Paintings & Drawings2020produced

NASA × SPACEX × FALCON 9 ISS

A launch, drawn on the day it happened

A landscape sheet of white paper drawn in red and black ink: a rising black plume, a red arc of flight, feathered spray, ringed forms in a row and small words reading NASA, ISS and SPACEX

The same drawing lying on a concrete floor in daylight, showing it is a single loose sheet — One sheet, on the ground, the afternoon it was made.

Red and black ink on a single white sheet, made on 30 May 2020 — the afternoon a Falcon 9 carried two people to the International Space Station, the first crewed launch from American soil in nine years.

Close view of the drawing showing NASA, ISS and SPACEX written small among the marks, with a figure beneath them — The only words in it are the ones that were on every screen that day.

Close view of the black plume rising off a flat base with red flame shapes around it and a red F9 to the right — The plume, and F9 beside it.

It is not a picture of a rocket. It is what the day looked like inside his own vocabulary: a black plume rising off a flat base, a red thread of flight arcing across the sheet, feathered spray where the thrust was, eyes, small ringed bodies drifting in a row like a countdown. The only words in it are the ones that were on every screen that day — NASA, ISS, SPACEX, F9 — written small, in among the marks, the way a date gets written in a margin.