Category Archives: Space Arts

Space Arts, Space participation

ISS crew member Karen Nyberg invites crafters to join in making a grand astronomical quilt

I’ve mentioned before that astronaut Karen Nyberg, currently an ISS crew member, likes to sew as a hobby. (See posts here and here.)  She is now joining with Quilts.com and challenging other sewing enthusiasts to combine their  star themed quilt squares with the one she has made on the station : Astronomical Quilts Block Challenge – Quilts.com (pdf).

She describes sewing in microgravity in this video. At the end she describes the astronomical quilt project:

Here is a NASA announcement about here challenge:

NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Contribute a Star Block 

International Space Station Expedition 37 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA, a lifelong lover of sewing, is inviting fellow crafters to join her in stitching together a global community space quilt.

Nyberg, who is in the final weeks of her mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, recently shared a star-themed quilt block she was able to complete during her limited free time in space.  She is now inviting quilters from the public to create their own star-themed quilt blocks to help celebrate her mission and passion for the quilting arts.

“Now that I’ve tried my hand sewing in space, I can say one thing with certainty: it’s tricky,” Nyberg said in a video sent down from the space station. “This is what I’ve made. It’s far from being a masterpiece, but it was made in space. I’m inviting all of you to create your own star-themed quilt block. We’ll be combining them with my block to create a quilt for next year’s 40th anniversary International Quilt Festival in Houston. I can’t wait to see what we make together.”

Nyberg’s complete video and other video clips of her quilting aboard the space station will be featured in a NASA exhibit at the 39th annual International Quilt Festival Thursday through Sunday, Nov. 3 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Sewing and quilting include many of the principles and technical skills used in developing equipment for spaceflight missions. The exhibit will include sewn samples from spacesuits and parachutes, a cargo transfer bag and other soft goods from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The deadline for submitting a block for the quilt is Aug. 1, 2014. For more information about where to send your block, visit: http://www.quilts.com

Nyberg and The International Quilt Festival will collaborate on having the squares stitched together for display at the 40th annual International Quilt Festival in 2014 and at other public displays. The Houston festival is the largest annual quilt festival in the world, attracting more than 60,000 guests annually.

Nyberg arrived at the space station with Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency in May. The trio is scheduled to return to Earth Nov. 10.

For Nyberg’s complete biography, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/np5ICw

For more information about Nyberg’s personal sewing hobbies visit: http://go.nasa.gov/CraftyKaren

For more about the 39th annual International Quilt Festival, visit: http://www.quilts.com

For more information about the International Space Station, onboard research and crew members, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/station

Living in Space, Space Arts

A spiral top with LEDs produces beautiful patterns in micro-g

Via Universe Today comes a pointer to an interesting in-space microgravity art event carried out a few years ago in the Japanese Kibo module on the International Space Station : “Auroral Oval Spiral Top” Performed in Kibo:Experiment – International Space Station – JAXA

The “Auroral Oval Spiral Top”, which was proposed by Professor Takuro Osaka of the University of Tsukuba,  involves a “spinning top that has arms illuminating with LED linear light sources and point light sources. Various movements of the spinning top floating in microgravity show aurora-like light traces.”  The image below came from a “performance” on May 11, 2011.  Unfortunately, I can’t find a video of the event.

Photo: Aurora Oval Spiral Top

Aurora Oval Spiral Top

An earlier trial in 2009 used a simpler “spiral top”:

Spiral Top (performed in April 2009)

Spiral Top (performed in April 2009)

According to the JAXA page:

The project’s precursor mission “Spiral Top”, which was performed on April 30, 2009, was designed to produce light arts using a spinning top that has arms illuminating with LED point light sources. “Auroral Oval Spiral Top” was the second version and designed to produce aurora-like luminescence traces using a spinning top with both linear and point light sources. In microgravity, the center of gravity of the spinning top continuously and randomly moves while it is spinning. Using the characteristics of the top in microgravity, the project tries to produce various light arts using its unexpected movements/spins, by changing attaching locations of its arms and weights.

I hope that in a few years, the cost of putting people into space will drop to the point it will be possible for many artists and artisans to experience space and microgravity first hand. I expect there will be many amazing things they will come up with as they experiment with the effects that microgravity can produce.

Space Arts, Space films and videos, Space Music

Music video: “How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze” by Simon Lacy with Natasha Marsh & Jack Liebeck

Simon Lacey has released a new video for the project A Quarter Of A Million Miles, which was inspired by Michael Collins’ famous book Carrying The Fire in which Collins described his role as the Command Module pilot during the Apollo 11 mission. (See earlier post here.)

How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze features soprano Natasha Marsh and violinist Jack Liebeck:

Simon describes the project here:

And here is the video released earlier this year titled The Thought of Floating In Space with Liebeck on solo violin:

Space Arts, Space Collecting

Searching for a big rocket relic

A Project Designer at Quezada Architecture is looking for a large non-working rocket component. She is

working on a commercial interiors project in Redwood City, California. We are designing the corporate lobby of Rocketfuel‘€™s main building, and are looking for a piece of a rocket (or something along those lines) to act as a centerpiece for the lobby entrance. The lobby is a 2 story volume and so it could probably reach 12[ft]€™ high and 6-8[ft]™ diameter at max. Budget for this project is negotiable but this is the centerpiece of the company’s headquarters so we are serious about getting something that works for us. We were thinking something along the lines of a sounding rocket, but are open to anything along the lines of a rocket shell/engine/nose that you would be able to find.

(Via Aleta Jackson of XCOR.) If you have such a part or know where one might be available, let me know here and I will pass the info along.

Space Arts

Space artwork goes for nearly $4M

Christies  just had an auction of Post-War and Contemporary Art and it included the piece Böcklin’s Tomb (copied from ‘Floating Cities’ 1981 by Chris Foss) by Glenn Brown.  Brown is known for taking existing work and embellishing it. This piece is a variation on Floating Cities by well known  illustrator Chris Foss, who has done many space science fiction works.

Böcklin’s Tomb (copied from ‘Floating Cities’ 1981 by Chris Foss) 
It’s not exactly my idea of realistic space art but it definitely is space themed. It made a big impression on the person who purchased it for $3.8M.
Update Jan.9.14: Brown sells another work derived from another sci-fi artist: How a Science Fiction Book Cover Became a $5.7 Million Painting- io9