KU News Release

Dec. 5, 2008
Contact: Erin Curtis-Dierks, School of Fine Arts, (785) 864-9742.

The art of physics: KU junior’s jewelry, sculpture designs win national prizes

LAWRENCE— Quantum physics-inspired jewelry and a sculpture by a University of Kansas junior won top prizes at the Quadrennial Congress of Sigma Pi Sigma, a national physics honor society, held last month in Batavia, Ill.

Kristal Feldt won Best of Show for “The Particle Decay Series,” a jewelry collection inspired by the spiraling and curling tracks that charged particles leave as they move within a device known as a bubble chamber.

She also won a special Artist’s Choice award for “Bubble Chamber Reliquary,” a small metal sculpture influenced both by physics and the bond she shares with her sister, Julie Feldt, a senior in physics and astronomy at KU.

As Best of Show winner, Kristal will display her work at the meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers, to be held Feb. 12-16 in Chicago. Her work also will be featured in an upcoming edition of Radiations, the official magazine of Sigma Pi Sigma.

Kristal was the only design major in the nine-member delegation from KU’s chapter of the Society of Physics Students who attended the congress at Fermilab, the National Accelerator Laboratory in Naperville, Ill. Her sister wasn’t able to attend because of a conflict with a graduate school entrance exam scheduled to take place that weekend.

Sarah Reynolds, co-president of KU’s physics society chapter, who encouraged Kristal to enter the contest, noted that Fermilab historically has promoted connections between science and art. The art contest combined Fermilab’s philosophy and the theme of the 2008 congress — Scientific Citizenship: Connecting Physics and Society.

The theme resonated with Kristal, who hopes to “bring light to the beauty of science” with her art.

“I seek to design sophisticated art jewelry and small scale sculpture that brings the elegance of scientific phenomena and concepts, particularly in the realm of physics, to the everyday person,” she said.

Kristal’s designs resonated with the judges, including Fermilab’s artist-in-residence, Lori Napoleon, who announced the winners. Napoleon encouraged the more than 600 people attending the congress to view Kristal’s jewelry collection, which included a necklace, bracelet, ring, brooch, hairpin and earrings all made from nickel silver.

Kristal had designed the jewelry specifically for the competition, but the sculpture was created in a spring 2008 introductory jewelry class.

The sculpture is a poetic version of a vessel used to study particle physics. When her jewelry instructor asked her class to design a reliquary — a small container often used in the middle ages to contain precious items or relics — Kristal spent weeks contemplating the form her reliquary would take. First, she considered what it should contain. She ruled out possessions, determining that her relationship to her sister was what she valued most.

Kristal wanted to symbolize the way she and her sister, “though different are irrevocably bound together.” The bubble chamber concept intrigued her.

She constructed a bubble, about three inches in diameter, by sealing together two halves of a sphere — symbolic of “the inescapable blood bond between us.” Inside, she enclosed two smaller spheres, equal in size. One is inscribed with a Feynman diagram (a schematic form of drawing that uses wavy and straight lines to denote particles) to represent Julie’s logical mind, and the other with an image of a particle collision, a symbol of her own creative mind.

She cut holes into the sphere, letting light flow through and providing pockets that allow the interior spheres to bulge outside the chamber but never slip through. Kristal notes that although the holes appear to be random, they align symmetrically in each half of the chamber.

“Even if I got mad at Julie, I couldn’t say, ‘you’re not my sister.’ Sometimes we are just forced to deal with that fact face to face and rattle around within the sphere,” Kristal said.

She and Julie are close but are “not without our spats,” Kristal said.

“When the bubble chamber is still — the two spheres inside are peaceful,” Kristal said, holding the sphere in her palm. She rolls the chamber until an interior sphere lodges in one of the bubble holes. “Other times the spheres inside get stuck in places. They knock around.”

Kristal and Julie are the daughters of Patricia Feldt of St. Louis, Mo., and graduates of St. Elizabeth Academy in St. Louis.

Kristal considers herself part of a pioneering movement to blend art and science and hopes it will motivate others to take a new look at science.

“I’ve always wanted to bring something different to the table with my artwork. I’m really grateful to the KU chapter of Sigma Pi Simga in giving me this opportunity. It’s nice. I really feel like I’ve found my niche, and this has helped reinforce that feeling in me.”

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