Meteorite Paintings

Serendipity: an unplanned fortunate discovery, or – as it can also be seen – a form of “active luck”, bringing chance encounters and human action together. This term best describes the events that led to Ulrike Arnold’s first meteorite painting in 2002. Having worked with the colors of our planet for over two decades, creating her paintings with natural materials from the earth, she attended a conference on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission taking place at the USGS Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. There, she met the American astronaut, Harrison Schmidt – to this day, the last man who has walked on the moon. She asked him for his autograph and upon shaking his hand, she suddenly had the idea to work with extraterrestrial materials. Spontaneously, she asked him about the next shuttle to the moon and they both laughed. During the conference, she also met the astronomer Caroline Shoemaker, who had discovered the Shoemaker-Levi comet in 1993. The next day, while visiting the Barringer Meteor Crater, she encountered the meteor researcher Marvin Killgore.

The artist wrote about this encounter in a short text entitled “How the meteorites fell to me”: "On the second day, we descended into the nearby, huge meteorite crater, also known as Canyon Diablo. So we marched and slid down the steep slope... An American with a huge cowboy hat who happened to be walking next to me said: 'Are you in the Mars project? I stuttered that I wasn't a scientist, but a painter, and painted with soil from the five continents on site. He almost crashed, and so did I, because as if moved by the meteorite strike, he shouted: 'I'm a meteorite collector, do it worldwide! I cut and saw off fine slices in the laboratory to diagnose the age, composition and origin. Of course there are chips. And I've always wondered whether an artist would be interested in it. Older than the earth – metals, nickel, iron from asteroids ...’ all these words flew around my ears like comets. And hadn't I expressed my desire for this the day before? The new dimension to space, to the cosmos! Heaven and earth? The stardust fell on me like star thaler."

It was this fortunate meeting that enabled Arnold to become one of the first artists to paint with the extraterrestrial substance of meteorite dust. This material dates back to the origin of our solar system and gives her work an incredible cosmic dimension, linking earthly landscapes to the vastness of the universe. This way, her paintings pay homage to the earth and its place within the cosmos.

– Dr. Sophia Sotke

Invitation to the Apollo Meeting, 2002, autographed by Harrisson Schmidt

Meteorite #6, 2003

Earth Rock and Stardust

The meteorites, which Ulrike Arnold has been working with for some time, are messengers from unimaginable spaces and times, embodiments of the cycle on a cosmic level. Some of them carry water bound into salt crystals, as well as amino acids and trace elements, which are older than our solar system. There is almost an analogue movement, a correspondence between how this painter visits her places on the planet, and how the meteorites, massive congregations of stone and iron, find their places when they hit the earth.When Ulrike Arnold talks about her work, she often uses the words „coincidence“, or „chain of coincidences“. This has nothing to do with coincidence in the sense of randomness, but rather with allowing things to happen. If your perception is truly open, the tissue of reality becomes transparent. It then becomes apparent that what we like to describe as coincidence is pure evidence. In order to get there, you need to remain firmly focused on your path, an anachronism in our time. Then such pictures emerge, which portray places with immenseintensity, in the very broad, as well as specific sense associated with the meaning of the word „place”: an extreme point which focuses everything – a place of transition and transformation.

– Excerpt from a text by Matthias Bärmann

The Art of Cosmic Connection

Since 1980, Ulrike Arnold has traveled worldwide to historical and sometimes very remote areas to study cave art and work, many times alone, at sites that would offer the natural earth colors she desired for specific works. She recognized and honored the ancient’s use of pigmented earth in their attempts to chronicle reality by selecting powdered earth to carry her dialogue into abstract expressionism. (…) Drawn by a still unrecognized itch to draw the connection between that which was at her feet and in her hands, and that which was above her head, in the vault of the cosmos, she included in her travels the places in the world where man had constructed edifies and sculptures that, when looked at with an open mind, showed the human propensity to reach up to the universe.

Helen Running, who worked for the United States Geological Survey’s Institute for Astro-Geology and resided in Arizona, befriended Ulrike, showing her images of the planets, moons and asteroids, and photos and papers covering the continuing discoveries in space. Ulrike began to frequently visit the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff gleaning additional information on the cosmos. (…)

In 2002, two seminal events occurred in Arnold’s life; her meeting with the American astronaut, Harrison Schmidt, in Arizona and a visit to the Barringer Meteor Crater the very next day that resulted in the possibility of Ulrike getting her piece of the cosmos. Both happened as a result of Ulrike attending the USGS celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 17 mission.

In a conversation with Schmidt, who had stood on the moon, Ulrike began thinking of the cosmos and how it could be integrated in her work. She asked him when the next shuttle was going into space as she would like to get her hands on some of the “cosmos”. They both laughed at the impossibility of such a thing happening, but the desire was planted firmly in her consciousness.

The next day as Ulrike was walking along the rim of the 50.000 year old, mile wide impact crater she was approached by a tall man in a cowboy hat. They didn’t know each other but still walked along side by side silently taking in the result of a high energy connection between the earth and the universe. The tall stranger finally broke the silence and asked if she were a scientist, and then got a bemused look on this face when Arnold explained she was an artist, and what she had been doing with her work, and at the moment she was having a revelation that in front of her was the actual evidence of our origins and a portent of our future. She told him of her desire to make a work using cosmic material. Kilgore said nothing for a moment, then told her he was meteoriticist and that he has for year collected meteorites from all over the world and cuts them to identify and classify them for science. His process results in pounds of meteorite cuttings. He asked if she would like to have some “stardust” for use in her work. (…)

Arnold has been visiting Killgore’s laboratory in Payson, Arizona, where he and his wife, Kitty, have the largest private collection of meteorites in America. Killgore provides her with different classifications of meteorite cuttings for her projects.

– Excerpt from a text by Count Guido Roberto Deiro

Ulrike Arnold and Marvin Killgore

Sky Paintings – Space Paintings – Universe Paintings

Ulrike Arnold, Earth Artist, has turned her eye to the sky. Painting with meteorites. (…)These stones and irons have come from across the universe from planets, asteroids and comets traveling millions of miles on a collision course with earth. A meteor appears as a trail of light visible across the night sky. The meteorite is a meteor which survives the heated entry and impacts on earth. These objects from outer space are rare and wonderful.

These messengers from space contain the substances of the earliest formation of the universe. In the nebula formation of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and its billions of stars. The four meteorites represented in this series of paintings by Ulrike Arnold are chondritic and iron meteorites. The irons are a unique combination of nickel and crystallized iron octahedrites. The process which crystallizes iron is similar the core of our earth cooling slowly as little as one Kelvin per million years. On the other hand chondrites are relatively rapid forming. These stone chondrites vary in their composition and appearance; they do have chondrules. Chondrules are small curricular structures within the matrix of stony meteorites. We do not have anything like it on earth because these are some of the most primitive compounds which materialized in our universe. Chondrule formation is a mystery. But we are able to observe minute grains with an affinity to form, combine and accumulate in varied ways with indications to the dynamic nature of the creation.

– Excerpt from a text by Marvin and Kitty Killgore, Southwest Meteorite Laboratory

Ulrike Arnold working by the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama, Chile

Ulrike Arnold – Astronomy

Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences known to mankind – perhaps even the oldest. Looking up at the stars at night probably made early man think about the origin and future of the world and the universe. Most world views of the civilizations of mankind known to us have tried to explain the phenomena of the starry sky and to relate the role of mankind to the respective known universe. (...)

Despite the immense increase in knowledge about the development of our universe, many fundamental questions about where, how and where remain unanswered. The fascination of looking at the starry sky remains undimmed. Ulrike Arnold has experienced this unclouded view of the sky in many places around the world far away from the lights of civilization – including the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. Due to the exceptional climatic and geographical conditions, this desert is home to the largest modern astronomical observatories on earth. During her stays in the Atacama Desert and at the Paranal Observatory of the European Southern Observatory, Ulrike Arnold intuitively grasped the connection between these extraordinary human observation stations and the universe and captured it impressively in her works created on location.

– Excerpt from a text by Dr. Andreas Kaufer, Director of Operations, European Southern Observatory

CONTACT