Students inspire petal colours

What do 200 lucky Holdfast Bay students have in common?

They were all part of a school outreach program, conducted by artist, scientist and teacher Nick Athanasiou – who is also the creator of Jetty Road’s stunning new entry statement Elysian Fields.

Nick visited St Leonard’s Primary School, St Mary’s Memorial and St Peter’s Woodlands and worked with the students in June this year, who created their own mini Elysian Fields creations and colourful butterflies.

The students were also the first people to get a taste of what the entry statement would look like – weeks before its unveiling earlier this month.

“If we can outreach to the community, the community understands the work a little bit better and it makes them feel like the work is part of their community, and not just there in isolation,” Nick said.

At the school workshops, the students learnt first-hand from Nick - who has a PhD in Chemistry - about how light interacts to create colour and the difference between colour produced through pigmentation and colour produced through structure.

The student’s creations were also used as inspiration for some of the petal’s colour configurations in the final installation that was completed two weeks ago.

Each of the petals, in the 23 flowers that is Elysian Fields, contain layers of stainless steel, inlaid with optical filters – some of which display different colours when viewed from different angles.

“And what nature does is create colour from the physical process of white light passing through microstructures, that are arranged in ways that allow only one or two waves of light to reflect,” Nick explained.

“In nature, we see this phenomenon play out when we observe the colourful wings of butterflies. Their colour is a consequence of light’s interaction with fine microstructures found deep within their wings.

“The materials that we use mimic what happens in nature. Some of the filters we use are made up of hundreds of layers so as light enters these filters only certain waves (certain colours) are reflected while others are transmitted.

“Modifying these layers (structure) allows us to modify colour. It’s nowhere near as sophisticated as how nature has created colour for millennia, but it goes someway in creating vibrant and vivid colours.”

School and community outreach programs are fundamental to Skunk Control, which is the art company Nick founded in 2020.

“We rapidly discovered that the best way students learnt was through practical means,” Nick said, adding that many of his former students are now part of the Skunk Control creative team.

“We would teach a lot of physics concepts, including how light is affected by different structures, and the students would build things that allowed them to see the results in real life.

Those students themselves became teachers, going into schools to explain and show what they had learnt. As the demand for community programs grew, Skunk Control came to life.

Elysian Fields is both a public art piece and an eye-catching entry statement that welcomes people to Jetty Road and lets them know they have arrived in Adelaide’s premier coastal destination.

Nick is hopeful Elysian Fields will do just that - elicit a sense of wonder in people as they drive by it, walk alongside it or wander through it.

“I like the idea of people stepping in, stopping and trying to figure out how it’s all working … and then taking a step forward but stopping again to pause. I like the idea of that pause,” Nick said.