Hosted by the Tulsa Artist Fellowship and featuring multidisciplinary luminaries, including the first Black female space pilot, Earthbound blends art and science.
TULSA, OK—As light pollution increases exponentially throughout the world, the exhibition Earthbound at the Flagship project space in Tulsa, Oklahoma, explores dark-sky preservation through an artistic lens, bringing together artworks that consider our interconnectedness with the cosmos.
The show is presented by Space For Us, a platform founded by the artist and aspiring astrophysicist Cheyenne Smith to champion STEAM careers and resources in underserved communities, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, an initiative that aims to promote arts production in the region, with support from the George Kaiser Family Foundation and others.
The exhibition features an unlikely mix of artists and scientists, including Smith; the artist and UX engineer Mattaniah Aytenfsu; the astronaut, artist, geologist, and doctoral science educator Sian Proctor; the artist and chemist Tyler Thrasher; and the artist Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota/Mohegan/Muscogee).
Art is a way to interpret and imagine science.
In a statement made at the opening of the exhibition in October, Smith said Earthbound is “an experience that creatively illuminates the importance of dark preservation and deepens our understanding and connection to the night sky.”
Smith adds that “art is a way to interpret and imagine science,” and the exhibition serves as “a reminder of our dual nature—rooted on Earth but always… seeking knowledge and meaning from the stars.” It reflects the “tension between our grounding in the physical world and our desire to go beyond it.”
The show is appropriately presented in a dimly lit space, featuring a series of wall texts with didactic information about light pollution juxtaposed with works that bridge themes of the earthly and celestial.
Smith’s own contribution to Earthbound is a work titled Cheyenne’s Nightstand (2024), an installation that captures nostalgic childhood memories of space. It features a series of classic VHS tapes, like Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage and Bill Nye the Science Guy’s Outer Space, and other books and videos that have fueled generations of interest in space exploration.
A centerpiece of the exhibition is the compelling series Artemis Collection by Proctor, who was the first Black woman to pilot a spacecraft and the first Black female artist to paint in space when she was a participant in SpaceX’s Inspiration4 mission in 2021. TuProctor calls her work “a tribute to humanity’s earthbound connection to the moon and our quest to go into the dark sky,” and engages with real and imagined histories of lunar exploration.
Proctor began her art practice during the coronavirus pandemic as a much-needed creative outlet, and has been deeply influenced by the so-called “overview effect,” or the sight of Earth from space. Works like Afrobotica Ciseaux, The joy of one giant leap for womankind and Red Moon, To rise beyond a copper past to create a new norm for women in space (both from 2023) show female figures leaping triumphantly or dancing over the moon. She produced the seven works in the Artemis Collection series by laser cutting, engraving, and layering wooden panels and other materials.
Tyler Thrasher, who has background as a self-taught chemist, artist, and botanist, presents Moonbeam Flora Garden and Moonbeam Portals (both from this year)—works that incorporate phosphorescent mineral powder to give the illusion of a wild “glowing gardens.” The artist wanted to “make older minds feel the wonder of childlike curiosity again,” he writes, prompting the viewer to “find themselves as kids again staring at the glowing stars in their ceiling.”
Traditional [Indigenous] life revolved around star knowledge.
Other highlights include Under the Guidance of Hanwi (2024) by Marlena Myles, a self-taught artist based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, who blends ancestral and contemporary Indigenous storytelling in her work. The augmented reality work is experienced through a QR code and reveals the Hanwí, the Dakota moon spirit. The figure’s eyes are the brightest component of the piece, representing a guiding light in the darkness. Viewers can engage with the installation by tapping on the labels of thirteen lunar months to make the constellations rotate around the North Star.
“Traditional life revolved around star knowledge, which taught us when to harvest, when to plant, when to hunt, and when to have certain ceremonies,” Myles explains in her statement. “Thus, the months are lunar based and given titles to reflect traditional society reflecting the star world above.”
The Tulsa Artist Fellowship, which has partly sponsored the exhibition, invites artists to live in Tulsa and provides them with a housing allowance, stipend, and studio. For the last two years, the organization has held an open house weekend, which kicked off in October with the opening of Earthbound and a series of open studios with participating fellows not included in the exhibition, in addition to panels, film screenings, performances, and other art-centered events.
