It’s not every day that one of the artists we work with has their work displayed in space. It’s not as if there are any fine art galleries on the moon (just yet!). But, artist Lisa Pettibone has actually had her glass artwork sent high up into the stratosphere and onto the International Space Station (ISS).
Among the scientific equipment and ISS crew supplies was a small purple canister, containing a series of miniature artworks, each one measuring just 1 cubic centimetre. Dubbed the ‘Moon Gallery’, these diminutive artworks are paving the way for the first glass art gallery to be displayed on the moon, sometime in the near future.
This ‘Lunar Louvre’ will house “the seeds of a future, interplanetary culture.” Where it will be based on the Moon has yet to be decided.
In the meantime, the current 64 works of art, arranged in an 8×8 grid, are a mix of media and formats, varying in material and in 2D, 3D and Augmented Reality, are paving the way for future art in space.
The first Moon Gallery has been provided by Texas-based company Nanoracks, which provides payload services to the ISS.
The gallery is housed in a research module that enables the artworks to float around inside.
The art serves as moving targets for Nanorack camera performance tests and also enables artists to see how their artwork will react in a gravity-free environment.
Lisa, originally from the US, but now based in Surrey, England, created a tiny glass art and thread sculpture, which utilises and explores the concept of weightlessness in art.
The structure of the artwork is based on the chlorophyll molecule which allows plants to absorb energy from light and is essential to all plant life on earth.
Lisa’s art piece returned to terra firma yesterday (January 11th 2023) after many months circling the earth, 250 miles above the surface.