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An artwork created barely a year ago is now the most-viewed ever, eclipsing the Mona Lisa within months. You can't buy the piece, even with colorful currency. It's free, actually. I interviewed the creators last year for a story that was never published, and we'll get there, but first...

Think about the ideas you associate with the word color.

Dinosaur eggs and insect wings and rainbows, for me, aided by a supernumerary appearance in DC. Vantablack and its opposite, unleashed this month. One of my favorite painters, Alma Thomas, pops into my head too.

Humanity has created art for more than 40,000 years, but we have to apply more creativity when we represent parts of the world we can’t see. For instance, color doesn't really exist for the coronavirus – the particles are smaller than the wavelengths of visible light.

Yet as soon as you hear "coronavirus" your mind probably conjures the signature red-and-gray image known across the globe. That's why I talked with Alissa Eckert and Dan Higgins, medical illustrators at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their work always balances the needs of both science and style.

After studying the shapes of the viral particles identified by CDC researchers, the illustrators tinkered with visual translations.

The spherical surface: not soap-bubble translucent but stony, "like you can actually touch it," Eckert said.

"We don’t want to scare people," Higgins said, "but we want to make sure it’s a real thing, and that’s why the texture is the way it is. We also use the gray to let the other parts stand out."

Notably, the spiky proteins that define this contagion's identity.

Eckert tested a version with blues and greens, but the effect was "soft, kind of flat."

Instead, they rendered the spikes in red.

"When we tried this combination," she said, "it was much more powerful. It says something.”

And to close National Poetry Month, here's Ada Limón saying something about color and spring and survival.