Pearl John uses large format holography as a medium to examine issues of self-identity. She combines holographic images with text, video and photography to reach toward the meaning that exists at the boundaries between words and images, and between artist and viewer. Her latest series, “Breakfast,” “Lunch,” and “Snack,” produced during a residency at Long Island City’s Center for the Holographic Arts, documents our complex relationship with food and eating. Words are laser-etched into fruit, toast, crisps and peanuts, offering a sense of the many subliminal meanings we project on our food.

Pearl John graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in Holography in 1992. Her holograms and installations have been exhibited in Japan, Europe and throughout the USA. She currently teaches laser technology in schools throughout the UK, with the University of Southampton Department of Physics and Astronomy.

For more information on Pearl John’s work, please visit and  

For more information on Hong Lin’s research, please visit the Physics Department’s website.

Pearl John Push, 2001 White light hologram with laser etched mirror 8 x 10 in.

Marsden Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine and became one of America’s greatest modernist painters. Hartley loved traveling. France and Nova Scotia are two distinct places gave Hartley inspiration.

In France, Hartley caught Cézanne fever, and in Nova Scotia, he found a fundamental goodness and nobility of humanity. My talk, based on research conducted during an internship with the museum during the winter 2010 term, will offer insight into Hartley’s wanderings and how his discovery of his unique vision emerged from his relationship with nature and human interactions.