Michener Art Museum’s original exhibition, “Judith Schaechter: Super/Natural,” is the first to feature the internationally-known glass artist’s newest monumental work, an 8-foot-tall stained-glass dome designed for a single viewer.
On view at the museum in Doylestown from April 12–Sept. 14, the immersive stained-glass environment, also titled “Super/Natural,” represents a “three-tiered cosmos” that explores the idea of biophilia, the human tendency to connect with nature.
Judith Schaechter, who lives and works in Philadelphia, produced “Super/Natural” in a year and a half as artist-in-residence at the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics.
While creating this multi-tiered masterpiece of glass craft, she attended lab meetings with a pioneering team of researchers and scientists who study the neural and biological basis of aesthetic experiences. Their research, and Schaechter’s recent work, explores relationships between art, beauty, morality, and the brain.
The “Super/Natural” dome’s 65 panels are filled with a riot of imagined insects, flora, plants and birds, encouraging visitors to imagine themselves subsumed in the natural world, with all its beauty, violence, decay and growth. The central stained-glass structure, reminiscent of a church, creates a sublime sanctuary space for the secular.
“My goal is to invite viewers into a deeply personal, immersive experience that explores the connections between self, nature, and imagination,” Schaechter said. “We are ultimately connected to, not just observing, nature.”
