Rarely does a day go by that you don’t see a new piece of Star Wars art, but rarely is that art official. That changed this weekend when Lucasfilm staged an official art show called Art Awakens at Gallery 1988 West in Los Angeles CA. It featured over 100 brand new pieces of Star Wars art, from original paintings and sculptures, to poster prints and drawings.
With the exception of seven in-gallery screenprints, every piece in the show was exclusively listed on eBay with proceeds going to UNICEF, a charity near and dear to the filmmakers behind Star Wars. Those auctions are open through early December.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens writers J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan helped kick off the event, which saw a steady stream of fans enter the gallery all weekend. And while the show is no longer on display in person, you can still bid on pieces at this link, and see a huge chunk of them below.
We also talked to a few of the artists to ask them about their inspirations behind their pieces.
Joshua Budich
“I sort of picked the moment where Luke first encounters Yoda and then tried to lead into the part where Luke discovers that he could have a dark side. And I branched that into the other characters in the movie, especially the love story between Han and Leia.”
Andrew DeGraff
Note: This piece follows the paths of all the Jedi and Sith over the course of all six movies, each represented by a different color line.
“I really felt like I had to do the generational split between the older generation and the new generation and the only way to do that was, obviously, do all six movies and just smash them all together. It took 600 hours of painting, not including the research.”
Rich Kelly
100% Soft
“Because the emojis I designed had been limited to the app, I wanted to do a physical interpretation of them. And instead of just doing prints, I partnered with this company who does thick, laser cut prints, and I thought the emojis would look really good that way.”
Eric Tan
“I’ve been working on The Force Awakens for the last couple years, so it’s very much in my mind. It’s one of the benefits of having all the references and all that. But everything has been done for Star Wars, so I went back and looked at what inspired George Lucas to begin with. And all he talked about was Akira Kurosawa and samurai movies and how they inspired the original trilogy. So I looked back at those movies and those posters and thought, ‘This is a samurai movie done in space.’”
Aaron Jasinski
Andy Stattmiller
Ansel Dryden
Ashton Gallagher
Bennett Slater
Brad Hill
Dan Mumford
JC Richard
Jerkface
Joey Remmers
Joey Spiotto
Josh Keyes
Julian Callos
Kristin Tercek
NC Winters
Nan Lawson
Naoto Hattori
Nate Frizzell
Nathan Stapley
Nicole Gustafsson
Scott C
Scott Listfield
Tom Whalen
Kiersten Essenpreis
Jeff Boyes
“Bousch was my first figure that I ever got as a kid and it’s the only one I remember as a young child. I just remember that helmet, taking that helmet off and I thought it was the coolest thing ever and that’s my favorite Leia.”
Anthony Petrie
“My stuff is very information based so I figured I’d play to my strengths on this. So I put The Force Awakens aside, and I tried to find something in the Star Wars universe that spoke to my work that I’m most known for, which is charts. So I picked the Death Star. Whenever you think of Star Wars, you think of the Darth Vader and the Death Star.”
Dan McCarthy
DKNG Studios
Mark Englert
Matt Taylor
Alex Pardee
Andrew Thompson
Bruce White
Kris Lewis
Rob Prior
Veronica Fish
And that’s only about half of the art that’s on display and for sale! See everything at ebay.com/artawakens.
Contact the author at germain@io9.com.