Jack Nawrot, a senior scientist emeritus at SIU Carbondale, shows off the forged the 8-1/2-foot, hand-crafted stainless steel and iron sculpture he crafted in celebration of the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse. (Photo by Russell Bailey)
March 27, 2025
Sculpture dedication, discussion commemorate 2024 total solar eclipse at SIU
CARBONDALE, Ill. — Recapture the awe of the 2024 total solar eclipse with a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work for an event that mesmerized thousands of spectators across Southern Illinois and millions of viewers who saw the spectacle from Southern Illinois University Carbondale during a one-year anniversary celebration on April 8 at Morris Library.
“Art in the Dark” will reflect on special moments with a discussion and sculpture design dedication. The “Journey to the Sun” panel discussion is from 3 to 4 p.m. in the library’s John C. Guyon Auditorium and will look at SIU’s meticulous planning, collaboration and scientific endeavors behind the experience. The discussion will also be available on the NASA-SIU Carbondale SolarSTEAM YouTube channel.
In addition, the “Art in the Dark” eclipse-inspired sculpture designed by Jack Nawrot, a senior scientist emeritus at SIU, and first shown at Saluki Stadium on the day of the eclipse, will be formally dedicated outside the front of Morris Library at 4 p.m. (rain location will be Guyon Auditorium).
Both events are free and open to the public.
SIU Carbondale and the region were the Solar Eclipse Crossroads of America on the centerline of the path to longest duration of totality not only for the 2024 eclipse but also the 2017 eclipse.
Sculpture dedication
Nawrot and Robert A. Lopez, associate dean in the College of Arts and Media and associate professor of design in the School of Art and Design, will speak, along with 2024 Eclipse Steering Committee co-chair Bob Baer, associate scientist in the School of Physics and Applied Physics, and John Pollitz, Library Affairs dean.
The sculpture was designed to be viewed from 10 to 12 feet away to enable viewers to see the eclipse as it moved across the southern sky behind the sculpture. A compass directional faceplate on top of the pedestal is inscribed with spherical coordinates for the beginning of the eclipse, totality, and the end of the eclipse.
Nawrot said many of his friends who saw the sculpture on display last year “could not believe that I, a ‘nerdy biologist,’ was actually an artist.” Nawrot, who worked with the university’s Cooperative Wildlife Research Lab before retiring in 2011, designed and forged the 8-1/2-foot, hand-crafted stainless steel and iron sculpture by Nawrot’s Jackson Forge in Cobden to commemorate the historic event on campus.
His first “art training” came in a college biology class in 1968 when he sketched an amoeba for a laboratory assignment. After retiring, Nawrot took blacksmithing classes at the university, and he has since made numerous gates and railings and other special mementos.
Nawrot had already forged and fabricated an 8-foot prototype when he met with Lopez about raising funds for students in the metalsmithing program. In addition to the sculpture, Nawrot sketched an “Art in the Dark” T-shirt design sold by students with proceeds also going to the Southern Illinois Metalsmith Society.