Week NINE! What?! Now the pressure is really on to get everything I’ve wanted to do done.
Had some great results out of the kiln (a few flops too, but that’s ok!) Getting all the parts out of the kiln meant that I could start playing with resin. The first result wasn’t perfect, you can see big cracks in the resin in the image above, but I learned a lot, like how not to get those big cracks! I’m loving how the pieces already have a specimen in a petri dish feel about them and that the translucency of the clay is working with the translucency of the resin. Now that the initial learning curve is over with, I’m excited to really get going on these pieces and I feel really good about working with this new medium.
In an effort to create a community project based around art + science while I’m here in Taiwan, the ceramics museum arranged a meeting with the science museum for me and I was able to get a day behind the scenes at the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung. Their lead mycology scientist shared their extensive fungi specimens in the herbarium and how they grow fungi from spores in petri dishes. She also shared the process of identifying mushrooms by looking at a tiny section of the gills at a microscopic level. It was absolutely fascinating! I also met with their education department who was thrilled with the idea of doing a clay workshop for some of their staff and volunteers. So I’ll be going back there in a few weeks to lead them in a art + science project. The pieces created will eventually become an installation at the science museum. I’m excited to get clay into the hands of these scientists in a few weeks and seeing what inspires them!
