Jean woke me up at 8 o'clock to make Daddy breakfast in bed for Fathers Day. I was already awake thanks to creative insomnia. We made him breakfast and presented it too him (not entirely sure he was initially chuffed to be awoken early on a Sunday!).
The baby instantly stole his yogurt (it's an alpro one so she can actually eat it and she did!).
We had also made some planet/space cupcakes for him which Jean gave him 🙂 I bet you can guess which two the baby decorated!
The we were off to the Cheltenham Science Festival for the day. Above is me and Jean pestering the guy from the Cotswold Astronomical Society.
Jean again spent an age looking through microscopes and prodding things. The main phrase I heard through out the day was, 'I see you have a budding scientist there!'
Alaric found electronics and was happy 🙂 He also found a picture of Alan Turin and thus told a very interested (and I mean it) Jean about the origins of computing.
Mary entertained herself for a huge chunk of time with reading the science festival programme 🙂
I found pretty lighting to take photos of!
Jean found an entity called Keji. She got to generate her own little creature who's bounciness was based on her heart rate. Meaning she got to bounce on a trampoline 🙂
She then helped the Sustainable Chemists with their experiments 🙂 Though she did inform one Chemist that she didn't want to make a rubber ball because she wanted to explode more things!
Oh yes! She also wanted to start a fire with the telescope once I explained we mustn't look directly at the sun.
We then went to The Aviator at Staverton airport for dinner which everyone loved 🙂
This contains two pieces of my own science art - the Life Coral which has been displayed before and Sweet a textural visualisation of sugar specifically sucrose (though only as I ran out of time to knit more molecules!).
The concept of this exhibition is to allow those who are visually impaired to enjoy the art, to raise awareness and to experience art primarily through the sense of touch rather than sight.
I really liked this fabric piece
This history of art in smiley faces done by Zaphira was Mary's favorite piece 🙂
The children especially loved the art, Jean and Mary both go much happiness out of the gallery. Mary just because she could interact with the art work and Jean as she could explore it and no one shouted at her for touching it! (though she did get into trouble for trying to convert one of them into an archeological dig).
Jean loved the glass sculptures especially - there was a magnifier with a light for those who have some vision but not much.
My favourite was this landscape and it piece as a whole along with the science festival has led me and Alaric to want to resurrect a resin casting project we have.
This speech by the writer Neil Gaimon I found extremely powerful especially for someone like me who has to do creative things to survive.
But also the fact that I have not done things the normal way and that I keep hitting barriers such as I don't have an art degree so therefore do not count as an artist for some people. I am in a space inbetween. When I hear or read that others have not done it the normal way either it gives me hope.
Also I feel encouraged that I am not the only person who finds that trying to do projects for money fail and end up leaving you worse off than you started but the ones you do because it's a fun idea race ahead and are successful.
He mentions the changing landscape of publishing too which for me is an emotive subject - I really think I am going to continue on my own path with my blogs and getting my own CDs printed and what have you. I have tried traditional publishing twice now and both time the company has gone bust or something similar - one still having the rights to the work I'd done so I didn't even end up with it and worse they have not done anything with it :/
My first attempt at crowd funding has been a huge success 🙂 So I am very happy with that.
He mentions throwing bottles into the sea and then they all start coming back and you have to learn to say no. And you know - this is actually happening - though I would say I have been shouting into the void and now the echos are not only coming back but are bouncing and reflecting and propagating and I am having to turn things down! (But please still ask as I may not be doing stuff that weekend etc... or like with the Stroud Water Festival - what I was supposed to be doing may have been canceled).
I do feel a bit weird though it is just like suddenly I am this person that people know of - I'm getting pounced by people who I do not know who start chatting to me about my art (ok well this has always happened quiet alot but frequency has increased!).
It is bizar but I do feel like a fake - really? Me? That thing I made in the middle of the night? That story I wrote whilst breast feeding the baby at 5 am? The knitting I did at a festival whilst listening to my favourite local bands? That really? You like it?
It is not all positive feedback mind - one of my best friends hates my songs, I was accused at the Poetry Festival of being arrogant as my business cards say Artistic Scientist and Scientific Artist. Alaric cringes at my Wiggly Pet stories and visual puns. Performance poets see me as a page poet, page poets see me as performance or worse experimental and the artists are scared or the science part and the scientists are like 'you have no PhD!' and I have people ranting at me over spelling mistakes on my blogs...
But....
That is small compared to what is coming back to me at the moment. I keep thinking I'm so lucky how has this come about? But it is such a knife edge world really - I'm getting bookings now but 6 months down the line? And also it still isn't actually making money 🙁 And what it does make tends to be for charity.
But you know people are excited about Ballads of the Scientifica and there have been requests for a Wiggly Pet book and for t-shirts with things like my Normali Tea picture on.
If you watch/listen to Neils speech he says make good art, I would change that to Get Creative.
When I tore the ligaments in my ankle and had to be flown home from a field trip in the desert I GOT CREATIVE - I made Wiggly Pets
When I found myself having nearly died, and crippled from childbirth, boiling with anger and fear - I GOT CREATIVE - I started writing a novel and so was found in a cafe by the now Cheltenham Poetry Festival Director.
When I got shingles and had to rest and give up the Master degree for the second time I found the Paleo Art community and began drawing trilobites and things.
When I was devastated about miscarriage I constructed The Punk In Pink personality.
When I was petrified of going to the hospital to have little Mary I wrote poems about that fear and about having a separated pelvis.
When we were being chucked out of our home I made a poem about how the home is not the building but the people with in.
And so on. There is an even larger list of good times and being creative but that would make this post silly long! 🙂
Basically as I have struggled to build my own serendipity funnel and have just reached my perceived tipping point and this talk resonated so strongly that it made me cry (yes I know that will be the hormones).
If you haven't already listen to it 🙂 But most of all Get Creative!
Jean picked up some rollar blades for 50p on a charity stall and could not resist trying them out when we got home. This ment that whilst I was putting away shopping and what have you, there was a CRASH, clatter, clunk and thonk from the kitchen.
I go in to find Jean a pile on the kitchen floor, she was wearing the rollar blades, three festival tails and her new angry birds hat. She was already picking herself up to continue the experiment when I reminded her that they were an outside toy.
'Oh yeah' she said and disappeared out the back door, she has since been seen chasing cats, rabbits and babies 🙂
This is my knitted sucrose molecule still missing some of it's hydrogens. It has worked out both better and worse than I expected - as a first attempt I think it's great personally. My long term plan is to knit molecular assembles so groups of molecules as say found in tea, comet tails and chocolate... you get the idea 🙂
The finished knit is part of the work I will have on display at Centre Arts Cheltenham as part of their charity Exhibition Please Touch. The idea behind my knitted molecule is to give a tactile visualisation as it were of what how a molecule fits together - it is basically a model.
They have also asked for The Tree of Life Coral to be there which makes me very excited - I would have loved to have the sound cave up and running for this but it took too long to get the basic funding so that is going to appear later in the year and at a few things next year. There is still time to fund the Sound/Sensory Cave though not much! I have reached target but the excess money will go towards a science-art exhibition next year in March.
Alaric, Astronomy, Events and Outings, Sci/Tech, The Family | sarah | 
Sun 17th Jun 2012 11:02 pm | 
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