[1–2]
Double Rainbow (Redacted), 2024
Graphite on rag paper, black tinted glass
18 x 12 inches; 21.75 x 15.75 inches (framed)

[3–5]
Spiral Galaxy NGC 2090 (Redacted), 2025
Graphite and colored pencil on rag paper, black tinted glass
18 x 12 inches; 21.75 x 15.75 inches (framed)

[6–10]
Triple Rainbow (Redacted), 2024–2025
Graphite on rag paper, black tinted glass; Diptych
Each: 18 x 12 inches; 21.75 x 15.75 inches (framed)

[11]
Triple Rainbow (Redacted), 2024
Installation view
MORA Art Museum, Jersey City, NJ
May 17 – June 1, 2025

This body of work, Rainbow (Redacted), was presented at the MORA Art Museum in Jersey City, NJ. The series repurposes imagery from Cold War era physics textbooks as the basis for colored pencil and graphite translations of the ripple tank experiment, an education tool used for scientific demonstrations. The setup for this experiment resembles an aquarium-like tank, illuminated from below, which works by activating thin metal levers to produce vibrational waves in water. These waves can be observed interacting constructively and destructively, interfering with one another in complex and dynamic motion and as standing waves. Thus, the drawings speak to the optical experience of light, stripped down and isolated in the laboratory.

Rainbows and the visible spectra of light appear throughout the exhibition in shifting gradients and visual arcs. These forms recall the rainbow as a fleeting symbol of luck, providence, and tenderness, while also nodding to its ambivalent history in medieval and Renaissance painting as a bellwether of judgement and the apocalypse. The colors of the rainbow were once coded with Christian myth and mysticism: blue for the flood that came before, green for the present state of mercy, and a golden, flickering yellow-white-red for the hellfires to come. Graphite renderings of rainbows, spectra, and moiré patterns are enclosed beneath dark, tinted glass in an act of redaction and concealment. The arrest and capture of these arcs and bows under semi-opaque glass replicates the conditions of viewership found when witnessing a true rainbow; as the angle and intensity of a room’s ambient light shifts, the drawing beneath the glass comes into focus, sometimes visible, at other times fading from view. 

The original ripple tank experiment was designed by American photographer Berenice Abbott, whose pioneering approach to photography drew on the techniques of the Surrealists to form a distinct mixture of documentary and distortion. Abbott’s demonstrations of light’s wave motion were produced within her larger photographic project titled Documenting Science (1939–1958) and were presented amid the political climate ushered in by Joseph McCarthy. Relatedly, the drawings in this exhibition were initially begun in 2019 during the U.S. congressional investigation of foreign election interference. By repurposing Abbott’s photographic scenario, these drawings ask what is entailed in political and electoral interference, whether by foreign powers or politicians at home, and how we can make sense of large-scale distortions in truth within the public realm. 

Installation views of the exhibition are available here.