Psyche Inspired: Levi Keatts
Institution: Virginia Commonwealth University
Major: Art Foundation (intended Painting/Mathematics double major)
Psyche Inspired Class: 2019-2020
Reflections from Levi
Psyche has a metal soul
Psyche has a metal soul
Levi Keatts
Major: Art Foundation (intended Painting/Mathematics double major)
Genre/Medium: oil paint on aluminum composite panel
About the work: (16) Psyche is a metal asteroid that we believe may consist largely of nickel and iron. The team working on the Psyche mission hypothesizes that the asteroid may be the exposed core of an early protoplanet. When I was challenged to make artwork based on this mission, I immediately began to make connections between this information and the classical mythology and symbolism of Psyche, the goddess. Read more…
Impacting The Future
Impacting The Future
Levi Keatts
Major: Art Foundation (intended Painting/Mathematics double major)
Genre/Medium: acrylic paint, plexiglass, glass
About the work: One of the primary objectives of NASA’s Psyche mission is to determine if 16-Psyche is an exposed core of an early protoplanet, or if it is comprised of unmelted materials. I was inspired to create a piece around this question. This is my artistic imagining of an early collision removing chondritic crust from the protoplanet and exposing Psyche’s melted nickel-iron core. This painting was done using acrylic paint on the front and backs of plexiglass sheets (topped with a glass sheet). The final image is made from seven total sheets. My hope was that the physical thickness of the transparent materials I painted on would add a sense of additional depth to the work.
Somewhere Between Jupiter and Mars
Somewhere Between Jupiter and Mars
Levi Keatts
Major: Art Foundation (intended Painting/Mathematics double major)
Genre/Medium: oil on canvas and jasper beads
About the work: This piece is a homage to the advancement of art and exploration. Debatably, one of the earliest known pieces of art was the Makapansgat pebble. This is a small red jasperite rock that looks like it has a face on it, which was caused by natural withering. Some early human found this pebble and decided to carry it back to their cave roughly 20 miles away. This makes me think about how far we have come as humans–from being enamored with a pebble to sending an unmanned spacecraft to an asteroid far away from Earth and making art about it. (Because Psyche and Earth orbit at different speeds, the distance from Earth to Psyche varies over a large range, from < 2 astronomical units, or AU, to > 4 AU!) I hoped to display this with a three-panel painting. The first panel shows a human surrounded by jasper beads, representing the Makapansgat pebble. The second panel depicts the moon, representing one of the most noteworthy feats of human exploration. And finally, the last panel depicts the asteroid (16) Psyche, representing our current field of exploration.
Light Curves
Light Curves
Levi Keatts
Major: Art Foundation (intended Painting/Mathematics double major)
Genre/Medium: wire and yarn
About the work: My fourth project for Psyche Inspired is a yarn sculpture of the asteroid (16) Psyche. It was inspired by a paper called “Radar Observations and Shape Model of Asteroid (16) Psyche.” In this paper, scientist spoke about how they used the “inversion of light-curves” to develop a topographical map of (16) Psyche. The sculpture is meant to be an artistic interpretation of this.