"... Peter Terezakis' light installation powerfully suggests heat lightning fragmenting the desert's night air...."
— Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

Since then, the sculpture has been recreated and repeated in a variety of settings on several continents.  Always at twilight and for a few hours into the night. Year after year, each experience continues to be different.

Watching the movement of light and shadow across the landscape never fails to open a floodgate of thoughts, visuals, and waking dreams.

There is an uneven beating back of gathering darkness as strong flashes of light depict a less than perfect arc of some imagined life.  Memories of frailty, vulnerability, and ultimate temporality; a quiet stand against the inevitable. 

Within the sinusoidal ebb and flow of the heartbeat of light there is room for mystery and promise.  Between light and shadow is the dwelling place of hope.

Far from things man-made, as the sun sets and before darkness falls, the earth and glowing sky come alive with delicate magic.   Standing in the desert while the pink and violet veil of twilight paints the expanse of both land and sky is an experience which is both tactile and delectable.  The gift of bearing witness to the every day miracle of day becoming night or night falling way to day is a forgotten birthright.   Experiencing such beauty on a celestial scale humbles the ego to silence.   During moments like these I know what it is like to be truly free.

Memories like candles in church.  Bonfires at the beach.  Sparks  from a burning building.  Fireflies escaping through holes in the lid of a catch jar.   Memories beget memories.   Like driving through the countryside.  Remembering that once upon a time we were children, and felt removed from the affairs of the world.

Remembering speeding along a country road in winter, white snow pushed off the black roadway.  Warm, safe, protected within the vibrating womb of the family car.   Dad's strong hands on the chrome and black steering wheel, eyes focused on a distant destination.   Sometimes with my nose and forehead pressed against the cool window, hands cupping temples, I would run my vision over snowy forested hills and imagine volumes of mystery within a shifting landscape of darkness, light, and shadow.  There were moments when it seemed that I would feel the cool dark's knowing, patient return caress as we traveled on black bands scarring the perfect body of the earth.

A life-time later, Heart Beats Light has become a digital metaphor for love and the search for love, of being and not; for life and of death.  Like fireflies in flight, the changing light invokes a sensation of physical movement across a landscape of time and imagination changing the way I see everything.

Peter Terezakis,
San Diego, December 2003