Bon Voyage. Good luck. See ya later. Godspeed.

A spacesuit has 27 layers. Like the garments they bear, Adam Devarney’s travelers navigate through a layered patchwork of imagined narratives. Devarney’s pieces were first included in a 2010 exhibition entitled Godspeed, collaged portraits pieced together in a dream-like narrative of hallowed ghosts of aviators past, suited up for a prosperous journey ahead. The Fox is Black reader and Vermont native speaks of his process:

“I’m interested in how narratives arise from simply taking things out of context and thrusting them together,” Deverney says. “How the collage material relates depends on the associations we make with the content.  They are almost like dreams to me… Vague fogs, with little snippets of information that allude to some sort of dialogue or story.”

Alana

This week’s Space Suit of the Weeek comes from Ric Stultz, an illustrator and painter hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Reaching Out to You, The Dream Got Control, and Sleeping with the Fishes (above) are really playful and rather cheeky, a departure from a lot of the work we feature. After taking a stroll through his portfolio, I was chuckling more often than not. His work feels familiar or rather comfortable – like you’re sharing a recurring childhood dream where imagination was the basis of reality.

Alana

The earth is a truly spectacular place. Michael König compiled this video from footage taken by Expedition XXVIII & IXX aboard the International Space Station from August to October 2011. The footage is courtesy of NASA Johnson Space Center Image Science & Analysis Laboratory’s Gateway to Astronaut Photography.

König’s compilation includes a number of views of Aurora Borealis & Aurora Australis. One would be quite cosmically fortunate to witness something so spectacular from earth let alone witness it from space- repetitively. Expeditions are long duration missions flown by the Russian Federal Space Agency usually lasting about four months in orbit. These sights, shown above, occur more often than most enough will ever have the opportunity to enjoy (unless you live in the arctic circle).

I tried to calculate how many times one would be able to possibly witness these sights from the International Space Station, but calculus has been long been lost in the dusty archives of my brain. I did however figure that those on board see eighteen sunsets and eighteen sunrises every twenty-four hours. Give or take a couple, an Expedition crew member could witness 2,162 sunsets during a mission. I can’t even begin to fathom what it would feel like to wake up in the morning, look out the window and see the sunset or the green hues of an Aurora Borealis dance across the horizon. Let’s only hope that the crew isn’t jaded by the end of it.

Alana

Originally found via Colossal. Also thanks to the7000club for the tip!

Alicia Framis is the Lost Astronaut.

The Lost Astronaut was one of the Performa 09 Biennial performance installations that explored the identity of the astronaut and concept of living on the moon. The activities performed by the lost (female) astronaut were dictated by a slew of other authors and artists–like complete a New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, ride a subway line from end point to end point, etc. The work explored a domestic side of space exploration or, rather, the lack thereof.

Framis situates the iconic landing on the moon in the metropolitan American dream. The work is subtle, almost transcendental, as she stops to experience the city in a new, leisurely and monumental fashion.

In a city that never sleeps, its easy to feel lost.

Performa 11, New Visual Art Performance Biennial, is currently underway in New York City. It ends November 21st.

Alana

William Immer takes classic portraits persons in social and political power and places them into contemporaneity, making for playful and rich oil paintings. He is associated with Aureus Contemporary and their statement on him explains: “Working with the idea that the history of art is often lost in the broad view of things, Immer started taking a closer look at how people view that history and what exactly they might be looking at. Starting with the language of the observed, he began to take the details into all sorts of visual direction.” Astro-Lady does just that. I honestly don’t know anything about seventeenth century portraiture or the source of inspiration to this piece, but my heart skipped a beat when I first saw it.

This piece reminds me of Kenn Brown and Cris Wren’s Blue Boy Re-Visioned (2004) that Alex wrote about last year. Their Cosmonaut rendition of Gainsbourough’s The Boy Boy (1770) was the cover piece of an anthology of short stories of how the world would be different if various technologies evolved and were successfully applied at an earlier time. Simliarily, Immer’s Astro-Lady could be a fitting cover.

Astro-Lady is shown in the classic astronaut pose in a white EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity, AKA space walk) suit and helmet resting by her forearm. Donned in her Elizabethan collar and bonnet, the colors of Holland are brandished across her arm. I enjoy that she’s wearing an EVA suit whose white color is intended to reflect the sun’s heat so the astronaut doesn’t get too warm. In my opinion, portraiture in the seventeenth century is cold and sterile: Astro-Lady is one intergalactic monarch that I wouldn’t mind paying homage to.

Found via Juxtapoz Magazine

Alana