Fleeting red flares dance above thunderstorms, invisible to the naked eye and dismissed as pilots’ tales for a century — until 1989. Join Canadian artist Peter McLeish as he shares two decades spent turning this rare atmospheric phenomenon into art, in collaboration with NASA-linked scientists.
Fire in the sky, too fast for the human eye
High above thunderstorms, at the very edge of space, brief red flares can leap upward into the darkness — vast, fleeting, and gone in a fraction of a second. For over a century, pilots reported these strange lights and were largely dismissed. It wasn’t until 1989, when a low-light video camera captured one by accident, that scientists finally had proof. The phenomenon, now called a red sprite, blinks in and out of existence roughly ten times faster than the human eye can register — one researcher likened the discovery to “biology suddenly finding a new human body part.”
Join us at Central Stories for an evening with Canadian multi-media artist, painter, filmmaker and lecturer Peter McLeish, whose two-decade collaboration with atmospheric scientists has turned this elusive phenomenon into striking works of art.
About the talk
Peter will share the story behind his long-running collaboration with American meteorologist Dr. Walter A. Lyons (former President of the American Meteorological Society) and Dr. Colin Price of Tel Aviv University, whose ground-based sprite research connected with NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia MEIDEX mission. That partnership led to a National Science Foundation grant supporting The Hundred Year Hunt for Red Sprites, a 42-minute documentary on one of the most unexpected atmospheric discoveries of the late 20th century, and Peter’s own companion film, Lightning’s Angels — a six-minute piece combining digitally enhanced oil paintings that reveal aspects of a sprite’s transformation invisible to any camera, set to music by Paul Schwartz and the Joyful Company of Singers.
Trained first in physics and mathematics before turning to the visual arts, Peter has spent his career bridging art and science — with over 80 exhibitions, film screenings and lectures delivered in more than 60 cities worldwide. This talk is a rare chance to hear directly from an artist who has spent decades chasing one of the atmosphere’s strangest secrets, and to see the sky through both a scientist’s and a painter’s eyes.
Details
- Date: Saturday 12 September
- Time: 5:00pm
- Venue: Central Stories Museum & Art Gallery, 21 Centennial Avenue, Alexandra
- Entry: Koha/Donation
- Tickets: Free via Humanitix, or RSVP to manager@centralstories.com
All welcome.
