A Personal Statement
"Ever since I was a young boy, I have been fascinated by astronomy, and in
particular, the question of life on other planets. In 1962, when I was 14, I
avidly read Walter Sullivan's book, "We Are Not Alone," and for the
first time heard the names Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Philip Morrison, and Barney
Oliver, and terms like magic frequencies, CETI (communication with extraterrestrial
intelligence, as it was then called) and the values of N and L (variables in
the Drake equation, which can help us determine how many advanced technical
civilizations may exist in the Milky Way Galaxy).
"In my college years I, like many others of my generation, became
interested in questions about the ultimate nature of the cosmos and the destiny
of humans in it. But to me it seemed obvious that it was the scientists, not
the mystics, who were most likely to supply useful answers to these deep questions.
Nevertheless, it was the art of the 1960s--ecstatic,
psychedelic, surrealistic, visionary--that inspired my artistic talents.
"In this sense I am unusual among astronomical artists, in that the great
master Chesley Bonestell had little influence on me in my early years as a
painter. Rather, artists like Salvador Dali, M.C. Escher, Jim Steranko, and
Jack Kirby were my artistic icons. I wanted to create compelling images like
these artists had, but using as subject matter ideas in science, treated
symbolically and metaphorically, rather than literally. Books that had a
strong influence on me included the novels of Arthur C. Clarke and Olaf
Stapledon, and especially the book "Intelligent Life in the Universe"
by Carl Sagan and Iosif Shklovskii. I wanted to do in images what they did in words.
"In 1972 I showed some of my paintings to Carl Sagan, and he asked me to
illustrate his forthcoming book of essays. This began a long partnership that
has provided me with unusual, in fact unique, opportunities to work with
those scientists most directly involved in the subjects that interested me.
Carl and I had many discussions about the possible nature of extraterrestrial
civilizations, and whether art, like mathematics, might be a common trait of
intelligence, wherever found. These discussions led to my being invited in
1977 to help design an actual message for extraterrestrials--the Voyager
Records--and brought me into close touch with the worldwide SETI community.
Later, when Carl asked me to lead the art aspects of his television series,
"Cosmos," I widened my technical knowledge of painting, animation and
computer graphics, adding powerful new tools to my artistic toolkit.
"At the same time, I was working in Toronto as a writer and reporter for
the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, creating radio programs about space
science. I often quipped that a painter could find radio very satisfying
because it was the most visual of all media--providing images far superior than
those that could be seen on television, for example. I covered the Viking and
Voyager missions for the CBC, and thus had a front row seat for those
thrilling explorations of the planets. These experiences only
reconfirmed my commitment to the exploration of space and motivated my support
of The Planetary Society in their many projects.
"In 1993, at The Planetary Society's invitation, I directed the design of
an artifact to be sent to Mars in 1996 aboard a Russian spacecraft as a gift
for the future human inhabitants of Mars. This CD-ROM bears works of
literature and art about Mars and shows how important the imagination of
writers and artists has been in inspiring the real exploration of space. The
disk also carries the logo of The Planetary Society and the names of its
members, a fitting symbol of the power of individuals to support our
development as a spacefaring species.
"The Voyager and Mars messages were positive and optimistic tokens of our
world as we might describe it to others. Another "deep-time" message
I have designed tells a darker story. It is a warning marker for a nuclear waste site
in New Mexico, intended to warn our descendants for the next 10,000 years
against inadvertent intrusion into the waste repository.
"For an artist it is, of course, thrilling to be involved in such
projects. Art is one of the best ways by which societies leave a record of
themselves. All artists want their work to survive and be seen by an
audience. Few artists have had the opportunities I have had of creating something
specifically for audiences in deep space, on a colonized Mars, or on Earth in
the year 12,000. The fact that I will never live to see how the works are
eventually received hardly matters.
"Since 1988, I have lived on the Big Island of Hawaii, which sits like a
lens in the middle of the Pacific, focusing varied aspects of nature to the
observant eye. Here intrepid Polynesian explorers arrived after long journeys
from Samoa and Tahiti, navigating by subtle signs in ocean and sky, guided by
the stars, in voyages that prefigure our future journeys to distant planets.
Here are delicate and eerie rain forests and the intricate other world of the
coral reef, where I float weightless as any astronaut. Here one
can observe lava fresh from Earth's interior, or gaze at the stars from Mauna
Kea, home of one of the best observatories on our planet. From time to time I
take my own telescope to the beautiful Kona Village Resort and try to share my
own sense of wonder with visitors to the island. In 1994 we
observed the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 impact, and were one of the only amateur
groups in the world to see the impact of fragment R in the Jovian atmosphere.
Such experiences only confirm my sense that nature unites artist and
scientist--and indeed all curious humans.
"The exploration of the planets and the search for extraterrestrial life
are the most important endeavors of our century, perhaps of all human history.
I hope that my work has played some role in communicating the excitement of
such efforts, for our own time and species and, perhaps, for
others as well."
--Jon Lomberg
In 1980, Carl Sagan asked his long-time artist and colleague Jon Lomberg to
design a logo
for a new organization that Sagan was founding with Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman.
That organization was The Planetary Society.
Sagan suggested a variation on a piece that Lomberg had created for Sagan's
first book of popular essays on astronomy, "The Cosmic Connection,"
published in 1973. That logo, showing a sailing ship set against a stylized image of the
solar system, draws a metaphor between the great age of exploration of previous
centuries and humankind's first steps into space. It also symbolizes
the unusual collaboration between art and science that has characterized the
work of Jon Lomberg, who has remained a Senior Consultant to the Planetary
Society to the present day, preparing for them projects as humble as a SETI T-shirt and as
grand as the CD- ROM time capsule included on the Russian Mars '96
spacecraft.
Lomberg's prints and posters--many of which are
available through the Society's sales department (e-mail
lomberg@aloha.net)--include the
cover of Sagan's novel "Contact" and the most accurate painting of
our Milky Way Galaxy
ever made. This latter painting is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian
Institution in the "Where Next, Columbus?" Gallery.
Lomberg is one of the world's best known astronomical artists. His paintings,
graphic designs, and animation range from fine art and book illustration to
art direction for many television documentaries about space science. His work
has been reproduced widely in Europe, Russia, and Japan, as well as in North
America. He has also designed some of the most unusual, durable, and far-flung
artifacts ever produced by the human species. Lomberg's design for the
cover of the Voyager Interstellar Record, predicted to last for over a thousand
million years, may be the longest lived piece of human art ever created. He
directed the creation of an artifact to be landed on Mars in 1996, and is
currently design director for a proposed message artifact that
may be placed aboard the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan.
He has worked on many projects with astronomer Carl Sagan since 1971. He
illustrated many of Sagan's books and magazine articles, and was chief artist
for Sagan's classic television series "Cosmos," which aired in 1980.
For his work on that series, Lomberg received a Prime Time Emmy Award for
"Outstanding Individual Achievement in Creative Technical Crafts."
He has also art-directed other science documentaries for the PBS and Turner
television networks, including several episodes of "Nova."
In 1983, Lomberg's widely reproduced paintings and animation of the Earth
during and after nuclear war helped Sagan and other scientists introduce the
controversial idea of "nuclear winter". His videotape about this
subject won first prize at the Vermont World Peace Film Festival in 1984.
Lomberg has designed astronomical displays for major museums in the United
States and Canada, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Ontario Science
Center, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Sonora Desert Museum, and the Visitors
Centers of the Jodrell Bank and Arecibo radio observatories. He has been
commissioned by NASA many times to create images, posters, and displays,
including a large graphic used at the Paris Air Show in 1987.
In Moscow in 1987, Lomberg led the first delegation of American astronomical
artists to display as a group in the Soviet Union, at the Space Future Forum,
held on the 30th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight.
Lomberg has been closely associated with the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence (SETI) since 1977, when he was the design director on the team
that created the Voyager Interstellar Record. These messages for
extraterrestrials are destined to travel in interstellar space forever,
unless found. He is the co-author of the book Murmurs of Earth, which
describes this project. He has worked with NASA and the SETI Institute on
popular and educational projects using SETI as a theme, including the
"Life In The Universe" curriculum for grades 4-9, currently being
introduced throughout the United States.
In 1992, Lomberg cochaired a panel, organized by Sandia National Laboratories,
that was given the task of designing very long-lived (10,000-year) markers for
the proposed nuclear waste repository in New Mexico. These markers will
carry a message of words, symbols, and images intended to warn and protect
future generations against inadvertent intrusion into the waste repository.
He is the editor of a forthcoming book about this project called "Warning
the Future: A 10,000 Year Marker for Nuclear Waste," published by MIT
Press.
Lomberg was the project director for a CD-ROM called Visions of Mars, produced
by The Planetary Society and Time Warner Interactive Group. This disk will be
launched aboard the Russian Mars '96 mission and landed on the surface of Mars
in 1997. It is intended as a gift for the future human
explorers of the Red Planet. Lomberg served as editor in chief for this
project, which documents humanity's long fascination with Mars as reflected in
science fiction, artwork and popular culture. He has also played a role in
the design of the Mapex sensor, a long-term nanotechnology sensor that is part
of this project, now being built at the Microdevices Laboratory at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory.
Lomberg is also a respected space science journalist, working for Canadian
media. Beginning in 1975, he has created radio documentaries about space
science for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's program, "Ideas".
His 1986 program "Halley's Comet" won the coveted Armstrong Award for
radio documentary, given by the Columbia University School of Journalism. He
has also written about space science for the Toronto Globe and Mail, Canada's
most respected national newspaper.
Since 1981, when he designed the Planetary Society's well- known logo, Lomberg has worked with that organization on many projects in planetary exploration and SETI. He has also lectured on art and science at many universities and museums around the world. This past winter, he was a Regent's Lecturer for the University of California at Irvine. In February 1995 he was invited to give a Director's Topical Seminar to the staff of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is the winner of numerous professional awards and is listed in Marquis' Who's Who In the West.
Jon Lomberg's artwork is included in collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and in the many private collections including those of Carl Sagan and Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft.
Lomberg was born in Philadelphia in 1948 and now lives in Hawaii with his wife and two children.
©Copyright 1996 THE PLANETARY SOCIETY