What would you send to space? Perhaps a postcard, a handprint, a photograph of loved ones, or a piece of art. Artist Richelle Gribble was commissioned to make an original artwork to fly aboard Blue Origin New Shepard Space System. Given her prior work examining themes about planetary connectivity, she was asked to make a small artwork to respond to humanity’s relationship to space.
Our Humanity is a commissioned project containing two overlapping linocut prints reflecting human potential. A DNA strand symbolizes the origin of all life ghosting through a crowd of people constructing a DNA strand together, forming a ladder to the stars. This symbolizes how our humanity and collaborative capabilities take us to new heights. This print flew enclosed in a transparent pouch to outer space and back, returned with a certificate of flight detailing the object’s time in microgravity at 156.2 seconds. This project proves that the sky is not the limit.