The Wild Satellite series started with an art show calling for paintings of "chairs", a theme which perplexed me for a while. As I ruminated, I thought about an Our Lady Peace song I used to love which sang:
"she builds her own satellite, from an old rusted chair/ she leaves this whole world behind..."
The song always struck me as sad, and if taken literally, it conjured up an image of what a homemade satellite would look like if built from discarded junk: The rusty iron chair, a broken umbrella "antenna", and window shutters wired with individually-extracted tiny solar panels from perhaps a hundred grade school calculators.
I added a feline character to man the satellite, and so I find myself coming back to send this wild satellite on lonely, and unlikely adventures.