This part of the Space Art section provides lists
of galleries, photography, the art of mission patches,
and other resources on the web
The Arts Catalyst
- Dancers on the Russian
parabolic trainer aircraft experiencing microgravity
Space
Art Galleries
NASA
Galleries
NASA
Official Art Gallery - NASA has commissioned
over 200 artists over the past 30 years to document
the course of space exploration. Now includes over
800 works of art in the NASA archive plus 2000 pieces
donated to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
Copernica
Art Database offers an unusual graphical and
interactive navigation to NASA space art. See also
the NASA
- Multimedia for several interactive galleries
of space art and photography.
Marshall
Space Art Collection - art that goes back
to the beginning s of NASA and the early visions of
going to orbit and the Moon.
artFUTURE
This site is dedicated to art and design of the future.
This includes space art but also other categories such
as robotics and futuristic architecture.
Slawek's
Ultimate Guide
Huge collection of art and artist links in space, Sci-Fi
.and fantasy. Collected by Slawek Wojtowicz who creates
space
and sci-fi art of his own including the covers of
a number of sci-fi books.
Solar
Art
The Stanford Solar Center displays the work of several
artists who have been inspired by scientific studies of
the sun to create wonderful works of art (and also music.)
Solar
Voyager - Space Art on the Web
Gallery site that highlights the work of several space
artists. Maintained by Dave Jones, Solar Voyager strives
to become "the most diverse collection of space art
available on the internet today and have great involvement
from the artists hosted on the site."
Space
Window at the Washington National Cathedral ,
formally called the "Scientists and Technicians
Window", to commemorate "America’s exploration
of space and man’s first steps on the moon".
It includes a "7.18-gram basalt lunar rock from
the Sea of Tranquility" embedded in the beautiful
stained glass display.
Cosmosphere Stain-glass memorial
For the Cosmosphere's rotunda, the museum commissioned
a "8x11 foot stained glass that commemorates
the seventeen fallen United States astronauts.
The stained glass was constructed over eighteen
months by nineteen artists at Rayer’s Bearden
Stained Glass Supply in Wichita , Kansas"
Classic Sci-Fi Illustrations/Sci-Fi
Magazine/Book Covers
Illustrations for science fiction, especially books
and magazines covers, have been a major source of income
for many space artists. Here are some resources devoted
to such art.
Earth
and Space Foundation Art Collection - the non-profit
group that funds both space and environmental projects
holds an impressive collection of original space art.
We list here a sampling of exhibits
of astronomical and space exploration photographs, which
were created with a particular artistic viewpoint and
talent.
David
Malin Capturing Ancient Light
Malin shows photos taken from an Australian observatory
since 1975 and "represent techniques of photographic
observation pioneered by David Malin."
Sight
Unseen
"Astronomical and Space images from 1860 to the
1920." This exhibit at Howard Schickler provides
a history of space photography
Dreams of Space - John Sisson
John Sisson had a website devoted to the history of
art in childrens' books about space, now gone
unfortunately. Covers several periods between 1949 to
1974.
For more about Space books for Children,
see Alexa
Smith in the book
section.
Visions
of Space
This book by David A. Hardy
with a forword by Arthur C. Clarke this book traces the
history of space art and displays the work of 75 artists.
Published by Paper Tiger/Dragon's World. Out of print
but can be found in used book stores on line and off.
Ron Miller, The Worlds of Lucien Rudaux,
Final Frontier, May/June 1991. A look at the famous
French astronomer-illustrator who help create the
space art genre.
"...The object of the I.A.A.A., as a nonprofit
foundation is to implement and participate in astronomical
and space-art projects, to promote education about
astronomical art, and to foster further international
cooperation in artistic work inspired by the exploration
of the universe."- from the IAAA Manifesto.
See also
Members
list for links to many individual artist galleries.
".. aims to make visible the work of artists,
writers, composers and others interested in the exploration
of outer space. We also aim to help establish contact
between artists, scientists and engineers interested
in working together on space art projects." -
Leonardo website at MIT.
"... introduce, nurture and expand a cultural
dimension to humanity's astronautical endeavors. This
task will be manifested through the identification,
investigation, support and realization of related
cultural, astronautical, humanitarian, environmental
and educational activities which may take place both
on and off planet Earth, and which are deemed as beneficial
to the development and advancement of human civilization
in this new environment." - OURS home page.
OURS has organized numerous activities such as the
Ars
Ad Astra space art exhibit on the MIR space station
in 1995.
SPAACSE
Society of Performers, Artists, Athletes, and Celebrities
for Space Exploration
SPAACSE is a space activist organization made up of
people from the arts,
entertainment and sports world.
The group offers yearly scholarship awards to promising
space artists, There are also frequent space "fun"
contests: SPAACSE
-- Member Contests
ASCI
: Art & Science Collaborations - "to
raise public awareness about artists and scientists
using science and technology to explore new forms
of creative expression, and to increase communication
and collaborations between these fields."
West-to-Mars
- This is a collaborative
art project that is dedicated to Mars. Inspired
in particular by Robert Zubrin's The Case for Mars,
the project sees Mars exploration both as a space
project and as a wonderful inspiration to artists.
Contributions include not only graphic arts but also
sculpture, poetry, theatre, etc. West-to-Mars
Poster
Art in Space
The
Arts Catalyst
- Dancers on the Russian
parabolic trainer aircraft experiencing microgravity
Some art has
now been taken to space and more trips are planned.
These have been for both symbolic and practical purposes.
Frank
Pietronigro
Pietronigro has carried out a space arts projects while
riding on planes flying parabolic trajectories to provide
periods of microgravity.
Lowry
Burgess
Burgess "created the first official Non-Scientific
Payload, the "Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture", taken
into outer space by NASA in March of 1989". Burgess
is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
A 28min video of the cosmonauts Alexander Polischuk
and Gennadi Mannakov and their experiences with the
sculpture in weightlessness was made. A short clip is
available.
To finance the project, which cost $150,000, he created
99 versions of the sculpture for sale.
The Moon Museum 1969 -"a small ceramic
tile carried on Apollo 12 on which American artists,
including Robert Rauschenbuerg and Andy Warhol, had
drawn small motifs" - Arts
Catalyst
The Fallen Astronaut - 1972 - "a small
figurine by Dutch artist Paul Van Hoeydonk sent and
left on the Moon on Apollo 15 as part of an astronaut's
personal effects"Arts
Catalyst
Boundless Cubic Lunar Aperture - 1989 -Lowry
Burgess created this "conceptual artwork including
holograms and cubes made from all the elements known
to science, which flew on the space shuttle as a self
contained non-scientific payload" Arts
Catalyst
Damien
Hirst on Mars
The European Mars
Express mission to Mars in 2003 involved an orbiter
vehicle that released a separate module called Beagle
2 that was suppose to land on the surface.
To help calibrate the lander camera, it carried along
a painting by the artist Damien
Hirst. The artist, who had won the prestigous Turner
prize with a colorful "dot" style painting,
worked with the imager's scientists to create a similar
work with carefully chosen colors and materials to insure
that the camera would have a good metric to obtain the
true Martian colors.
This would have been the first human work of art to
be placed on the surface of another world. Unfortunately,
the Beagle 2 did not land safely on the surface and
the lander mission failed.
Susan Collins, director of the Tate in Space program,
has informed me that the ETALAB
- Extra-Terrestrial Architecture Laboratory is "one
of three architectural practices invited to propose
models for a new Tate in Space as part of the Tate in
Space project."
" There is also now launched a competition open
to everyone to also submit propositions/models for the
new Tate in space...[D]etails can be found at http://www.tate.org.uk/space/spacearch.htm#4
The ISADORA Module
Richard Seabra led this effort to add an arts module
to the International Space Station. Visual artists,
dancers, filmmakers, artisans, and other creative people
would visit the station to experience Space and communicate
their impressions to the world in their own unique way.
[Read my suggestions for artistic creations in space
in the Future
section. - Ed.]
"high-tech, art-science project designed by
Slovenian artist Marko Peljhan and managed by the
Projekt Atol Institute. It is a temporary sustainable
laboratory designed to support 4 - 6 artists and scientists
working and living alongside each other in isolation
for periods of up to 120 days." - Arts
Catalyst
"Loosely based on the Spider and Jeanne
Robinson’s series of novels, Stardance (Dial Press
1979), Starseed (Ace Books 1991) and Starmind
(Ace Books 1995). The story follows astronaut
Treya Anderson, a full time maintenance worker
on a space station orbiting earth in the not too
distant future. Both a dancer and an engineer,
she chose science and space over a career in dance,
but now, circumstances and opportunity will combine
to allow her to merge her two passions into transcendent
art with cosmic consequences."
Aurora 2001 - "..evening-length work of dance,
music and visual presentation about the mystic luminaries
of the Arctic and Antarctic skies, the northern and
southern lights."
Classika-Synetic
Theatre in Arlington, Virginia performed in 2006
a space inspired childrens play called Galactika.
"In collaboration with NASA, Classika-Synetic Theatre
has put together a show filled with dance, pantomime
and learning. Reporter Halley Comet takes kids on
a tour through the galaxy, encountering planets, stars
and nebulas." See the Washington
Post review.
NASA Glenn Research Center "was a collaborating
partner for a ballet choreographed by Mr. Jeffrey
Graham Hughes, Artistic Director of the Ohio Ballet,
to the music of Gustav Holst’s The Planets.
It was presented in Cleveland and Akron, Ohio, in
February of 2000." (See poster image above.)
The company dancEvert
collaborated on aeronautical themed work in 2006 called
Confluence.
A similar theme was in a work in 2003 called Wild
Blue Yonder from the choreographer Elizabeth Streb.
From Mercury to the most recent shuttle
flight, the astronauts on every mission wore a unique
patch designed by the crew. A patch symbolically describes
the mission objectives.
When a mission is first assigned, a member
of each crew, typically a first time astronaut, becomes
the lead contact with the NASA Graphics Division. He
or she communicates the ideas of the whole crew to a
graphics programmer who constructs a computer image
for the patch. Once approved by the crew, the patches
are made by authorized manufacturers.
Besides US manned missions, patches are
also available for Soviet/Russian missions and for many
unmanned/commercial spacecraft missions.
Collecting patches has become a popular
hobby. They have high artistic merit and offer an interesting
approach to learning the history of space exploration.
Astronomy Drawing
Astronomers, amateur and professional, often make sketches
of what they are seeing in their telescopes, e.g. lunar
or planetary features, for both enjoyment and future
reference. Here are some astronomers showing their sketches:
Imagine
Mars - K-12 education program that invites students
to develop ideas for a Mars community including art
and other aspects of culture on a new world.
MARS
PATENT - "The first interplanetarian Exhibition
Space on Mars" - concept site
Hardyware: The Art of David A. Hardy
C. Morgan, S. Baxter, D. A. Hardy- 2001
Amazon: USUK
" A retrospective of the life and work of David
A Hardy, the world's longest-established space artist, and a former President
of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA)"
The Art of
Chesley Bonestell
Ron Miller, Frederick C. Durant III - 2001
Amazon: USUK
Finally a book with a broad selection of Bonestell's
glorious space art. Bonestell's marvelous visions of space helped prepare
the public of the 1940s and '50s for the space age and continue to inspire
us today.
Visions of Spaceflight : Images
from the Ordway Collection
Frederick Ordway - 2001
Amazon: USUK
