Vision
Monica Moreno
Major: Jewelry/Metalworking
Genre/Medium: bronze, glass, photography
About the work: Since the start of my NASA Psyche Inspired internship, I have been fascinated by the people working on the NASA Psyche Mission. They are a group of individuals who have devoted countless hours, days, and years of their lives to one mission. Their drive and dedication are apparent, but to me, their sheer sense of wonder and curiosity are inspiration enough. This piece pays homage to those special human traits.
Everyone working on this mission has a vision, represented here as a human eye. I sculpted this eye in clay by hand, hoping not to make it look female or male and giving it no particular age or ethnicity, so that it may represent all. Through a process of mold making and wax casting, I finally cast this heavy 3”x 2” piece in bronze.
Looking at its pupil, you will notice that it is made of a different material. I spent about two years on and off researching how to make a traditional magnification lens out of glass and how to mount a shrunken version of my original artwork onto the glass. If you look from behind the bronze eye and against the light, holding the piece about four inches away from you, you will see the image of Psyche in human form looking up at the spacecraft that is traveling toward her.
On the back of the piece, I engraved: “Here’s to the ones who dream. Foolish as they may seem.” This quote from the film La La Land was subject of a social media post that Lead Systems Engineer David Oh wrote on January 2, 2017. Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton adds Mr. Oh’s words to her blog post in the NASA Psyche Mission blog. You can read it here: https://psyche.asu.edu/2017/08/15/waiting/.
I’ve been enjoying reading the blog posts for this mission, especially the ones from the early days when the team was dreaming big, keeping their fingers crossed, waiting for good news from NASA, and hoping for their vision to become a real-life NASA mission.
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