Fierce Planets is a Studio Art Quilt Associates traveling exhibition and a collaboration with John Hopkins University’s Wavelengths program. The participating artists drew inspiration from professor Dr. Sabine Stanley’s work in planetary science and her book What’s Hidden Inside Planets. Then, they created their artworks.

I don’t usually make artworks to someone else’s theme. But this one was of particular interest to me for the intersection of science and art. Also, I had some more personal interest as my daughter was doing some research on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, for her Master thesis, at the time.

Research

I looked through some of my daughter’s textbooks and researched some images. I wanted to be able to tie my artwork to Titan somehow. Eventually, I was led to NASA’s website where one can view images. I was able to see images of Cassini’s flybys of Titan.

For my inspiration, I chose the synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) image from Cassini’s Titan Radar Mapper taken on June 21, 2011, as part of the Cassini-Huygens Mission, a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. 

Process

To start the artwork, I created a pattern based on the image. The lines in the radar image represent linear dunes on the surface of Titan. I knew these lines would have to be marked separately to be able to add them with stitching as the last step. Next, I taped tracing paper over the pattern and drew the lines again.

Since there were very curvy lines, I decided to fused the fabrics instead of trying to piece them. Then, I traced, cut and placed the pieces on top of another piece of backing fabric.

Once I had all the pieces fused to the backing fabric, I laid my tracing pattern with lines on top and used a perforating tool to mark on the fabric.

I knew I wanted the lines to stand out more than they would if I just stitched them with regular sewing thread. Therefore, I decided to couch yarn on instead. To start and stop each yarn, I had to bring the yarn through the top by hand.

The finished artwork is approximately 64″ high by 27″ at its widest. I liked the shape of the original radar image and mostly kept it in the artwork. 

Titan is Saturn’s largest moon and several features are represented in this artwork. The Ksa crater is rendered in the upper left corner of the the artwork. The red lines represent the linear dunes on the surface of the moon. The lighter sections on the right and lower left illustrate part of the area referred to as Xanadu, a large feature centered near the moon’s equator. In my orientation of the artwork, North is on the left.

I used orange colors based on NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab information: “In true-color images taken in visible wavelengths, Titan’s photochemical smog, rich in organic material, gives the moon a smooth, featureless, orange glow.”

Fierce Planets is currently on view at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA. It was previously on view at Louisiana State University Museum of Art, Baton Rouge, Louisiana from April 18 – September 8, 2024.