Fallen Stars

Jeffrey Dell’s Fallen Stars explores space as both an illusionistic device in art and an imaginative territory in the science‐fiction novels that lend this and related works their titles and motifs. Subtle shifts in color, trompe l’oeil flaps evoking interstellar “wormholes,” and layered transparent and opaque sheets of paper suggest spatial depth, while brushy waves counterbalance the illusion of sharply cut paper. However, Dell’s investigations go beyond this high degree of technical finesse.

Dell is especially inspired by the use of stylization, color gradation, and illusionistic shadow by Utagawa Kuniyoshi and other Japanese Ukiyo‐e printmakers of the 17th to 19th centuries. Dell’s use of a cloud‐like shape and subtly shaded background in Fallen Stars reflects this interest in the “agreed‐upon” symbols that become shorthand for real objects and scenes rendered in two dimensions. He also draws on imagery he saw as a child in the 1970s science‐fiction cover illustrations of artist Chris Foss, which blend high art with entertainment, much like Kuniyoshi’s popular prints of legends such as the 47 Ronin. Dell links our projection of hopes, expectations, and desires onto imaginings of future worlds with the illusionistic techniques used to represent them graphically; in Fallen Stars, space becomes a manifestation of longing.