Monday 29 April 2013

Alfred Russel Wallace

With so much about Alfred Russel Wallace happening at the NHM and the new BBC Bill Bailey programme about him, I thought it was high time I put up a couple of pictures of my natural historians that I made for my MA show. I chose to make a few of the natural historians from the past that I found the most interesting to look at, and had personal or  professional stories that grabbed my attention. (which admittedly is a lot of them) Wallace is described as  'An intrepid explorer and brilliant naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) co-published the theory of evolution by natural selection with Charles Darwin in 1858 and was one of the most celebrated scientists of his era' (NHM Website )























I also made Mary Anning, the female fossil hunter based in Lyme Regis, and Evelyn Cheesman, who had guts- as in bravery and adventures with spiders and snakes- Please have a read ; http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/science-of-natural-history/biographies/evelyn-cheesman/)






 Have a look here at an old blog post for my figurine of Friedrich Welwitsch.









Tuesday 23 April 2013

New Moby Dick Necklace


Pressed ceramic Moby Dick earthenware necklace (http://bysaw.bigcartel.com/product/moby-dick-necklace)

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Book Title Brooches

Some designs I've been doing for fun, they're carved into plaster and then the clay is pressed in, and measure around 2.5 cm across.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Spirit Specimen Drawn Tiles


 Here's a few of my wall tiles based on the London Natural History Museums Spirit Collection. Its called that because the specimens are kept in alcohol, not because all the little and large creatures are magically stored with their animal and plant spirits floating around them, but it's a nice name, and gives my work an unintentionally mystic title. The alcohol has to be topped up constantly as it is forever evaporating, which apparently is a bit of a boring job as there are thousands and thousands of jars to do.
The original pen and ink sketches for these tiles are reproduced on my Spirit Collection tableware, that you can see (here bysaw.bigcartel.com)and I'm currently making a new batch of tiles for an exhibition later this year at the Ruthin Craft Centre. Here's the first of many....