The form of LYRA/VEGA II's 12 discs mirrors a constellation of stars viewed in the West as Orpheus's LYRE of Greek & Roman mythology. Arab astronomers, having absorbed the science from the ancients and made great advances in the area through the middle ages, visualized the same pattern of stars as an eagle. The name of its brightest star, VEGA, comes from the Arabic word meaning 'swooping eagle'.

It is the tension between the varying projections onto these stars that prompted me to create this work as a reflection of these two (Western/Islamic) worldviews.

The designs are all Islamic in origin, culled from drawings, tiles and mosaics found in walls, floors and ceilings and other architectural elements produced during the Persian Empire, embodying this tension in the contrasting organic and geometric forms. The colors of each disc correlate to the colors of flags from a sampling of countries, touching on all continents, a 'global' representation. The vehicles of cultural or national ‘identity’ have a fluidity of meaning like the otherwise neutral stars above.

In western mythology, when Orpheus played the Lyre, no one and nothing could resist him; he had the power over the animate and inanimate. His music moved rocks on the hillside and turned the courses of the rivers. What symbolism, if any, the eagle may have had to Arab astronomers is unknown to me, although in view of our current condition, it also seems to me a poignant symbol.

Numerous stars today are labeled with Arabic names. As the astronomers translated knowledge obtained from the ancient Greeks and Romans, many of these names are direct translations of their classical meanings, leaving open the possibility of Vega being a misinterpretation, as this group of stars have been referred to variously as an eagle or a vulture in ancient translations. Because of contact and trade with the Arabs in the middle ages, Europeans inherited astronomical texts and translated this information into Latin. The Arabs were responsible for the transmission of a sophisticated development in Astronomy, as well as other subjects, having gained the highest level of achievement in the world at that time.

Contemporary astronomy survives as a 'collective cultural construct'.

LYRA/VEGA II could be viewed, in light of this, as irreconcilable perceptual (cultural) difference, or the piece could be viewed as a cultural synthesis. Let synthesis, or an amicable coexistence, be the model if we are to live and prosper in peace.