DESERT BLOOM -Crystalline THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) from cannabis
NOTES FROM THE STUDIO/LAB:
I'm now in the process of getting ready for several summer events, but also back in the studio/lab creating new crystal photography.
I'll be exploring some new wine crystals this year and continuing my THC and CBD crystal work. Interestingly, some of my early lab work done at the University of Washington on the function of receptors in the brain called cannabinoid receptors. THC binds to these receptors, but we all naturally produce a chemical that binds to these receptors, as well. Scientists have isolated this chemical and named it "anandamide,” a name derived from the Sanskrit word "ananda," meaning "joy, bliss, and delight.” There are also small amounts of anandamide naturally found in chocolate. Small world.
THANK YOU TO ALL WHO PARTICIPATED IN MY ART AUCTION FOR HUMANITARIAN AID TO UKRAINE: Last month I announced an auction to raise funds for the Save the Children: Ukraine Fund. It was a rousing success. To help in a small way alleviate the desperate situation so many children face there, a metal print of my crystal photograph "Symphony," 36W x 15H inch, was offered to the highest bidder.
You would have thought he didn't want any patients, and you would have been correct, for Haeckel wasn't particularly fond of working with patients. What he truly desired was to be a zoologist.
It comes as no surprise that fewer than a half-dozen individuals were ever to avail themselves of the services of Dr. Haeckel, and while we will never know what Haeckel the physician might have accomplished with a little more flexible schedule, Haeckel the zoologist was about to begin a journey that would make him famous worldwide.
Blessed with abundant free time, Haeckel embarked in 1859 on a five-week sabbatical to Rome. There, his interests drifted to art. During his Italian travels, he met the German painter and poet Hermann Allmers and briefly considered becoming a professional landscape artist.
However, by October of that year, we find Haeckel in the Gulf of Messina in Sicily, pursuing his passion for zoology and deep into the study of the tiny marine plankton known as radiolarians. So small as to be virtually invisible to the naked eye, radiolarians drift through the ocean on the currents in incalculable numbers. "Everything now came before me in new and beautiful and remarkable forms," he wrote of the radiolarians in Messina. Here Haeckel’s artistic training served him well as he assembled a series of extraordinarily detailed and beautiful drawings of these sea creatures.
Ernst Haeckel (seated) and his assistant
As abundant as they are, radiolarians had been little studied in Haeckel's day. His skill at recording the details of his tiny subjects was astonishing, aided in part by the use of a high-quality microscope and his ability to look through his microscope with one eye while attending to his drawing using the other. He was recording these illustrations in exacting if somewhat idealized detail; Haeckel was able to describe many new species and published his beautifully illustrated volume The Radiolarians on his return to Germany in 1862.
Ernst Haeckel from The Radiolarians,
Haeckel possessed an enthusiasm and sense of wonder at the sheer diversity of life and a driving passion for sharing this wonder with others through his art. He believed that his task as a scientist was to portray what he had discovered with both precision and passion and that the universe itself represented an infinitely beautiful work of art.
