Brown Arts
Blue Moon: Lunar Orbiter Silk Cyanotype
November 1 — 16, 2024
EXHIBITION | MULTIMEDIA
A student exhibition featuring a 60-foot vertical silk cyanotype, along with smaller cyanotypes, community event photos, and a video on the 1960s Lunar Orbiter Missions.
Blue Moon: Lunar Orbiter Silk Cyanotype
November 1 — 16, 2024
EXHIBITION | MULTIMEDIA
A student exhibition featuring a 60-foot vertical silk cyanotype, along with smaller cyanotypes, community event photos, and a video on the 1960s Lunar Orbiter Missions.
About The Exhibition
Blue Moon: Lunar Orbiter Silk Cyanotype
Exhibition
November 1 — 16, 2024
Level 4N, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
Gathered on Pembroke Field at Brown University by an open invitation, 30 Brown University community members assisted in creating this large-scale silk cyanotype. Using the sun’s ultraviolet rays to print pictures of the Moon from archival film, this piece displays photos from Lunar Orbiter 2.
The five NASA Lunar Orbiter Missions from 1966—1967 photographed 99% of the Moon to survey for the Apollo Lunar Landing sites. The photos were shot on film aboard the orbiters, developed in orbit, digitally scanned, radioed back to Earth, and projected onto 60 ft x 10 in film rolls. This silk piece was printed in one exposure for its entire length to honor the drama of this technological feat. The Lunar Orbiter film rolls’ scale and images surrounded by descriptive text mirror the format of Chinese handscrolls with their inscriptions and colophons framing landscapes, a connection alluded to with this piece’s use of silk.
“ Something about making prints of the moon with the UV rays from the sun seemed so interesting. With cyanotype, everything is blue, so there’s also this fun ‘blue moon’ element to it. ”
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Brown senior Logan Tullai led a team of volunteers on Pembroke Field to create sprawling silk prints of lunar craters using cyanotype. All photos by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.
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Brown senior Logan Tullai led a team of volunteers on Pembroke Field to create sprawling silk prints of lunar craters using cyanotype. All photos by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.
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Brown senior Logan Tullai led a team of volunteers on Pembroke Field to create sprawling silk prints of lunar craters using cyanotype. All photos by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.
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Brown senior Logan Tullai led a team of volunteers on Pembroke Field to create sprawling silk prints of lunar craters using cyanotype. All photos by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.
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Brown senior Logan Tullai led a team of volunteers on Pembroke Field to create sprawling silk prints of lunar craters using cyanotype. All photos by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.
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Brown senior Logan Tullai led a team of volunteers on Pembroke Field to create sprawling silk prints of lunar craters using cyanotype. All photos by Nick Dentamaro/Brown University.
In The News
September 24, 2024
News from Brown
Photos: With cyanotype, Brown student uses the sun to visualize the moon
Inspired by Chinese handscrolls and NASA film of the moon’s surface, senior Logan Tullai used an 1800s technique to lead a community art project on campus on 60-foot-long swaths of silk.
The Brown Daily Herald
Silk, film, plexiglass: How one Brown student printed the Moon with sunlight
With the help of the Brown community, Logan Tullai ’25 created long silk prints using decommissioned Lunar Orbiter film and the cyanotype printing method.
About the Organizer
Logan Tullai is a member of the Brown University class of 2025, concentrating in Political Science and Economics. As an artist, he focuses on community-oriented art creation, film photography, print production, and the ways that art and science intersect. Logan is deeply interested in creating art-centered curricula for use in language learning and science education. He loves bringing people together through art and using it as a tool for broader community connection.