The Individual
No. 7
Cygnus-17 Launch from Wallops Space Flight Center on Feb 19th 2022.
My work was among 64 works sent to the ISS.
Moon gallery floating in the cupola on the ISS. You can see the rice grain floating in the upper right, second row.
Mock up of the grain in microgravity. The grain will have space to tumble and float while it's aboard the ISS.
A series of 12 was originally made in the summer of 2021. No.7 has been sent to space.
Using a microscope and a custom-made brush of carbon fiber threads, the rice grain was hand-painted with oil.
The Individual no.7 will spend 10 months aboard the International Space Station as part of the Moon Gallery test flight exhibit with Nanoracks. The launch took place on Feb 19th. With this work I challenge others to think about how they fit into an indifferent universe. Does its emptiness provide a canvas where change is possible or are we in perfect equilibrium? By hand-painting a human figure on a rice grain the viewer is confronted by the limits of their own scale to see the image and by the scale at which the human is represented in the larger universe. Even though the figure is small and alone in a vast emptiness they are capable of standing out and creating visible change.
This feeling of miniscule scale and the question of genuine impact represent a connection between astronomy and philosophy that I visualize through art as a way of reminding us of this dissonance and to eventually come to terms with it. Humans struggle with comprehending the vastness of space and this incomprehension can be unsettling. Accepting the small magnitude of our existence is an important step in forming a more comfortable relationship with scale and the universe.
Using a brush made from carbon fiber thread and a microscope, I'm able to paint at a scale limited only by the precision of my hand movement. The figures are just barely distinguishable to the naked eye. How does it feel that the Universe contains scales at which a human, the Earth, and even the Solar System become indistinguishable?