CONTEMPLATING THE NIGHT:

This special two-day exhibition is a community celebration of our relationship with the night sky through art and science. The focus is the culmination of a yearlong museum astrolabe workshop for adults led by recently retired Bolinas Stinson School science and math teacher Don Jolley that began as part of last year’s Cosmic Wonders exhibition. An astrolabe is a complicated but elegantly efficient circular instrument used for centuries to understand the cycling of the heavens, and one’s own location in time and place. They were commonly used to guide navigation, and to predict solstices and equinoxes, and the seasonal calendar.

For years, Jolley taught his 8th grade students to make astrolabes as a means of heightening direct experience of astronomy, geometry, mythology and the arts. This exhibition brings together astrolabes by Jolley’s adult students, a few by school students, fascinating interpretive text, magnificent night sky photographs by Marsha Kirschbaum, and a selection of current Bolinas – Stinson Beach School student class projects, all inspired by our universe.

Please join us Saturday, January 18 for light refreshments. At 2 PM Don Jolley will give a short talk that will enrich our awareness and stimulate our imaginations as we contemplate the night sky.