Untitled (Parabolic Lens)

Fred Eversley, 1971

Before this, Fred Eversley was an engineer. He helped design the rooms where NASA tested what launch noise would do to a spacecraft. High-intensity acoustic stuff. Basically: put the spacecraft inside. Turn the volume up to rocket launch. See if anything falls off. Gemini. Apollo. And the shape Eversley kept coming back to was the parabola. Satellite dishes. Telescope mirrors. It catches whatever hits it and dumps it all on one spot. Then, in 1967, he was trying to push-start his stalled MG in the company parking lot. The accident broke his femur. Thirteen months on crutches. And while he recovered, the art thing took over. But he never gave the parabola back. He poured colored liquid plastic into a round mold and spun it on a turntable he'd rigged up himself. Spin a liquid and it climbs the sides, leaving a dish in the middle. The curve forms on its own. Physics does that part. Then Eversley had to grind and polish the cast until the plastic went transparent. Three feet across. Three colors. Three layers. It stands on edge, on a little clear block you can barely see. It looks like it fell out of the future. Glowing space candy. Then you move past it and the room bends. Light pools in the curve. Check the floor beside it. Even the shadow has color in it. Blue and amber. Eversley said he wanted his sculptures to attract energy from the person looking and give it back. So the same shape that caught signals from space ends up catching the room. The light. The floor. You. This is Untitled (Parabolic Lens), 1971. MoMA bought it in 2017. Forty-six years after he made it.

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