Scientist’s understanding of snow crystals owes a great debt of thanks to a 19 year old farmer living in Vermont in 1885 by the name of Wilson Alwyn Bentley. Fascinated by the snow crystals and their composition this man was the first person to successfully produce a photograph of snow or ice crystals. He did this by magnifying the crystals he gathered at 69 to 3,000 times on glass plates.

Bentley devised his own camera at a time when photography was raw, new and rare. He attached bellows to the microscope, along with wood splints, turkey feathers and a black board. Through the images he captured he discovered that every ice crystal is unique and grows symmetrically in a 6-sided hexagon around a tiny nucleus. Whether the growing shape from that nucleus becomes concentric or dendritic [branching] depends on various factors including temperature and water content.

In general terms warmer temperatures produce rapidly developing crystals that are lacy, whereas lower temperatures will slow the growth of the patterned extenuation and produce denser concentric layers. If growing in isolation the formations of each crystal will tend to be more perfectly symmetrical. All the power of beauty is in the form, as the crystals are colour-less, teamed with the inclusion of streams of light through various densities of microscopic ice shafts, ridges and anomalies.

Schwerdtfeger Library has a vast selection of photomicrographs of snow crystals, prepared sets of glass lantern slides of dew, frost and ice crystals. This collection was amassed and donated to the library by The University of Wisconsin’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, and many other collections exist like it in universities and study centers around the country.

Nadelstern’s repeat block format is based around repeating segments of a circle, and the interaction of selected textile print fabrics to create visual anomalies.  She is inspired by the ever shifting forms in Kaleidoscopes and the ever-changing crystaline formations of snowflakes. The relationship of one fabric patch to another is controlled by the geometric parameters that can be taken out of a shape with a 360° limit at it’s core .

On display were a remarkable selection of creations by some of the country’s finest Kaleidoscope makers. Many of these ‘mechanisms’ hold found objects that are manipulated with light and motion to achieve mesmerizing tessellated patterns. Of particular interest was Oddysey#2, a piece by Charles Karadimon, a master kaleidoscope maker since 1975, who hand crafts all the mechanisms, glass and construction himself. Another interesting piece; ‘Honey Jar’ by Henry Bergeson . A catalogue and other publications are available at the museum shop.

Found materials and gathered matter is the construct of many a patch-worked textile as it is also with the ‘contents’ that create the patterns in a Kaleidoscope. It seems fitting that there is a dialogue between the two mediums, both operating on the same principle of playing with the ‘found’.