Salaric

For my husbands 30th of birthday we decided on a Logains Run theme – the film has the death age fixed at 30 (the book at 21) so we made lots of things including hand crystals out of LEDs etc… I decided I wanted to be the robot/cyborge Box but more in lines with the one in the book – this wasn’t as easy to do as I would have liked so I ended up creating a fusion out fit. This is how I made the head/mask.

I used a balloon as a former for paper mâché – this was pieces of newspaper shredded and dipped in a solution of watered down PVA/white craft glue. I put Vaseline on the balloon first to make it easier to remove once dry ie it stops the balloon actually sticking to the paper mâché.

I did 5 layers of paper mâché and used a piece of card taped on for the nose. To keep track of layer I use grey/white newspaper and the pink newspaper (Financial Times) but you can just wait for each layer to be dry before you start the next – I only ever do 3 wet layers at a time as thicker than that can lead to buckling of the structure when drying issues with drying.

I then drew the shaped of the eyes and used a stanly knife to cut the shapes out.

Jean then decided to try it on and we reasoned it was good to go and I covered it in a layer of silver paper – I think of this as a neat coat of paper mâché but it can also be called decoupage.

Once dry I painted it with a layer of more concentrated PVA to give it a nice strong top layer.

It was then time for some finishing touches – I wanted metal springs for the eye brows and hair so I got some metal wire and popped it on my wire twister. I did close even springs for the eyebrows and loose slightly larger and messy springs for the hair. The wire twister is easy to use but you can do the same thing using a rode or pencil even.

The Mouth was also a coil of wire but I put the already coiled up wire wire back onto the wire twister to give it a second coiling.

I then used a bradle to punch holes into the mask where I wanted the coils/springs/wire to be attached and taped them on the inside to make sure there were no spikes ends to catch myself on.

My little girl made this hanging flower at her preschool for Father’s Day – it is very simple and quiet effective.

It is a yellow card disc 12 cm or 4 3/4 inches across (diameter) on one side – the back there is a smaller circle with the message I Love my Daddy becuase he takes me to the park. The other side has tissue paper discs stuck on like petals in blue, purple and yellow. They are 7 1/2 cm across or 3 inches, with a blue card disc or circle in the middle saying Number One Daddy. There is a whole punch whole at the top through which a fluffy white pipe cleaner has been pushed through and twisted to itself to make a hanging loop!

She also made him this card – it is simply a piece of orange card folded into a greeting card with a picture Jean has drawn cut out and stuck on. The picture is Daddy in Green Felt Tip 😉

We also made him a Rocket cake which will appear on Salaric Cooking shortly! And in its defence all I can say is that icing isn’t like painting and polymer clay!

Last year my little girl came home with this car card for her Daddy on Fathers Day. It is literially the shape of a car cut out of folded red card with the roof acting as a ‘hinge’ so the card opens. She then painted it (with red paint!) and the nursery school drew on the windows and wheels. Very easy and effective – Jean enjoyed making it and it is still up in pride of place this year!

Cheltenham is famed for its festivals and has a Science Festival ironically as I am a trained scientist (geology) I found out about the Science Festival last year from a poet!

This year there was an ecological art space organised with the Environment Agency where the Biologist and Artist Dr Lizzie Burns and her friend Matt where helping people explore the natural world through art. Getting children especially or so it seemed to me! to think about the world and our impact of the environment.

My little girl had a great time painting our garden onto the big white column just outside the Environment Agency Cafe. I had to label things as being 3yrs old some of the things were not that obvious. There were pots of clay and a watering can of water to make a ‘paint’ out of the clay and then lots of paint brushes!

Lizzie said it was great to work big like this and I felt it contrasted very well with Matt’s seeds – he had a table with different types of seeds on it – wild banana, seeds that float on the sea, a tub of 20 different tree seeds and so on. He then gave the children the option of making seeds out of clay themselves or drawing some. There were two colours of clay red/brown and white clay.

There where lots colouring pens and things avaliable for the children to colour there seeds and decorate them if they wished – my three year olds seeds were basically clay blobs with no colour on them but hey she tried 🙂

I am myself known (on twitter at least! plus in various poetry and science groups) as the Artistic Scientist or the Scientific Artist – you choose because I can’t/wont! So I was very excited to find someone who not only is trying to cross the percieved boundaries between these two areas but is being active and successful with it. She runs workshops on lots of fun things using art to interest people in science and to explore science giving it back the sense of adventure that is often lost in modernity.

She also makes fantastic molecular jewellery which is an idea me and Ella (Chemist come writer/poet/photographer) during our undergraduates but we never got around to doing anything about it – the closes I got is making tertiary and quarternary structures out of my wire working and thinking about protiens :). Lizzies work is bueatful and she embroiders ties and things.

If I had more money than I currently do I would get some of the jewellery for Ella as a congratulations presant on completing her PhD! (Ella if I ever get out of debt name your molecule!).

My Geo-Vases are probably the closest I come in the visual arts to this kind of thing (not sure that loo roll hubbles and pompom comets count!).