Get Lost in Translation
BY NANCY STETSON nstetson@floridaweekly.com

COURTESY PHOTO Artist Megan Kissinger works on her Newton's Cradle for Saturday's Art Royale gala.

WHEN FORT MYERS ARTIST MEGAN KISSINGER LEARNED that the theme of this year's Art Royale festival was "Lost in Translation," she was initially stymied.

"I really wasn't originally attracted to the idea," she says. "It was so vague, it could be taken so many different ways. It took me a long time to come up with something. I got within a week of the deadline and was still stumped."

Finally, she came up with the idea of smacking bowling balls together.

"I started looking into a group of artist scientists in Minnesota, somewhere. They would take old appliances and make art out of them, take a washing machine and turn it into spin art."

It started Ms. Kissinger thinking about the connection between science and art, and how artists can help people better understand a scientific thought or formula.

Kissinger has a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Florida Gulf Coast University.

"I remembered my own days as a student," she says. "I loved science, but when it came to the mathematical side of it, physics, I could never grasp it in my mind. It never made any sense to me."

She remembers being totally dumbfounded when learning about Isaac Newton's laws of motion. But the next day, when someone showed her a picture of a Newton's Cradle, she understood his third law of motion, which states that energy is neither lost nor gained, and that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Executives often have a miniature version of Newton's Cradle on their desks: a series of small, metallic balls suspended in an even line. When one is pulled back and let loose, hitting the row, the metallic ball on the opposite end swings out with equal force and distance.

Ms. Kissinger knew instantly what she wanted to make an oversized Newton's Cradle. Hers would be 7 feet high, with bowling balls suspended with rope. The piece, which she'll paint in "crazy, fluorescent colors," will also have black lights and strobe lights.

For a month and a half, Ms. Kissinger haunted thrift shops, scouring them for bowling balls. She found 10. Then people started leaving bowling balls on her doorstep.

"We got too many, but it was good in a way," she says, "because one of the things we learned was that we needed bowling balls that were of a certain range and weight. If they were too big, or too light, it would throw it off, make it unbalanced."

She had bowling balls as heavy as 16 pounds and as light as 8 pounds. She wound up using ones that were in the 12 pound range.

"We had to pull out the bathroom scale, measure each one," she says.

The bowling balls, she says, are "every color of the rainbow you can think of in a bowling alley. We have one that looks like tutti-frutti, or confetti. We have your basic black. We've got sky blue, green, jade green, lots of red ones."

Whatever she doesn't use in the oversized Newton's Cradle, she'll keep on the side as replacements, if any should break during Art Royale.

"That's part of the excitement, to see what happens if they break," she says. So far, in practice, everything's still intact.

"We've been launching them pretty hard in the garage," she says.

How does her piece relate to the theme "Lost in Translation" ?

"Sometimes a picture's worth a thousand words," she says. "When you sit and read Newton's Third Law of Motion, it literally fills half a page. It's somewhat technical for someone who's never looked at it, and it's somewhat boring and bland.

"But anyone who's sat at a desk and played with (a Newton's Cradle) knows how irresistible it is. It translates the idea perfectly. As a kid, I wasn't good at math. I was always lost in translation, but through my art, and through the visual sensation of Newton's Cradle, is how I understood some of these basic laws of nature."

This year's Art Royale chair, artist Scott Guelcher, a friend of Ms. Kissinger's, came up with the year's theme, at the request of the board of directors of the Alliance of the Arts, which holds the annual event.

This keynote event, held on the organization's grounds, is based on European street festivals, and incorporates visual art, performance art, and food. Attendees are urged to dress up according to the evening's theme. Previous themes have been "Take Flight," "Games People Play," and "Metamorphosis."

Mr. Guelcher says he came up with five or six ideas, and the board narrowed it down to two, before picking "Lost in Translation."

"The theme 'Lost in Translation' has transformed itself as the months have gone by in planning," he says. "It's an open-ended theme that the artists would not have any constraints or boundaries. They're wide open on what they could do."

Mr. Guelcher designed the Art Royale treasure map that'll be handed out at the Nov. 22 event. It not only tells you what performers will be on the main stage and when, but points out various points of interest.

He says that the look and feel of the map is late 1800s/ early 1900s turn of the century.

"The map of the campus is an old treasure map," he says. "That's how things evolved, it transformed into a traveling exploration. When you travel through countries, cultures or languages, things get lost. So from there I went and decided to lay out the event like a treasure map. Guests would walk or travel around the campus to different cultures and countries. And that way, every artist or culinary artist is located in a different country. The signage on each installation has a title saying who they are, and it's also in the language of the country they're representing."

Large wooden street signs will be placed around the campus.

"For example," Mr. Guelcher says, "on one part of the campus, there will be a sign that says, 'You are here.' Then elsewhere on campus will be another sign saying, 'You are there.' It adds to the whole idea of 'Lost in Translation.'

"We also have signs with multiple arrows. On those, we have different cities or countries, with different distances. For example, it would say: Tibet 1800 miles. Entrance 30 feet. New York City 10,000 km.

"I have it in inches, feet, miles, etc."

You just never know what to expect at an Art Royale event.

"I am a very traditional artist. I do very realistic acrylic paintings. I do a lot of scientific illustration," says Ms. Kissinger. "One thing I love about Art Royale is, it gets me out of that traditional mode of what's expected in an artist and allows me to do something crazy. It seems that every year I do Art Royale, I do something crazier and more fun.

"You're freed of the expectations that you have as a traditional artist. You can surprise, you can shock, you can do whatever you want what's to do, what s not expected of you."

if you go

"Lost in Translation" Art Royale

>> When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22

>> Where: campus of Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Blvd.

>> Cost: Advance tickets are $75 each or two for $125. Tickets are $100 at the door.

>> Information: Call 939-2787 or go to www.artroyale.org