I'll admit, I got excited to create an NDGT poster for one of his US lecture tours. The image depicts Tyson as a massive library of human knowledge containing the history of astronomical observation, from the ancient observatories of India (Jantar Mantar) to the Maya, through the Western enlightenment thinkers like Galileo and Newton, to modern thinkers like Carl Sagan. From his mind ascends a spiral stairway (double helix) as people climb through his mind into the sky, flying aloft into space. For me it represents how great teachers like Tyson are vessels for the vast accumulation of human knowledge, connecting us both to our past, and to our future of knowledge. 

THE BEST PART...

I had the chance to present the poster to Neil in person at en event. As is his reputation, he got giddily excited about it, signed the poster, and we took a photo together (see below). That's all I was looking for. Done. However, the next day I randomly saw him walking across a plaza, and I stepped forward and asked him a provocative question about Climate Change and Capitalism. To answer, Neil then proceeded to deliver a spontaneous 25 minute public lecture as a crowd formed around him. In this impromptu "show" he put his arm around me and I suddenly became Neil’s sidekick (or prop). It was epic. Suddenly, in the middle of it, he remembered I was the guy who made the poster he met the day before, got really excited and then described the whole image to the crowd. Was NDGT giving people a tour through my artwork? Very cool. A young girl, maybe 15, said she actually had the poster hanging on her wall.  He then darted off, and a number of people in the crowd stayed to talk to me, as now I was somehow the “celebrity." Then I realized that this was his way of demonstrating the principle of the Transfer of Energy.