Who hasn’t wanted to pluck a handful of stars from the clear night sky?
Collage artist Dolores Nemi Caldentey—known publicly as The Stars Collector and colloquially as “Lo”—has found a way. Inspired by vintage illustration and surrealism, Lo creates spacey scenes straight out of your star-filled lucid dreams.
The Argentinean artist creates her digital works under a thin veil of anonymity, sharing her legal name and nickname, but never her unobstructed face. Shrouded in mystery, Lo’s public persona only intensifies the heart-stopping romance at the heart of her celestial works. Often capturing moments of intense yearning and melancholy, the digital artist acknowledges the breadth of human emotion. "I want to create a universe where people can feel understood,” she says. “To reach people's souls, to express their emotions, to help them heal.”
Cradled in fingernail moons and perched on puffy cumulus clouds, the figures in Lo’s work appear coupled or alone, cut and pasted into an obscure galaxy. Her star-speckled scenes combine the beauty and wonder of existence with the loneliness and sublime terror of unknown emotional terrains. “This too shall pass,” promises one of her lunar works. Elsewhere, Lo offers her take on Michelangelo’s “The Creation of Adam,” imagining God and his children as sparkling stars, a red thread tethering the two forever.
Often paired with typed messages, Lo’s warmhearted work became instantly popular when she began sharing on Instagram early in 2022. In one post, she quotes singer/songwriter Robyn’s heartbreaking single “Dancing On My Own”:
I'm right over here
Why can't you see me?
In another post she pivots, reminding her followers—and herself—they “deserve a love that makes [their] heart feel lighter and free.”
"I want to create a universe where people can feel understood.” — The Stars Collector
The Stars Collector: Instagram
All photos published with permission of the artist(s).
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