Nearly 45 years ago, Edward Lorenz, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorology professor posed a question: “Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” This idea became the basis for a branch of mathematics known as chaos theory.

The concept referred to as the butterfly effect has been embraced by popular culture, where the term is often used to emphasize the significance of small occurrences.

29 September 1944 | A Czech Jew, Pavel Friedman (b. 1921), was deported to #Auschwitz from Theresienstadt Ghetto. He did not survive.

On 4 June 1942 in the ghetto he wrote a poem titled "Butterfly".

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The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ‘way up high.
It went away I'm sure because it wished
to kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto
But I have found my people here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut candles in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don't live in here,
In the ghetto.

After the cloudy sky blue was painted in, I stuck pieces of deconstructed oil paintings that I had cut up directly on to the canvas. The pieces adhered as the oil paint dried. I have used these small rectangular pieces in a few other works. I chose the colorful pieces to represent the butterflies.

Photographed by Jay Daniel, Black Cat Studio, Novato, CA

Exhibited at: Marin MOCA, Novato, CA, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Sebastopol, CA and Fulton Crossing Gallery, Fulton (Santa Rosa), CA