Annual Dinner

Richelle Ellis creates art at the absolute extremes of human exploration. Working as a multidisciplinary artist across painting, sculpture, installation, and film, her practice spans deep space, the deep ocean, and isolated terrestrial environments, bridging seemingly disparate worlds together into a singular tapestry of humanity, technology, and the environment. Her work often explores materiality and process, resulting in singular pieces created in direct response to their extreme environments.

To date, she has completed 13 artworks sent beyond Earth, establishing an unprecedented space mission heritage. She is the first woman with art landed on the Moon and currently has two projects physically on the lunar surface. She has launched projects into near space, etched artworks onto orbital satellites and rockets, sent artwork to the International Space Station, and is slated to be the first person in history to send art to an asteroid in a 2027 mission. She has 10 upcoming lunar, orbital, and interstellar projects.

A recognized leader at the intersection of art and science, Ellis is an Artist Associate at the SETI Institute, a National Council member for the World Wildlife Fund, a Karman Fellow, and Head of Creative Research for analog space programs including HI-SEAS, SENSORA, Astroland Planetary Agency, and Lunares Research Station. Treating advanced industry infrastructure as an extension of her studio practice, she regularly collaborates with organizations among them SpaceX, Blue Origin, Google Quantum AI, Planet Labs, Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic, Relativity Space, Space Perspective, The Aerospace Corporation, and ExLabs.

Ellis’s work has been exhibited globally at institutions including the Venice Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, MASS MoCA, Ars Electronica, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the MIT Media Lab, and the New York Hall of Science. She is the Founding Director of the Los Angeles curatorial platform Supercollider, and Co-Founder of Inploration, a non-profit art initiative. Through Inploration, she is Co-Author of Inploration: Art Exploring Space to Understand Earth, a DelMonico-published book dedicated to understanding how art exploring the cosmos ultimately brings us closer to Earth.

Nicole Stott is an astronaut, aquanaut, engineer, artist, author of Back to Earth: What Life In Space Taught Me About Our Home Planet – And Our Mission To Protect It; and most importantly a mom. She creatively combines the awe and wonder of her spaceflight experience with her artwork to inspire everyone’s appreciation of our role as crewmates here on Spaceship Earth.

Nicole is a veteran NASA Astronaut with two spaceflights and 104 days in space as a crewmember on both the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle. Personal highlights of her time in space include being the 10th woman to perform a spacewalk, first person to operate the ISS robotic arm to capture a free-flying cargo vehicle, first to paint a watercolor in space, working with her international crew for the benefit of all life on Earth, and of course the life-changing view of our planetary home.

Nicole is also a NASA Aquanaut. In preparation for spaceflight, she was a crewmember on the 18-day NEEMO9 saturation dive mission at the Aquarius undersea laboratory.

Nicole believes that the international model of peaceful and successful cooperation we have experienced in the extreme environments of space and sea holds the key to the same kind of peaceful and successful cooperation for all life here on Earth.

On her post-NASA mission, she is a technical and creative consultant, motivational speaker, and advocate for all we do in space that is ultimately for the benefit of all life on Earth. Nicole is extremely proud of her role as a founding director of the Space for Art Foundation — uniting a planetary community of children through the awe and wonder of space exploration and the healing power of art; as a partner in purpose with SPACE for a Better World; and as an enthusiastic ambassador for our planet with organizations like Ocean Culture Life, Platform Earth, Sheba Hope Grows, Astra Carta, Plant A Million Corals, the Everglades Foundation, and 11th Hour Racing.