In collaboration with UB School of Architecture faculty Christopher Romano, Michael Hoover, and Randy Fernando; New York City–based printmakers and artists Zorawar Sidhu and Rob Swainston; and the UB Art Galleries staff, LookingUp/Looking Down is a temporary installation designed for the safe, collective, and interactive observation of the total solar eclipse on April 8, remaining on view through July 26.

Inspired by the intricate carving, layering, and registration techniques evident in Sidhu and Swainston’s woodcut prints—presented concurrently in their exhibition at the UB Anderson Gallery—the installation is constructed from plywood panels salvaged from boarded-up windows across New York City during 2020 and 2021. These materials, once part of the artists’ printmaking process, are reconfigured into suspended panels punctuated by constellations of precisely scaled apertures.

As the moon passes in front of the sun during the eclipse, these openings activate the installation, transforming the panels into optical instruments that project shifting patterns of light onto the ground below. The ground plane becomes both a projection surface and a shared field of observation, allowing viewers to experience the celestial event together while safely redirecting their gaze away from the sun.

By merging printmaking residue, architectural construction, and astronomical phenomena, Looking Down reframes eclipse viewing as a communal and material experience—one that collapses distinctions between artifact and instrument, past and present, and looking up versus looking down.