Category Archives: Painting
Planet Labs’ Artists-in-Residence
Planet Labs’ Art Director:
Welcome to Planet Labs. We believe in using space to help life on Earth.
We have a big vision at Planet Labs; we are focused on Mission 1: Image the entire Earth, every day, and democratize access to these data and tools. With our humble beginnings in a Cupertino garage, to a scrappy team of engineers hacking our initial satellite builds, we now find ourselves with brand new technology, market traction and an expanding team.
We have a people-centric approach toward culture and community and we are iterating in a way that puts our team members first and prepares our company for growth. Be a part of our mission and help build a company that is changing the world.
Creativity is in our engineering DNA at Planet Labs
Planet thrives on creativity and science. At Planet we believe that building technology for contemporary solutions requires both scientific and abstract thinking. Using space to help life on Earth is our goal. Our company is positioned at the edge of earth imaging and aerospace, with a foot on both sides of this conversation. We thrive on complex concepts and unique inspirations. Agile aerospace is what we call our engineering and product development approach. We are mission driven to help the Earth with technology and our ambitious techniques are creative and compassionate. – Everyday everywhere for everyone- We document the changes of this beautiful dynamic world in our photographic product, this beauty is also curated through our workspace and satellite hardware we build.
Be part of Planet Labs’ Artist in Residency Program!
Are you a Unique and Motivated Artist? – Are you inspired by the exploration of science and technology in your artistic practice? Do you make work that illuminate beautiful and thought provoking concepts? Are you inspired to work and collaborate amongst big thinkers and creators in the technology industry? Would you be interested in working in SF with our team who makes satellites and takes pictures from space to help life on Earth? Our Artist in Residence program is a hotbed for these things.
The Role:
At Planet, the artists will have a studio space in the heart of our office to make their work, join our company community and get creative with us as we grow and build for a 3 month period. The artists will produce their work amongst our team while speaking and interacting with visitors and employees. During the residency the artist will share their creative process by engaging in hands on workshops. The completed work will be exhibited in the office. We are looking for creative minds that will jive with our exciting culture and openly share their unique artistic workflow. A stipend of $1000 per month will support the artists work.
Artistic Expectations:
We understand that this residency can be just a slice of your professional artistic practice and work schedule. Artist do not have to live in SF to be a resident, although working onsite 3 days a week is necessary to get the most out of the experience. The suggested timeframe that the artist join us is 10-3 on Mondays and Wednesdays and one other day during the week. Artists of all media are invited to apply, but being an open office space, there are constraints for dangerous, large, and toxic medias.
Some recent press about us:
Our CEO, Will Marshall’s Dreamforce Talk
“A Tech Start-Up Just Restored My Faith in Humanity“ by Kevin Roose, NY Magazine
“A Start-Up Provides a Picture of Our Shape-Shifting Planet” by Quentin Hardy, NYTimes Bits
The Culture:
Planet Labs is headquartered in San Francisco, California, Earth. If you are feeling inspired, check out our website www.planet.com/careers and apply. Be sure to include a cover letter to let us know why you think you’d be a good fit and feel free to mention anyone you have previously worked with at Planet Labs.
The Atlantic: "NASA or MOMA? Play the Game!"
“Here are some pictures. Were they taken in space, or painted here on Earth?”
Mark Rothko, Honorary Mars Artist
Nat Geo: "Looking Back at Visions of Life on Mars"
More Curiosity Art
Robert Motherwell (Honorary Mars Artist)
Adolph Gottlieb (Honorary Mars Artist)
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Robert McCall, Artist of the Space Age
“I think when we finally are living in space, as people will be doing soon, we’ll recognize a whole
new freedom and ease of life,” McCall was quoted as saying. “These space habitats will be more
beautiful because we will plan and condition that beauty to suit our needs. I see a future that is
very bright.
I am living in the future I dreamed about when I was a young boy, and for me it is just as bright
and wonderful as I imagined it would be. Many of the paintings in this exhibition are my current
graphic thoughts about tomorrow.
One of the joys of being an artists is the freedom to create one’s own world, and through the
use of brushes and paints, to explore that world and participate in adventures of the mind that
the real world would not possibly provide. Like the real world, these excursions of the
imagination are fraught with inaccuracies of perception — it is rare that one glimpses through
the veil of time even a hint of tomorrow’s reality nor does it seem important to me, whether
one’s perceptions are right or wrong — the pleasure is in making the predictions and
doing the work.
Today we live in a world filled with awesome possibilities, both good and bad. The rush of
technology is so rapid, to stay abreast of it has become more and more difficult. Our
understanding of the physical universe continues to grow and astonish us with its
marvelous complexity.
To be an artist in these times of explosive change is, for me, a privilege and a challenge. My goal
is to document in my drawings and paintings a small part of this changing world and to
anticipate in my work, the future that lies ahead.”
NASA’s artist-in-residence program has drawn the likes of Annie Leibovitz, Norman Rockwell and
Laurie Anderson. But if the agency had a favorite, it was the painter Robert McCall. Once
described by author Isaac Asimov as the “nearest thing to an artist in residence from outer
space,” McCall’s glorious sci-fi paintings first attracted the public’s attention in the 1960s on the
pages of LIFE, illustrating the magazine’s series on the future of space travel. Stanley Kubrick
asked McCall to paint what would become his most well-known work: “Orion Leaving Space
Station,” which shows a space vehicle darting from the lit bay of a wheel-shaped space station,
featured on the posters for the film “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
And then his opus: the six-story “The Space Mural – A Cosmic View,” greeting visitors to the
National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC. Painted over the course of eight months in
1976, McCall’s depiction of the creation of the universe leading to astronauts walking on the
Moon is seen by an estimated ten million persons each year.
His bright, positive, optimistic work captures “an impulse to take what’s possible and imagine
what could be and what if. Between the subtlety and realism of his paintings and their more
fanciful imaginations, he was drawing colorful maps for the future of science and
space exploration.”
Astronomer Copernicus, or Conversation with God (1872) by Jan Matejko.
