Blessed are the few who know right away what direction they’re going to take when starting college. It’s a common freshman dilemma. It’s a good thing Zachary Cummings didn’t have his heart set and mind focused on something like accounting or pre-law when he started at LSU. Zach’s interests led him to higher realms. He’s just graduated with dual degrees: a bachelor of fine arts in studio arts and a bachelor of science in physics—along with minors in French and art history. A strange combination, you might think, but for Zach, it’s worked out well.
The Baton Rouge native says he did a bit of painting in high school. “But in my third semester in college I took a painting class under professor Denyce Celentano. I took to it so well she recommended that I take a class in New York for the summer.” The summer program he entered was at the New York Studio School, which offers intensive marathon workshops in different subjects. Zach chose a landscape session. “We went out for a few weeks; they took us to Westbury and Governor’s Island.” This month’s cover piece is of a wooded scene from a session at Westbury.
For Zach, his varying interests complemented each other. “It’s interesting to see the history of painting alongside the history of science. In a way, they sort of follow each other. Sometimes art may precede physics; sometimes physics would influence art.”
He cites the often-explored topic of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and the cubist art movement of artists such as Picasso and Braque. “The cubist idea of fragmented space and general relativity’s multiple perspectives influenced a lot of the cubist work that’s influenced me.”
Clik here to view.
Zach Cummings at work in the studio.
Quantum mechanics is another area of physics that comes into Zach’s mind as he’s creating abstract work. “When you paint abstract, you don’t paint objects as recognizable things. I would think of it as multiple things, or many things combined. The viewer interprets them in the same way that a particle’s wave functions are the superposition of many different states before the observer measures them.” Art, Zach feels, can be a universal language, like math, but unlike math, it’s a language that appeals to both one’s emotions and intellect. While that may seem a bit esoteric, his ideas have translated into a couple of pieces painted for his senior show that were chosen for an exhibit at the Shaw Center for the Arts in Baton Rouge. His scientific studies have obviously had a major influence on Zach and his art. He’s also spent a lot of time working in science fields, in 2009 as an intern at Caltech and at Caltech’s LIGO observatory facility in Livingston, La. In 2010, as a Starlab program instructor, he developed an astronomy curriculum for elementary school students in Zachary, La.
But it’s art that has won his attention post-graduation. He’s been accepted into the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, where he will pursue a master of fine arts degree in studio arts. “I really didn’t want painting to be just a hobby. I found I connected more with the professors and the students in the college of art, and I think it made for a more meaningful experience.”
Zach’s work can be seen online at zacharycummings.weebly.com.
The post Art, Meet Science. Science, This Is Art: Cover Artist Zachary Cummings appeared first on Inside Northside Magazine Online.
