In the Works
The Constellation of Ham: an Illustrated book for Adults
I am currently developing "Ham," a self-generated project about the early life of the baby chimpanzee who Americans trained and sent to space in January 1961 as part of the Mercury Space Program.
It is a collection of reflections on his life seen through the eyes of an illustrator and heard through the voices of those who knew him.
Pairing my drawings with words from the people from the period, it feels like I’m collaborating with a host of co-authors — among them, the animal importer who trapped him in Africa, the young airmen who took care of him, the research scientists who studied his body’s responses to “unusual environments,” and the astronauts who were bested by him.
Who was this chimpanzee the world called hero, then victim? Ham’s contributions to space exploration are not what justify his life. He had his own pleasures, pains, desires and preferences and, as such, he mattered for his own sake.
This captivates me, and sixty years later, I’m intent on interpreting Ham’s legacy for myself. Pairing words and drawings is my way to listen more closely, to explore contradictions, uncertainties and inconvenient narratives.
From a series of studies using period photographs and an on-site visit to
Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico.
On-site Research: A week at Holloman Air Force Base in April — drawing and puzzling with the Chief Historian — brought to life my research to date: the histories, archival film, photographs, scientific papers. And sitting in the stacks of the New Mexico Museum of Space History listening to the Assistant Curator made it more alive still. Ham is a deeply felt story for people in Alamogordo.
The Facts: The Mercury Chimpanzee Program began in October of 1958 with the mission to test the life support systems of the mercury spacecraft as well as the effects of spaceflight on the body. There were 65 chimpanzees in the colony overseen by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. By April 1959, a small group of these chimpanzees began daily training and conditioning for space flight, eventually undergoing the same simulations as the Mercury 7 astronauts. In July of 1959, just two years old and weighing 19 pounds, Ham (#65, then called Chang) joined this group of “chimponauts.” By early 1960, six chimpanzees, including Ham, were well on their way to being rated space-flight ready.
To put Ham’s life into context, it was this same year, in July 1960, that across the Atlantic, the young Jane Goodall, traveled from England to Africa to begin the pioneering study of chimpanzees in the wild.
And it was 8 years before we experienced that moment of humbling connection — Earthrise. Taken from lunar orbit during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, this photograph of our small blue planet rising above the lunar horizon radically shifted our perspective about our home. In Ham’s early life, we had yet to see the earth as fragile and glimpse ourselves, as Archibald MacLeish so memorably wrote on Christmas Day, 1968, as “riders on the Earth together, … brothers who know that they are truly brothers.”
Ham is the baby chimpanzee whose most solitary and frightening moments made possible some of humankind’s most daring and connected ones.