Like Galactic Dreams 1, this image is one of several I did using the idea of a figure in a bubble, and one of three with jellyfish. Rendering a jellyfish is no easy task, by the way, what with all that amorphous detail. Which is exactly what makes them so interesting. They say the human body is mostly water, yet we're rock solid compared to jellyfish. They seem barely distinguishable from their medium. Living water, so to speak. So I was thinking about the Hubble photo called “The Pillars of Creation” and about the organic chemistry roiling around inside those cloud formations, and it occurred to me that nebulae are not only nurseries for nascent suns, but for future biologies as well. So if jellyfish can be seen as living water, then we too are indistinguisable from our own medium — star dust, chemistry and water. The ancient nebula from which our own star emerged. The universe itself. Carl Sagan and others have said it so often that it has become a cliché, yet who could resist trying to express that?

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