Helium without Strindberg

Artist Laurie Palmer spoke April 15 about her installation, “The Helium Stockpile: Under Shifting Conditions of Heat and Pressure.” Palmer, a Radcliffe fellow, is a conceptual artist whose work focuses on industry, the environment, history, and economics. The “Helium Stockpile” is inspired by an actual federally owned helium stockpile near Amarillo, Texas, containing 3.7 billion cubic feet of the lighter-than-air gas, used during the Cold War in the manufacture of nuclear bombs. Palmer’s interactive piece, consisting of hundreds of hinged wooden blocks, explores the contraction of a flat field into a compact mass.