Strength In Story

The more I wade through the waters of the artworld, the more I understand how important story is. As human beings, we connect with story. It’s tangible, universal. It is something that stays with us and gets passed on to others.

Before writing was developed, everything was communicated through story, handed down generation after generation. And I know that for me, the art I buy usually has some sort of story to it — either the story I tell myself upon seeing it or the story being told by the artist him/herself.

It’s that connection that triggers the buy impulse. So I keep telling stories and want to share some of the stories behind my artwork here.

The piece featured above – “What Is Real?” – has a funny story. At its core, it just makes me laugh. The first time I saw a monkey in a spacesuit my natural instinct was to chuckle. It looks so odd! That can’t be real, right? Except it was.

In 1961, NASA sent Ham the Chimp into space on a suborbital flight on the Mercury-Redstone 2, part of Project Mercury. The mission was a success and the results from his test flight led directly to Alan Sheperd’s suborbital flight in May of 1961.

So yeah, a monkey in a spacesuit is real. But the image itself is shocking enough to make me stop and think: really?

Throughout my youth I was also obsessed with the Planet of the Apes films, so monkeys talking, conducting experiments on humans and telling jokes themselves kept me coming back because I found the juxtapositioned imagery so funny, so fascinating.

I wonder if, in an alternate universe where chimpanzees rule the world, if there’s a chimp painter painting a portrait of a human in a spacesuit chuckling to himself, asking the same questions.

Either way, this piece found a new home yesterday with Jesse. The story will continue and, most assuredly, new ones will continue to be told.

What comes to mind when YOU see the monkey in a space suit? Tell me in the comments!