As the Stars Go By

As the Stars Go By

Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, California, 2006
5:34 am until sunrise, March 20, 2003, Baghdad, Iraq (from the Palestine Hotel looking toward the Presidential Palace on the Tigris River)

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

As the constellation Scorpio tracks across the southwestern sky, bombing commenced over Baghdad on the morning of March 20, 2003, beginning the second war between Iraq and the United States.

The vantage point from the Palestine Hotel is familiar to many Americans, as that is where most members of the foreign press were staying. I remember hearing witnesses describe the bombs lighting up the Baghdad sky that night as looking like fireworks. The sense of mediated, distanced observation characterizing the American experience of the war is mirrored in the impassive wheeling of the stars.
5:34 am until sunrise, March 20, 2003, Baghdad, Iraq (from the Palestine Hotel looking toward the Presidential Palace on the Tigris River)

detail
As the Stars Go By

Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, California, 2006
2:45 am until sunrise on Tet, the Lunar New Year, January 31, 1968, U.S. Embassy, Saigon, Vietnam (looking north)

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

This work documents the stars on the night the Tet Offensive began, as a group of Viet Cong blasted a hole through the wall of the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon. The Tet Offensive was a massive initiative by the North Vietnamese, planned as a surprise attack on the first evening of the Lunar New Year holiday. While the nineteen Viet Cong members held the compound for only six hours before being killed, the icon of the U.S. Embassy under attack was emblazoned on the minds of Americans.

Despite being a technical victory for the U.S. military, the Tet Offensive is seen as a psychological turning point in the war. Images of violence, such as the footage shown on the evening news of a Viet Cong captain being executed in the street by a South Vietnamese general, reinforced questions among the American public as to what kind of war we were fighting and who we were fighting it for. Despite statements from U.S. government leaders that the war was nearing an end, the North Vietnamese forces did not seem weakened to the point of surrender; the war would continue.
6:01 pm until 7:05 pm, April 4, 1968, from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee (looking in the direction the shots were fired)

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

Following the direction of the pointing arms in the well-known photograph taken moments after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, this work shows the stars as they appeared on April 4, 1968, seen from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. The time represented is from 6:01 pm, the moment Martin Luther King Jr. was shot, until 7:05 pm, the time he was pronounced dead.

Here the work focuses on the impact of the life of a single individual. This quality is reflected in the North Star, Polaris, encompassed in this viewpoint, as it shines brightly in a relatively dark region of the sky. Polaris, less than one degree from the north celestial pole, barely turns in the sky, while the other visible stars, more removed from this axis of rotation, cast longer paths.
Midnight until the first sighting of land, October 12, 1492, six miles off the coast of current day San Salvador Island, Bahamas

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

This work shows the stars as Christopher Columbus and his crew would have seen them when they first sighted land off the coast of the present-day Bahamas. From Columbus's journal:

The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries. These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful. ... After sunset steered their original course west and sailed twelve miles an hour till two hours after midnight ... and as the Pinta was the swiftest sailer, and kept ahead of the Admiral [Columbus's phrase for himself], she discovered land and made the signals which had been ordered.

I chose this pivotal event in American history not for any violence contained in those few hours, but a moment at which the stars are both a navigational tool and an indicator of the changes to come.
Sunrise to Sunset, September 17, 1862, Antietam Creek, Maryland (from the North looking South)

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

The Battle of Antietam remains the deadliest day in American history, with 23,000 soldiers dying in the span of twelve hours, casualties equally heavy on both sides.

This vista is a reverse starscape, the stars shown from sunrise to sunset, exchanging day for night, reflecting the unimaginable violence that lasted from dawn until dusk.

I chose to represent this event not only for the number of soldiers that died that day, but also because the Battle of Antietam was considered a turning point in the war. Despite the high number of casualties, the battle was considered a Union victory and ended General Robert E. Lee's brief push to the north. This paved the way for Lincoln's announcement five days later outlining his intent for the Emancipation Proclamation shifting the objectives of the North not just to reunify the country, but abolish slavery as well.
Sunrise to Sunset, September 17, 1862, Antietam Creek, Maryland (from the North looking South)

detail
As the Stars Go By

Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, California, 2006
December 29, 1890, Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota, the Seven Stars of the Big Dipper in the final hour before dawn

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

This work shows the seven stars of the Big Dipper–stars thought by the Lakota Indians to represent the Seven Council Fires–in the final hour before dawn on the morning of the Wounded Knee Massacre.

The Lakota had already been pushed off their land when a treaty with the U.S. government was broken in early 1890 dividing the Great Sioux Reservation of South Dakota into smaller reservations so that white homesteaders could occupy the land. Led by Chief Big Foot, a group of Minneconjou Lakota was on its way to the Pine Ridge Reservation to negotiate a truce when intercepted by the U.S. Cavalry. There are conflicting reports of what happened when the soldiers attempted to disarm one of the last Lakotas, Black Coyote, but a gun was discharged at which point the U.S. Army opened fire. 153 Lakotas were killed, 50 wounded, and many of the remaining who fled were thought to have died from wounds or exposure. The 25 cavalry killed were thought to have been killed by the cavalry's own fire.

The massacre has been labeled the "last armed conflict" of the American Indian Wars–a misnomer due to the fact violence erupted after the U.S. Cavalry had disarmed the 350 Minneconjou Lakota gathered that day, 230 of whom were women and children. The term nonetheless indicates the ending of a period in American history.
8:45 am to 10:28 am, September 11, 2001 (above New York City looking toward Boston

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

This representation of the sky is a false one–the stars were obviously not visible the morning of September 11th–echoing a quality of that day, where the cycles of everyday life became invisible, forgotten.

The piece is oriented from New York toward Boston, the origin of the planes that hit the Twin Towers, and represents the time from when the first plane struck the first tower to when the second tower collapsed.

I did not choose to represent this event to focus on the tragedy of that day, as much as that is an inevitable element of the work, but for the way those events impact our present and reverberate far out into the future.
8:45 am to 10:28 am, September 11, 2001 (above New York City looking toward Boston)

detail
As the Stars Go By

Jack Hanley Gallery, San Francisco, California, 2006
5:30 am to sunrise, December 16, 1944 (above the Ardennes looking east)

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

The Battle of the Bulge was at the heart of the escalating violence at the end of World War II. An Allied victory had been established after the successful campaign launched at Normandy, and American soldiers were expecting to be home by Christmas. But this surprise offensive dawned the reality that Hitler would never surrender, and American soldiers were dying for a war already won. This led to a frenzy of violence on both sides, including the bombing of Dresden by Allied forces, and a complete surrender by Hitler became the only acceptable terms.

This piece is oriented from the Ardennes forest looking east, the origin of the German attack, showing the stars in the sky from 5:30 am, when the first assault began, until sunrise, as each star is burned out by the rising sun.
8 am, when the air raid alert was lifted, until 8:15 am, when the bomb was dropped, August 6, 1945, Hiroshima, Japan (looking in the direction of Tinian airbase in the West Pacific)

2006, hand-stitched cotton, 41 x 97.5 in.

When Japanese radar detected aircraft flying on a course for southern Japan, air raid alerts were sounded in many southern cities, including Hiroshima. But the radar operator lifted the warning when it was determined that only a handful of aircrafts were approaching. The detonation five minutes later instantly killed 70,000 to 80,000 people and obliterated everything within a one-mile radius; by December 1945, the death toll was near 140,000.

While Harry Truman and others justified the choice to use nuclear weapons with the calculation that fewer deaths would result from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki than a protracted military campaign, this belief was based on the United States only accepting an unconditional surrender from Japan. What would have been considered a war crime if committed by any other country–the policy of bombing civilians to win a war, as had been established in Europe with the firebombing of Dresden–continued to be an accepted strategy for the United States.

This body of work takes violent moments in American history that act as pivot points—where what came before feels separate from what follows—and, based on star calculation software, depicts the star rotation pattern above these moments in time. These hand-stitched works have the proportions of a movie screen, intended to suggest a representation of historical events through the distanced lens of observation, but by offering a literal vista they also place the viewer within that moment as witness, onlooker, participant.

The work is intended to act on many levels: as a memorial, as an actual vantage from a specific moment in history, but ultimately I am simply documenting an impassive cycle that is oblivious to the human violence below.

Additional Bodies of Work