space is part of Rankins Butterfly Effect exhibit, which runs at PCA&D through April 12.

By inviting people to gaze into the night sky of Mexico, she is playing with perspective. The viewer is in two places at once. Rankin is in Mexico in her mind and in Lancaster in her body. Rankin envisions the Holding Space as a place for students and visitors to let their thoughts drift.

Im a big advocate of just sitting around in the dark, Rankin says. Its super nice to sit outside and relax and not be staring at a screen. Enjoy the darkness, enjoy the silence.

The blanket of stars that hangs overheard on the gallerys ceiling represents the approximate location of the night sky from a trip Rankin and her husband took to Mexico. She made the work by sketching the night sky with her naked eye while in Mexico and using various star gazing apps to check her positions. Rankins work takes on vast subjects like the universe or the planet and makes them personal.

For instance, the night sky above her reminds her what she was looking at during her trip to Mexico. Constellations and single stars have long been used as a navigation tool. As an artist, Rankin uses the night skies to navigate her position in the world, as well as her memories and emotions.

Butterfly Effect features art based on star maps, world maps, changes in ocean temperatures, the amount of planes in a sky in a given location on a given moment in time and paintings of different nebulas. Theres plenty of room to think, explore and engender curiosity.

The Butterfly Effect is from chaos theory, Rankin says. Its this idea that a seemingly infinitesimal and inconsequential occurrence can affect its surroundings in ways that are extraordinary and supermassive. The guy that coined the term used as an example that a butterfly flapping its wings in the U.S. could cause a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean.

Rankin admits shes taken liberties with some of the scientific material, but shes allowed, she says. Shes an artist, not a scientist, and artists are allowed to be biased, she says.

One of her pieces, Warm Acid Bath, shows the change in ocean temperatures due to acidification.

These heat maps are all rainbow-colored, and I am particularly partial to the idea of the rainbow as a symbol of diversity and inclusiveness, Rankin says. Im using this imagery that is hopeful and positive even to indicate a lot of the things that are going wrong, because I think its not too late. I think we can dig ourselves out of this. Weve just got to plant more trees.

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She may be speaking as an artist and not a scientist, but shes about as close to a scientist as an artist can get. Her father is a professor of animal sciences and her mother a professor of literature.

Dinner conversations were like freewheeling lectures for Rankin and her family. There was often dry ice in the freezer. Rankin and her siblings would go to her fathers lab and gaze into the microscope at the tiny worlds on the slides. Her mothers influence drew her into making art about mythology.

I have always been an artist from when I could speak, Rankin says. Theres a little Super 8 film of me going Yo quiero ser una artista! My hands on hips saying I want to be an artist!

Rankin moved with her family from Uruguay to Oklahoma when she was 11. Later, she moved to Philadelphia and earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Temple University and her Master of Fine Arts from Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Her work in Butterfly Effect offers a chance to view our world through a different perspective. For example, her piece El Sur is an inverted world map.

You think about your position on the planet and if youre always on the bottom and suddenly it gets flipped, it changes the way you think of yourself and where you are with respect to the rest of the world, Rankin says. I mean, you have to think of the world in some way, and it makes sense to homogenize things to a certain degree, but I think theres a danger to this idea that everything has to be so standardized.

The standardization of things is something Rankin is obviously fond of playing with.

I think one of the biggest disservices we do to ourselves is this idea of standardization up to a point where you dont even know the questions you are not asking, Rankin says. The more you are bombarded by the same image over and over again, the less you even consider that an alternative is possible. So, as an agent of chaos, I can be like Hey, but what if, this were quote-unquote upside down. And its not even upside down. Theres no upside down in space.

Here she pauses.

Thats what I love about making this kind of art, Rankin says. Every day is like an existential conundrum.

What: Butterfly Effect.

Where: Pennsylvania College of Art & Design, 204 N Prince St.

When: Through April 12. Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.- 8 p.m.; Saturday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, noon-5 p.m.

Cost: Free.

pcad.edu/gallery-exhibit/butterfly-effect-by-ana-vizcarra-rankin.

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Artist Ana Vizcarra explores a sense of being from a personal perspective and scientific observations - LancasterOnline