Michael Filisky, performance artist, scientist

Michael Byron Filisky, an Arlington resident who successfully parlayed his background in performance art into a career in science, died March 9 of an apparent heart attack. He was 59.

''He could see connections between things," said his wife, Ingrid Bartinique. ''His greatest gift was describing the world . . . to people in a way that made these things absolutely irresistible."

Mr. Filisky grew up in Danville, Ill., and received bachelor's and master's degrees in theater from the University of Illinois. During the 1970s, he moved to New York City and worked as a stage manager for the Claude Kipnis Mime Theater. As a result of his experiences in New York, he formed his own successful mime company in Detroit, eventually taking the act to Amsterdam to perform at the city's ''Festival of Fools."

Mr. Filisky eventually returned to New York, where he met his future wife at a friend's birthday party in 1981. Bartinique was preparing to attend Harvard, and the couple moved to Cambridge together. They married in 1987 and had one daughter. Bartinique was working as a career counselor and helped Mr. Filisky realize his love for biology and that he was not too old to begin what he called ''the world's longest career change."

Mr. Filisky had always been interested in science and natural history and took over 50 credits to build up his knowledge of biology, his wife said. He worked under Dr. Ruth Turner at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology; working in that lab helped Mr. Filisky realize he preferred explaining science to researching it, Bartinique said.

His love for performance and his desire to explain science to others was a ''perfect match," she said.

Mr. Filisky joined the New England Aquarium as a volunteer and was promoted to assistant curator of education just three weeks later. He attended graduate school part-time, receiving a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1999.

He was especially interested in how children's understanding of natural selection affects their grasp of evolutionary processes, Bartinique said.

He continued his career at the Harvard/Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in its science education department and science media group, the media arm of that department. At the time of his death he was working on a symposium titled ''Parallels in Creativity," about the connections between art and science.

The symposium focused on the idea that creativity in science and art have certain similarities, something Mr. Filisky was especially attuned to, said Charles Whitney of Weston, a friend and colleague of Mr. Filisky's. ''He was somebody who really lived in both worlds very successfully."

Whitney described Mr. Filisky as an optimistic individual who ''always [saw] possibilities where some of us might have missed them."

Mr. Filisky enjoyed art and music, film, crossword puzzles, and the Red Sox. He also bird watched with his family, often joking ''bird watchers are always on duty."

Mr. Filisky had contributed to the magazine Science for the People in the 1980s and was a member of Concord Academy's Diversity and Equality Committee. He authored several children's books, including ''Living Lights: Creatures That Glow in the Dark," which was translated into Chinese.

Mr. Filisky often described himself as a ''xenophile" and was always attracted to that which is foreign or new, his wife said.

''He loved meeting other people and finding out about them," she said. ''He could keep up a conversation in just about any subject because he was so widely read and interested in so much."

Mr. Filisky's daughter recalled attending Arlington's Daddy/Daughter Dances with her father and the stories about a little cloud he would tell to help her fall asleep.

''I am who I am because of who he made me," Marina Filisky said. She said her love of theater, trivia, books, and language all come from her father.

Ingrid Bartinique likened meeting Mr. Filisky to the scene in ''The Wizard of Oz" where Dorothy opens a door and the once black-and-white world turns to Technicolor. ''That's the effect he had on people," she said.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Mr. Filisky leaves five sisters, Susan Livengood of Philo, Ill., Teresa Fugate of Danville, Ill., Margaret Nixon of Westville, Ill., Gerianne Tinsley of Catlin, Ill.; and Connie Little of Port Angeles, Wash.; and two brothers, Matthew Filicsky of Danville, Ill., Patrick Filicsky of Tilton, Ill.

A memorial celebration of Mr. Filisky's life will be held in the spring.