This was
an interesting commission centered around Walt Whitman's
poem, The
Learn’d Astronomer.
The lefthand white side of the piece represents the
clinical environment of scientists who lecture in
classrooms; or perhaps the stir-crazy scientists
themselves, stuck in laboratories listening to
dissertations and plotting graphs and equations.
The righthand indigo side represents the open, simple yet
complex, and utterly tranquil space itself and the awe that
an observer has for it.
The recipient of this piece was a high-level scientist. He
had done research involving magpies (hence the bird
featured in both sides of this piece... used to represent
the recipient himself). He has a penchant for boxelder
insects (note the graphical bug crawling in the bottom
corner).
When given this piece, the recipient noticed and delighted
in the fact that there were a couple of hidden references
included in the piece: 21 white/silver dots are in the
initial cap 'W' (an important number, scientifically); and
that is, in fact, the dark side of the moon featured
(irreverant homage to Pink Floyd's, The
Wall).
There are other details to note as well when looking at the
righthand indigo side. There are three constellations
present: Orion, Taurus (to represent the client's
astrological sign) and Sagittarius (to represent the
recipient scientist's astrological sign).
The details for the lefthand white side include icons of
Galileo, Einstein, telescopes, NASA, U.S. government,
covalent bonds, soundwave-ripple and infrared graphs, to
point out a few.