That phrase originated with Star Trek, right? Space, where no man had gone before? Today it’s two women’s turn: two artists who have done some incredible work with space and constellations.

The first is Scottish artist Katie Paterson who has an enviable knack for combining scientific research with creative genius: In 2017 she built Totality, an installation that culled images of every stage of a solar eclipse from the body of 10,000 which have been created since a drawing in 1778.  The images span drawings dating from hundreds of years ago through nineteenth-century photography and up to the most advanced telescopic technologies. Over 10,000 images reflect the progression of a solar eclipse across the room – from partial to total – mirroring the sequence of the Sun eclipsed by the Moon.She printed each individual image onto a mirrored panel, and then inserted it into a disco ball spanning 32.5 inches. Each row was arranged in the order that the sun eclipses, so began with quarter eclipses and finished with totality. You can see the whole thing for yourself in the clip below.

This year she will show her newest work, The Cosmic Spectrum, which encompasses the color of the universe from its very beginning to its eventual end. Working with scientists who have pioneered research on the cosmic spectrum, Paterson created a spinning wheel which charts the color of the universe through each era of its existence. 

Here is her own description: The Cosmic Spectrum encompasses the colour of the universe throughout its existence, spinning in one continuous cycle. It charts a history of starlight, from the primordial era, through the Dark Ages and the appearance of the first stars, to the current Stelliferous Era and into the Far Future. It uses the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and speculative data from leading scientists to establish the average colour of each era. The 2dF Redshift Survey measures the light from a large volume of the universe, more than 200,000 galaxies. Scientists Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry analysis this data in order to determine the average colour of the universe today as it would be perceived by the human eye – a colour they coined ‘Cosmic Latte’.

Cosmic Latte – I like that!

While Paterson utilizes science, and conceives of her shows as exhibitions of ideas, Vija Celmins tackles the constellations as a subject for her passion:the illusionistic process of image making itself. The Latvian-American artist, now in her eighties, uses satellite photographs to depict the night sky. Over decades she painstakingly drew layers and layers of charcoal, often sanded down, and then used erasers to add the stars. A current retrospective runs at San Francisco’s MoMa, with at least 40 paintings and drawings of the night sky. https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/vija-celmins/

Nothing but horizonless sky, dotted with stars and planets. As a reviewer noted:One of the primary philosophical questions of art has to do with its dual function as an illusory window, through which we view a subject beyond, and as an object to be valued for itself. Celmins has dedicated her career to consideration of that great dilemma. Ultimately, as this exhibition reveals, the subject is the picture.

Here is a nice illustration of the starry night illusion:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CubCXWeo53w

And here are illusions of light:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2wnuBV_nRE