What’s Behind Our UFO Obsession? An Intriguing Interrogation On Canvas

Why are we so fascinated with unidentified flying objects? An art exhibit in Idaho, which boasts a top spot on the list of states with per capita UFO sightings, explores that intriguing question.

“Sightings” shows through December 2 at the Sun Valley Museum of Art, located near a 1,416- square-mile dark-sky preserve that restricts artificial light pollution for an unobstructed view of starry night skies. The exhibit features more than 20 works by artists pondering why we look upward for signs of life and how we experience phenomena we can’t easily explain.

The UFOs that fly through the artists’ works range from abstract bursts of light to objects typical of the flying saucers that loom above Earth in sci-fi. The creations are provocative, quirky, enigmatic and sometimes funny.

“This exhibition doesn’t speculate on whether the objects or lights viewers report seeing in the sky are in fact otherworldly in origin,” curator Courtney Gilbert said in a statement, “but brings together a group of artists whose work, often with humor, invites us to consider what we might be seeking when we look to the stars for signs of life.”

The pieces include an untitled work by the late artist Ionel Talpazan, who described seeing a mysterious blue shape hover over him in the Romanian countryside when he was 8. The experience left him haunted and deeply curious about the possibility of life beyond our planet, themes reflected throughout his body of work. In the Talpazan mixed-media piece on display at the museum, dense annotation in Romanian surrounds a spaceship that looks like it flew straight out of Independence Day. Words like “mystery,” “possible” and “universe” pepper the text.

Reports of UFO sightings surged during the pandemic, according to the National UFO Reporting Center, as people stayed home with more time to gaze at the night sky.

That fact struck Seattle painter Cable Griffith, who has five pieces in the free exhibit. In a vibrant acrylic on canvas titled “Self-fulfilling Prophecy II,” a window overlooks a tranquil suburban home. One pane reveals an everyday sight, tree branches twisting across a striated pink and blue sky. Through the other pane, viewers see a mysterious electric blue shape lighting up the sky like a strange, misshapen star.

For the exhibit, Griffith revisited a 2015 series of paintings inspired by eyewitness UFO accounts, both drawn and written. He called the series “Sightings.” The Sun Valley Museum of Art borrowed that name for its exhibit, commissioning Griffith to expand his series.

The museum commissioned work by one other artist, Chicago-based artist Deb Sokolow. She visited Idaho’s Wood River Valley in 2022 to explore local lore of UFOs in the area and created an 18-page large-scale book that weaves a narrative from facts, research and speculative fiction.

“Fascination with the possibility of extraterrestrial life seems to be at a high across the country,” curator Gilbert said, “and, living adjacent to a Dark Sky Reserve, it felt like the right time and place to explore the current interest in the topic.”

In September, the U.S. Department of Defense launched a website to collect publicly available, declassified information on UFOs. And in July, a new U.S. intelligence office tasked with investigating UFOs released a report after investigating new sightings from the past couple of years. Balloons, drones, birds or plastic bags explained many of the sightings, but 171 were labeled “uncharacterized and unattributed.”

As The X-Files liked to remind us, the truth is out there. Or at least being contemplated on canvas.