I have been making visual art for over 3 decades and, before this year, not once had I used meteorites as a subject in my art. In fact, add me to the list of folks who (until about a year ago) didn’t even know that a meteorite collectors market existed, let alone that meteoritics was its own field of study. It was a bit embarrassing for me because astronomy, astrophysics, and space exploration have been long-time fascinations of mine. Being oblivious to the treasure trove of information that is meteoritics felt like a massive oversight. The things that we have learned, and continue to learn, from meteorites are central to understanding the origins of our solar system. That’s a pretty big deal! So the idea of being able to hold a rock from space was, and is, very exciting.
After discovering this new and exciting thing, I went out and bought the first meteorite that I could find: an overpriced Campo crystal. But this only whetted my appetite and, soon enough, reading about meteorites and collecting them consumed most of my free time. My partner and I even drove out to the desert on several occasions to try and make finds of our own. And when something is on my mind this much it tends to make its way into my art, in one form or another.
As a working artist, it’s difficult to negotiate my unique artistic vision with market demand. 100% of my income comes from murals, paintings, and tattoos so it can feel as if my voice gets lost in a sea of very specific ideas that patrons and clients provide for me. Don’t get me wrong, there are some artists that become famous and never have to compromise their artistic vision but they are the exception, not the rule. For most of us, we have to adapt to market trends if we want to get paid for our art. In short, it’s not often when my personal interests intersect with my professional (A.K.A paid) art projects. But, “not often,” does not mean, “never,” and I recently had the pleasure and excitement of getting paid to make meteorite art.
To the date of this writing, I have made 2 pieces of meteorite-related art in a professional capacity. The first was a painting that I designed to be painted live. The second was a tattoo. The following paragraphs offer a glimpse into my processes and some general thoughts about my experience.
I was commissioned by the Asilomar Hotel and Conference Grounds to do a live painting for an event. Their concept for the painting was “anything that represents Asilomar (history, architecture, nature).” Asilomar is a picturesque part of the California coastline, in Monterey County. I thought the obvious thing to do would be a landscape painting of some sort but, since I had meteorites on my mind, I decided to do a little research and see if there had been any meteorite-related happenings in the area. Much to my surprise and glee, I found an old newspaper article from 1906, in the San Pedro Daily News, about an observed fireball in Monterey County, not far from Asilomar. It was as if the heavens had opened wide and the perfect subject for me to paint blasted through the atmosphere and into my brain. I pitched the idea to the organizer of the event and they agreed (it helped that the organizer is an old friend of mine but a win is a win!), so I got to work.
I love doing research for new projects. I have as much fun, if not more, figuring out how to put something together than I do painting (I’m actually trained as a historian but how/why I became an artist is a story for another time). Lucky for me, modern technology gives me access to photos and videos of observed meteorite falls from around the world. After getting a good idea of what a meteor traveling through the atmosphere looks like, I parsed the details of the article to build the scene in my imagination. I wanted to make it as historically accurate as I could so I reviewed dozens of historical photos of Monterey County to help me recreate what the landscape might have looked like 100+ years ago. I found the photos taken by Billy Emery in the mid-20th century very useful for this purpose.
By the time I sat down to design the painting on my iPad, I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted it to look. It only took me a couple of hours to complete the digital version of the painting (I can usually produce one good design in an 8-10 day, but it can sometimes take longer depending on the agree-ability of the client and my relative interest in the project). Every painting, mural, and tattoo that I create has a digital counterpart that I use as its reference. I generally don’t use them for much beyond serving that function, to help me make a real, physical piece of art. But I loved this digital design so much that I had to have prints of it made, along with a small booklet with a reprinting of the original newspaper article. I figured that I could offer them up for sale during the event and maybe make a little extra on the side (I also wanted one to display in my home).
The event was in February and was a resounding success. I had printouts of the newspaper clippings displayed while I was painting so that attendees could understand the local context of the piece. I enjoyed some really good conversations and finished the painting before the event ended (phew!). Not only did I sell some prints, but I even sold the finished painting to the hotel so they could display it on their property.
I was very encouraged by the outcome of that project so, when I was contacted about a sword-in-the-stone themed tattoo, I pitched the idea of using a meteorite as the “stone” element in the design. Again, much to my glee and surprise, my client agreed (it helped that this client was also a good friend of mine… I’m sensing a pattern here). The general concept for the tattoo was, “sword in the stone,” featuring the Master Sword, from the video game franchise, The Legend of Zelda, in a forest setting.
Designing a tattoo is different than designing a mural or painting. A good tattoo design requires high-contrast between black and grey inks and the negative space in the design (the skin tone). (This is only the case for black and gray tattoos. Color tattoos are applied a little differently but I don’t offer color tattoos for several reasons that you can ask me about) There’s also limited space on the human body so issues of scale can come up during the design process. This design was for the back of the forearm.
With the parameters of the design set, I had an important choice to make: what kind of meteorite should I use? I wanted to use a meteorite that would serve 2 purposes–1) look like a meteorite to the layperson, and, 2) be doable in a high-contrast, tattoo design style. Ironically, I figured an iron meteorite would be the best option for the “stone” element of the design so I scoured the internet for reference photos of iron meteorites with well defined regmaglypts.
The obvious choice seemed to be the Sikhote-Alin meteorite. In addition to being one of the cool historical falls of the 20th century, Sikhote-Alin individuals have that classic, sculpted metal look that I think anyone can recognize as a meteorite. It also helps that there are tons of great photos of it that are viewable online. Unsurprisingly, many of the highest resolution photos of meteorites are posted on websites for big auction houses. That’s where I found the right reference for this tattoo design. (I won’t mention which big auction house website it was taken from but, if I gave you two guesses, there’s a 100% chance that you will guess correctly.)
After getting client approval for the design, we set an appointment and I did the tattoo in March. It took about 5 hours to complete and it was the first time that I’ve had someone fall asleep during the tattoo. I was very pleased with the outcome and, more importantly, my client loves his new tattoo. He told me that it came out better than he could have imagined, which is always nice to hear. It came out so good that I decided to tattoo a small meteorite on myself a few days later.
These were both really fun projects and, as I was reflecting on my experience, I was curious to see what came up when I typed the words, “meteorite art,” into Google’s search engine. The results were somewhat surprising to me. There was the expected slew of websites that sell stock images and merchandise with those stock images printed on them. There were a few science-sounding websites that sold prints of photographs and authorless art. There’s some dude who makes “paintings” with “meteorite material” that look like dirt smeared across a canvas (yikes!), along with a bunch of other abstract art that is meteorite-related by name only. Besides a few notable exceptions, I was a little let down by these search results and I went several pages deep (the notable exceptions: “The Meteorite” by Samuel S. Hoskins, “Dawn at Junction City” by Erlang Erlangga, and a very cool project by Katie Paterson that I don’t have the space to explain here).
I was expecting more contemporary artists focusing their gaze on meteoritics because, by any account, meteoritics has been having a cultural moment. The discovery of a new near-Earth asteroid, 2024 YR4, that briefly had about a 3% chance of colliding with Earth in 2032 was widely reported by every major media outlet. Results from the OSIRIS-REx mission that returned samples from the asteroid Bennu were published this year, confirming what meteorites have been telling us for decades–that organic compounds exist in the asteroid belt and may have been delivered to Earth via meteorites, spawning all life as we know it. Not to mention the ever increasing amount of video evidence documenting witnessed falls, and the first ever meteorite impact caught on a doorbell video camera. The amount of clicks that this kind of content generates suggests that the public is very interested in meteoritics, even if it only trends for brief moments.
The cultural implications of a large meteorite impact with Earth, or that the building blocks of life exist elsewhere in our solar system, are huge. As we continue to learn more from the study of meteoritics, the space that it occupies in our collective imaginations will continue to grow, as well, because it begs the question that humans have been grappling with for millennia: How did we get here?
Art has the potential to deepen our understanding of the human experience and our place in this universe. My hope with these few small projects is that they foster curiosity in those who see them. If my art can start a conversation, then it was well worth my time. I look forward to making more meteorite art and, if I can get paid while doing it, even better!
