First Light - New Work

First Light

In anticipation of the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, I am thrilled to share new artwork I made in response to this incredible event. I was so excited that I made not one, not two, but three new art quilts featuring the telescope and its mission. This one is titled First Light, and it depicts the telescope arriving and setting up at the second Lagrange Point. One of its early missions will be to find and study the first light objects that formed after the big Bang. Here I have imagined three vignettes of the imagery the telescope will transmit back to us.

First Light, detail 1

The telescope in my quilt is made of hand stitched gold silk hexagons, with a gray silk depiction of the sun shield. The telescope and shield were engineered to fold up in order to fit in the rocket for launching, and once deployed it will slowly unfold and get set up for observation.

First Light, detail 2

The gold coating on the beryllium mirrors is a stunning example of form following function.

First Light, detail 3

The telescope will use infrared to see farther, and further back in time, than is currently possible, so I was able to freely visualize the type of imagery that will be transmitted back to earth once it begins its missions.

First Light, detail 4

The background on the quilt is made of black silk noil, which has the combination of sheen and deep intensity I felt worked well to evoke the darkness of space. The vignette panels are wool, silk, and mylar fibers, needlefelted and then heavily stitched and hand-beaded with glass beads and semi-precious stones so that they glitter and gleam.

First Light, detail 5

The telescope and vignettes are surrounded by handstitched hexagon shapes. I spent a lot of my pandemic anxiety obsessively stitching hexagon "flowers" in three different colorways and two different sizes, which I then auditioned on the background before joining them into the large panels for the quilts.

After the hexagons are all painstaking joined, it's time for the fast and fun paper removal process.

  I've been obsessed with hexagons ever since working on my first JWST quilt, Luminosity.

Luminosity

In November of 2016 I was one of a group of 22 wonderfully diverse artists selected nationwide to attend the James Webb Space Telescope Artist Event at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. 

I had the opportunity to meet and interact with engineers, technicians and other team members from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, the world's next-generation space observatory, tour Goddard's Integration and Test facility, see the world's largest clean room facility, and see the James Webb Space Telescope itself. I had time to sit in front of the mirror and create, which I spent hand stitching silk hexagons for my representation of the mirror. Back in the studio, I worked on creating a large art quilt, and documented the visit and the process on my blog. You can read about all things JWST in reverse chronological order by clicking the tab in the top header. 

And in a nod to Luminosity, I had one of my images from that day printed up for the backing of the quilt.

Sue Reno, with First Light

First Light is 40" square; I'm posing with it here to give you a sense of scale.

So what lies ahead for the artwork? The excitement will continue, as the artists involved in the original project are planning a virtual reality gallery, with scheduled tours and artists talks. I've played around the beta gallery, and it's really quite wonderful. I will update with dates and times, etc., in the new year as plans become available.

As always, thanks for viewing and commenting, and please follow along on your platform of choice: 

Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/suerenostudio
Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/suereno
Tumblr: http://suerenostudio.tumblr.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sue_reno_studio/