New Legacy Project Part 6: What's Next?

Electric Beings

Dear Friends and Fans,

Is the image above simply TOO HOT? Electric Beings is about energy, especially electromagnetic energy (e.g., light and colors) and thermal energy (heat). Here in Ashland, Oregon, we have been struggling with temperatures of 95-100+ degrees Fahrenheit and NO RAIN. Above, two people and a cat are dancing in a field of flaming colors, flying red-hot disks, and blue electric charges. In the detail below, look for the fine white lines that represent our nervous system.

So what does electricity have to do with nerve cells? In 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery of bioelectricity, demonstrating that electricity was the medium by which nerve cells passed signals to the muscles. There’s no doubt today that the nervous system runs on electricity, i.e. exchanges of electrons, and is essentially a biological information highway, responsible for controlling all the biological processes and movements in the body.

Forgive me, dear reader, but here I must digress to do a shoutout to my favorite heroine, Émilie du Châtelet, who won a prize in 1737 from French Academie des Sciences’ competition to determine the nature of heat, light and fire. Using only her imagination, logic and knowledge of physics, she theorized that different colors of light carry different levels of heat. In 1800, William Herschel carried out experiments that proved Émilie correct.

So why this did I post Electric Beings as Part 6 of my Legacy Update? To tell the truth, the heat has been exhausting and I feel a bit fried. Nonetheless, I continue to burrow through my paintings, drawings, letters and journals from the 1970s and 1980s, looking for golden nuggets for my book, aware that my October 28 deadline for the first rough draft looms on the horizon. I think you’ll be interested in what I am finding. I’ll share some of it in next month’s Update.