"Earth to Erika: An Interplanetary Eclipse"

Description of artwork

by Erika

(written at the time I turned in the painting, which was my final for a college course called "Painting: Ideas in the Brushstroke" that I took in spring of 2000)

Earth to Erika: An Interplanetary Eclipse is a vertical triptych of acrylic paintings. They are mounted on a reddish-brown-painted wooden board of 41 inches by 24.5 inches. The first and second of the pieces are on 11x14" canvas boards and the third on a 17.5-by-12.5-inch canvas, which I stretched using two clumsily attached smaller pieces of canvas and a wooden stretcher that my classmate Nic gave me. The first two are attached with glue and the third with small nails. All are horizontally placed.

The series depicts the first moments of an eclipse of the planet Earth by Andromedia II, one of the imaginary planets I have created in an attempt, failing "fitting in" in this world, to make up ones where I would. I keep volumes of information on these worlds on a shelf in my dorm, written and illustrated in whatever blank books I could find, and the culture and behavior of the people reflect my feelings at the time I invented them. Andromedia II, the second planet I created, is the one that I feel at present best expresses my personality, and so in this piece I chose it to represent me. Since it is supposed to be in the galaxy Andromeda, there is no way it could get as close to Earth as it is pictured, but this use of creative license is necessary to the theme.

The depicted eclipse is an allegory for my life and my movement toward closer interaction with the rest of humanity as I have overcome my autism and Tourette's Syndrome through the use of medications and, like Temple Grandin in Oliver Sacks's An Anthropologist on Mars, studied the human culture until I understood the behavior of my species enough to begin to function like a "normal" person.

The first canvas shows Andromedia II and Earth very far apart, and the seven or eight-year-old image of my face in the planet is looking away from Earth as though completely disinterested. Until my teens I had little concern for what other humans thought of me, and lived in my own world, sharing regular positive interaction only with close relatives, some of my teachers and social workers, and a very small number of my peers. My experiences with peers usually involved inappropriate behavior on my part and/or teasing and tormenting on theirs.

The second shows the planets a little closer, and my face turned an equal distance toward and away from Earth. I am shown about fourteen or fifteen, when I was beginning to realize my predicament: that I was born on a planet where the way I acted was unacceptable, and that I had to learn what behaviors were appropriate here before I could be accepted. At this point I wanted to be accepted; my "human side" was longing for contact with other people, though the rest of me didn"t know how to get such contact, neither understanding nor totally approving of illogical human codes of conduct.

The third, final and largest of the paintings shows "first contact": the moment of the eclipse when my planet begins to cover a tiny corner of Earth, when I start to comprehend a little bit, but not anywhere near all, of what it means to be human; when Earth and Andromedia II have both moved a little closer to each other and the world has shown more and more interest in me and I in it, until the reddish haze around Andromedia II begins to envelop both planets and color the Earth, and I have begun to have a positive effect, leaving my mark on the planet of my birth with my art and my writing. The rotation of Andromedia II is apparent; my face, shown as it is at my current age of eighteen, has made the full turn from looking away from Earth to looking toward it. I am who I am now: a person who has initiated contact with her planet.

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