The invisible light that glows

Indiy Foley, Big Picture, Hobart City High School

In collaboration with Dr Lisa Gershwin

Artist’s Statement

The scientist who I worked with specialises in glowing things. It fascinated me how so many things we see on a daily basis and that we take for granted, glow under UV light! There’s a hidden world of colours and light we as humans can’t even see!

Dr Lisa told us about all the cool things that glowed including things like the aurora and ghost mushrooms. She also talked about how they glow! It was super interesting and cool.

It also made me think about other things that glow and admit light. Like stars and planets and space! How cool it is to look up pictures on the Nasa website and see planets and stars we’ll never visit in our lifetime but know that they exist. How many secrets the world holds that if we looked a little deeper, we could find a whole treasure trove of answers!

I decided to make it a landscape diorama, to show that so many things glow under UV lights! The trees, animals, grass, plants, we all have parts of us that glow. I really like space, so I decided to add that in too. I used paint, one non-glow in the dark, and one glow in the dark and UV light strips to create my glowing landscape.

This was also one of the first times I’ve ever painted anything, and I found it really soothing kind of like looking at the aurora itself.

Photographer: OI Studios

Description: I decided to make it a landscape diorama, to show that so many things glow under UV lights! The trees, animals, grass, plants, we all have parts of us that glow. I really like space, so I decided to add that in too. I used paint, one non-glow in the dark, and one glow in the dark and UV light strips to create my glowing landscape.