Part of a recent series of paintings based on the work of American scholar of the weird Charles Fort (b.1874, d.1932).

The inspiration (and source of the accompanying text) is Fort’s Book of the Damned (1919), a massive tome that consists largely of hundreds upon hundreds of accounts of strange objects and substances falling from the sky, obsessively gathered from centuries worth of almanacs, scientific journals, and eyewitness accounts, and interspersed with flagrantly bizarre stabs at explanation (at one point, he proposes the existence of an antigravitational atmospheric zone- the “super-sargasso sea”- where lost objects end up and are occasionally dislodged by errant wind currents).  These explanations are, I suspect, tongue-in-cheek, intended not so much to provide a believable theory to account for these events as to show what such a theory would have to look like.

The paintings are oil on wood, ranging from 24×18″ to 10×8″ in size.  Ultimately, for each painting, the corresponding text will be printed on a separate panel, matching the width of the painting and displayed directly below it.  Better images to come.

“…there is mention of a fibrous substance like blue silk that fell over Naumberg, March 23, 1665”

 

The Falls: flakes

“Upon March 3, 1876, at Olympian Springs, Bath County, Kentucky, flakes of a substance that looked like beef fell from the sky- ‘from a clear sky’.”

 

The Falls: paper

“Substance like charred paper fell in Norway and other parts of Northern Europe, Jan. 31, 1686”

 

The Falls: worms

“London Times, April 14, 1837:  That, in the parish of Bramford Speke, Devonshire, a large number of black worms, about three quarters of an inch in length, had fallen in a snowstorm.”

 

The Falls: disk

“A disk of worked stone fell from the sky, at Tarbes, France, June 20, 1887.”