Piranha Attack! (The Natural History Museum Inspired This! Part Five)

Welcome aboard, voyagers! Sit back and enjoy our lazy journey up the mighty Amazon river while our trusty old diesel engine does all the work, chug-chug-chugging our little river boat past picturesque ribereño settlements...



alongside other riverboats all loaded up for a journey from the deep forest to the colorful market in Iquitos...



This fellow certainly looks imposing, but that blowgun is no threat to us; he is just out hunting for a meal... wild jungle chicken, perhaps?



There are far greater threats in these parts: I implore you, friend, despite the heat, do not dangle those tender toes into the murky water lest you pull them out stripped to the bone by our hungry, razor-toothed scavenger, the fearsome PIRANHA!

Charley Harper's illustration of a cow being devoured by piranhas.


Some fifteen years ago, I found myself on just such a journey, chugging up the Amazon river from Iquitos into the heart of the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to learn about the plants that the indigenous people use as medicine. It was a picture perfect trip: I learned alot from the local shaman, saw all manner of fantastic jungle flora and fauna, paddled a dugout canoe up a tiny tributary to explore an overgrown medicinal plant garden, traded for some lovely indigenous crafts made by the Yagua Indians, witnessed the distillation of the local rum-like spirit (aguardiente) from sugarcane (then enjoyed some tasty aguardiente and sugarcane juice cocktails!), and even baited some tiny fishhooks with bits of raw chicken and caught several piranhas! We cleaned, cooked and ate those piranhas... they are awfully bony, and had a slightly "muddy" flavor, but they are still a popular source of sustenance for the local people. I also learned that the piranha's widespread reputation as an aggressive man (and livestock) eater has been greatly exaggerated, and even felt comfortable taking a leisurely morning swim in the same cove from which I had pulled the toothy little beasties the evening prior!



These dried, shellacked piranhas are popular tourist items in almost every populated area that abuts the Amazon, and while I didn't buy one on my trip, I did admire them, and thought that a school of them arranged in a case of some sort would make a rather fetching display.

Several years later, while taking a scientific illustration course that met within Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, I made use of the museum's fabulous library of "Exhibit Case Dioramas" available on loan through the Harris Educational Loan Center. The cases are self contained dioramas, 24" high, 22" wide , and 7" deep, that depict actual preserved plants, fish, birds and mammals in natural settings. Upon seeing these, I immediately thought back to those preserved piranhas, and knew that I should craft my own piranha diorama!

Well, oftentimes these ideas take some time to incubate; I have been collecting materials and thinking about how my diorama should look over the past few years, and when I finally found a good source for those dried piranhas, I took the plunge and got to work on a small scale, one-fish version of my piranha diorama (larger version to follow soon)!



The wooden shadowbox I am constructing this in comes from Ikea, and is called "Bas" though in searching the online catalog, I could not locate them. I purchased several last time I was at Ikea, but find them so useful that I would be rather disappointed if it turns out they have been discontinued. In the photo above, I am painting the interior and back panel of the box a deep aquamarine "underwater" sort of color.



Next, I carefully pulled my piranha off of its base, drilled a new hole in its belly, and used epoxy to secure a length of brass rod through the hole and into the body of the fish. Once the epoxy had cured, I determined where within the box the piranha should be mounted, then drilled a hole the same diameter as the brass rod into the base of the box. After plugging the hole with a piece of scrap rod to keep it clear of glue and gravel, I carefully poured about 1/8" of thick white craft glue into the base of the box, and sprinkled a layer of gravel into the layer of glue. In the photos above and below you can see that I put a piece of blue tape across the lower back of the box so that the glue and gravel wouldn't spill out the back before drying. After the gravel had settled into the wet glue, I sprinkled sand over the top so that no shiny glue spots would be visible where it seeped up between the gravel bits.





Next I set out several plastic aquarium plants I had picked up at the pet store, and decided which ones would look best in the display. Of course these aren't accurate representations of actual Amazon river aquatic plants, but I'm not really concerned about that. Because the plants are too large for the box in their original state, I trimmed off appropriately sized tufts, then fused the bases together by holding them briefly over a candle flame (in a well ventilated area!) until the plastic softened just enough that the stems could be pressed permanently together. The plastic seems to soften at a fairly low temperature, rather like the material used to make some of the lower-temperature hot glue gun sticks.

Then I stood each little fused plant clump upright on a sheet of thin scrap paper in a little, nickel-sized puddle of epoxy, and sprinkled gravel into the puddle. When the epoxy hardened, I had plant clusters firmly embedded in little, natural looking mounds of gravel that I could then tear off of the paper and transfer onto the gravel base in the box. I secured each cluster in the box with more epoxy (again sprinkling in some extra gravel and sand so that no shiny glue spots show through).







I also prepared a few plant sprigs to attach to the back panel of the diorama (above) by carefully slicing off a plane of leaves so that the plant would lay flat against the panel. Then I determined the placement of the sprigs, and drilled a few tiny holes through the panel on each side of the stems through which I could pass a piece of thin wire up through the back, over the stem, and back through the other hole, tying securely behind the panel:



As purchased from a curio shop, these mounted piranhas all have a characteristic high-gloss shellac finish that I find somewhat distracting. I was able to take the shine away very nicely by spraying on a few coats of clear matte-finish enamel. The fish on the left, below, is untreated, while the one on the right has been sprayed with the matte coating:



One of the little grassy clusters in the gravel base of the box is strategically placed to hide the brass rod that will secure the piranha within the box. I went ahead and painted the rod to match the tuft of grass:



Then I finally mounted the piranha securely inside by adding some epoxy to the hole I had drilled earlier, then inserting the brass rod (again, sprinkling a little gravel and sand in to cover up any glue that was pushed out of the hole!) and leaving the whole thing undisturbed overnight while the epoxy cured completely.



I was so excited to start on the inside of the diorama that I hadn't given much thought to how the outside would look, but at this point I decided I wanted the outside to be painted white, so I used blue masking tape to cover the front glass, and sealed up the back, and sprayed a few layers of primer and flat white paint on.





Painted! While the paint was drying I started one of my favorite parts of the project: writing the informative text and designing an appropriately scientific-looking label! In the photo above I've printed out four versions and I'm deciding which one I like the best. They are sized to fit onto the side of the display box. After picking one, I inspected it one last time for typographical errors, then printed out a high resolution copy on photo paper. Inkjet prints don't hold up well, though, so I took the print to a photocopy shop and made a black and white photocopy of the label onto a nice, cream colored paper, then trimmed out the label and glued it to the side of the box:







Done! My, what a voyage this has been, and we've managed to return with our tender toes intact! I Thank You most sincerely for joining me on this Amazon adventure and look forward to our next journey together!



(That's me on the riverboat heading back to Iquitos after twelve days in the jungle. My hands and face are stained with the juice of the unripe Genipa fruit. The local Indians decorate themselves by applying the clear juice to their skin. Over the course of several hours a deep, blue-black tint develops. The juice stains the top few layers of skin, and stays vibrant until those layers of skin are naturally shed. I sure got some quizzical looks back home!)

Ceremonial Bachelorette Party Headdress!!!

While I wasn't permitted to attend this talented friend's festive bachelorette party (girls only!), I jumped at the chance to craft the crown that would be placed on her head during her "abduction" and subsequent rituals and ceremonies performed throughout the evening to honor the bride-to-be!

I tend to be bad about documenting projects from start to finish; many of the details of making things seem so mundane to me that I can't bring myself to stop what I'm doing to photograph them, and before I know it I have a completed craft project and no photos of the creative process (which is pretty much what happened with this one)! I realize this is a problem, and I'm really going to work on this in the future!

For this project I decided pretty quickly that the crown was really going to be more of a headdress, and from there, I began to visualize the various elements that make up a headdress and how I could personalize those elements for the bride-to-be. In keeping with the original request for a crown, I started by cutting a foundation strap of silver leather to resemble a crown that terminated on either end in long, thin strips that would be used to tie the headdress on:



Once I had that foundation figured out, I decided on a dark turquoise leather strip (aqua/turquoise was a dominant color in the wedding) that would serve as the backdrop for a strip of beadwork I was envisioning that would feature the bride and groom's initials. I cut the scalloped upper edge of the strip (with some difficulty) using pinking shears. Although I've been doing quite a bit of lazy stitch beadwork lately, the turquoise leather wasn't well suited for that technique (the surface of the leather is very dense, not "pillowy" and easily pierced like the deerskin I had been beading directly onto previously), so I set up my little bead loom, and proceeded to bead a decorative strip (while listening to the entire new Joanna Newsom album for free on NPR!). This is the pattern I came up with beforehand that I worked from while I was beading:



Once finished, I tied off the ends of the beadwork strip, and whipstitched through the outermost warp thread on the top and bottom edge of the bead strip and into the turquoise leather. Now that the beadwork was attached to the turquoise strip, I wanted to attach that to the silver crown foundation; this I accomplished by punching pairs of evenly spaced holes through both layers of leather with an awl, then poking strips of imitation sinew up through through the holes from the back of the headdress. Each strip of sinew passes through both layers of leather and a vintage mirrored turquoise glass bead on the front of the headdress, then back down through the second hole where it is secured by a knot in back, so while the row of 15 glass beads across the lower edge of the headdress appears decorative (it is pretty!) it is also structural, serving to hold everything together! I wanted to resort to using glue as little as possible; on this particular project, I felt like the process of stitching different materials together was representative of the union of my two friends, so I stitched alot, and wished for their happiness with each stitch!



I had a grand time plundering my craft bins for materials to use on this project! On either side of the beadwork strip hang two tin-cone and horsehair (a reference to Horsefingers, the bride-to-be's brilliant short film trilogy) drops that pass through a decorative abalone disk... again, these items are all affixed with the imitation sinew... no glue (yet!). The turquoise bells were then stitched on.



Now it was time to affix the feathers, and that is where the glue came into play. First I glued the little arrangement of colored feathers onto the inner surface of the silver leather crown with flexible craft glue and let that dry. Then I glued the long strip of white feathers (they are sold on a ribbon strip by the yard at M&J Trimming in Manhattan) onto the interior surface of the silver leather crown and let that dry. Finally, I glued a strip of wide cotton twill tape over the entire interior portion of the headdress to cover up any knots or feather bits that might poke out and feel uncomfortable against the head.



This was a really fun and meaningful project for me that culminated in the attendance of a super-duper fun and meaningful wedding! Thank You, Congratulations, and Best Wishes to you Both, Kirsten and Bill!!!

And Thank You for joining me, Kind Reader!!! I hope you will join me again soon-ish for the fun and scary next installment in my "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" series!

Following are a few images of headdresses in the collection of The National Museum of the American Indian that served as inspiration:

Shaman Cap Makeover... Update!

Hello, Hello! Please pardon me and accept my apologies while I take a brief respite from the popular "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" series and publish this post that will, in all likelihood, appeal to exactly 0% of my readers!

You might recall one of my less interesting earlier posts entitled "Shaman Cap Makeover" in which I deconstructed a somewhat sketchy artifact I had assembled many years ago in the hopes of bringing it up to my current, more stringent, craft standards. I committed to applying quite alot of "lazy stitch" style beadwork to the shaman cap, and ultimately had a devil of a time deciding on a bead pattern for the front stripe. I actually applied and removed 3 different designs (making each subsequent strip wider by a few beads so as to cover the punctures from the previous round) before I settled on something I could live with. I finally came up with a simple, 13 bead wide strip of white and blue (2 shades) arranged in a "chevron" pattern. I'm pretty happy with this one; it's nice and simple, though the use of a darker and lighter shade of blue kept it from looking too plain.





There is still more work to be done on this project, but I was excited to share the new beadwork... Thank You, kind readers for indulging me!

Below are some images of similar headwear from the Native American collection at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. While I was researching this sort of cap, I found that the diagonal-stripe beadwork was quite common, which is why I decided to do the same pattern in black and white beads to cover the seams where the buckskin segments are sewn together.









Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou for joining me!

The Natural History Museum Inspired This! Part Four: Shells!

Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History had, as I recall, an excellent display of seashells from around the world. I wish I could find an image of the display online, but haven't had any luck... I hope that it is still there (they were renovating several older exhibits last time I was there), and I also hope I'm not mixing up my Natural History Museums at this point! At any rate, I will cite that extensive display of shells at the Field Museum as inspiration for my pursuing the hobby of collecting, and decorating with, seashells.

The images immediately above and below depict a small cabinet I picked up for a few dollars at a thrift store in Chicago. The glass front and side panels were originally wood; I simply popped out the wood panels and replaced them with glass, then cut and installed two glass shelves and a nice nickel knob, and gave it a few coats of paint: white outside, sea blue inside. I've picked up shells and bits of coral and sea life to put inside mostly at various beaches, though a few special ones were purchased from some of the many excellent seashell shops during visits to Sanibel Island, Florida. The beaches on Sanibel are veritable shell shops in their own right; the island is situated such that tons of shells from the Carribbean and beyond are carried there by the currents and dropped off right at your feet... all one has to do is assume the famous "Sanibel stoop" and make your way slowly up and down the shore picking up your treasures!

I made little stands for some of the shells by cutting a 1" diameter dowel into 3/8" thick disks. I then drilled a hole in the center of each disk and inserted a short length of brass rod, bent as needed to fit into the opening of the shell so that the shell could be displayed upright.



One of my favorite shells to hunt for on Sanibel is the tiny "coquina" (Donax variabilis) shell; what they lack in size is made up for in the fun assortment of rainbow colors that nature has imbued them with! They are sometimes called "butterfly shells" and it is easy to see why; at first glance you might think the image below is a butterfly display! In fact, I just picked out some nice colorful coquinas from my collection, drew a pencil grid onto a piece of black mat board (I left the pencil grid lines; I like the somewhat scientific "compartmentalized" appearance they lend) and glued a matched pair of coquina shells into the center of each square of the grid! They are framed in an inexpensive white Ribba frame from Ikea.





In an earlier "The Natural History Museum Inspired This" post on minerals, I pictured a pack of vintage educational mineral "flash cards" made by Ed-U-Cards of Nature. That company also issued a beautiful set of seashell cards; I liked looking at them so much that I decided to make a permanent display for them so I could enjoy seeing them all at once!



I started by assembling a simple 3 foot by 4 foot background support using 1"x 2" pine strips from the lumber store for the four sides (and 2 extra cross-strips in the center for support) onto which I glued a 3 x 4 foot sheet of Masonite. I painted the surface of the Masonite with primer, and then a light yellow/putty shade, then used PVA glue to glue the cards on. Over all that I affixed a sheet of protective Plexiglas by drilling small holes in each corner and the center of each side of the Plexiglas. I screwed tiny screws through each of the 8 holes and into the wooden background support to hold it on.



I haven't yet tired of looking at those cards, and I'm pretty good at recognizing shells by sight now, as well!

Also in that earlier post on minerals, I wrote about a contemporary reprint I found of one of my favorite little Golden Guide field guides entitled "Rocks, Gems and Minerals". Well, it turns out, the whole line of Golden Guide field guides has been re-issued, with updated covers, but featuring all of the same terrific information and illustrations as the originals! I recently picked up the beautiful edition on seashells and have enjoyed it immensely! Does anyone else remember having one (or more) of these books as a youngster?





Early one morning I walked out onto the beach in Sanibel and found that hundreds of sea urchins with brilliant purple shells had washed ashore overnight. I eagerly carried an armload back to the bungalow and set about cleaning them. They were very delicate, though, and only three or four made it home intact (two of them are barely visible on the bottom row of the second photo). One afternoon I was at Jamali Hardware and Garden in Manhattan searching for some supplies I needed to finish a window decorating project I was working on, and saw (of all things!) a bin of beautiful salmon pink sea urchin shells. They felt quite durable and I sure liked the color, so I purchased a few dozen. Back home, I packed them into an antique apothecary jar, and have enjoyed displaying them along with my collection of "sea curios" ever since!



To learn more about seashells than you ever wanted to know, hop over to the fun Seashell Collector website! Thank You ever so much for joining me, and I do hope we meet again soon!

The Natural History Museum Inspired This, Part 3... Nests and Eggs!!!

Good Morning, FinderMakers! During my last two semesters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago I had the great pleasure of participating in a scientific illustration course that met within Chicago's venerable Field Museum of Natural History. I have worked for several prominent art museums over the years, and have always appreciated the privilege of having a "backstage pass", or unlimited access to stored artwork and areas of the museum that the regular patron doesn't often see. I had never been granted that special access in a natural history museum, however, and eagerly looked forward to each session of the illustration course, as the instructor went to great lengths to expose the depth and breadth of natural wonders held therein for us study and draw from.

One session was held amid thousands of bottles containing preserved specimens of ocean life forms; another took us into a room densely populated by live colonies of dermestid beetles, busily stripping various animal carcasses down to the clean, white bone. One afternoon, a friendly Ornithologist showed up with a small bird that had perished after flying into a window, and demonstrated the process of bird taxidermy from start to finish; afterwards we were invited into a storeroom in which many compartmentalized storage boxes full of various bird eggs and nests had been set out for us to draw. I was quite taken with the beauty and diversity of the eggs, and have always marveled at the ingenuity of the feathered architects who build their cozy homes from grasses and twigs, or whatever other suitable material is at hand (or beak, I suppose!).

A couple of years later, I was ambling along the shore at Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco, and noticed that a stormy tide the night before had washed up countless long wisps of fine, dark seaweed tangled together with ribbons of seagrass roots, feathers, and other little bits of natural shoreline detritus. All of these masses gave the impression of bird's nests having been unwound and strewn about the sand. Of course they weren't, but I determined that I should collect as much of the stuff as I could conveniently handle, and set about figuring how I might turn it into convincingly realistic faux bird's nests!

I think the conversion was very successful, and was achieved thusly: I simply soaked the tangled masses in water so that they became pliable, then straightened them out and carefully wrapped portions around the bulbous end of several different-sized laboratory boiling flasks to achieve the characteristic nest shape. I then wrapped each wet "nest" loosely with twine so that it would stay in place, and somewhat compressed, on the flask, and set them all out in the sun to dry. When they were all dried out, I simply unwound the twine and slipped them off the flasks... bird's nests!







Oology is the term used to describe the collection and study of eggs, and although the practice of collecting eggs from nests in the wild is now quite illegal in most localities, the practice was wildly popular amongst hobbyist collectors during the 19th, and into the 20th centuries. I enjoy the look of eggs, but wouldn't dare collect them in the wild. In the photo below, I have constructed a wooden box, 12" long x 8" wide x 4" deep, with Plexiglas interior dividers, to display my homemade nests in. A sheet of glass slides into grooves cut into the side walls of the box to cover and protect the contents.



For eggs, I purchased a few dozen quail eggs from a Japanese market (sold for culinary purposes... not hatching) and pierced them on each end and blew out the contents. Some of these I painted white, others I left natural: brown and cream speckles. I also added a few colored artificial eggs from the craft store for variety, and, believe it or not, the easter candy aisle at your local drug store will be a great source for good looking eggs in the coming months. I have a few candy-coated chocolate eggs in there as well!!!

Below is a lovely book of mine that allows the bird enthusiast to identify birds by the appearance of their eggs. I don't spend much time peering into birds nests out in the wild, but I certainly do enjoy perusing the beautiful images of eggs and related information in this book!





And, finally... The esteemed artist Rosamond Purcell has published a book of her beautiful egg and nest photographs, many of which were exhibited at the wonderful Harvard Museum of Natural History last year. I have yet to see the book in person, but have no doubt that it will be stunning!



I Thank You for joining me for the third installment of "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" and do look forward to sharing with you again soon!

The Natural History Museum Inspired This! Part Two: Minerals

In my first post in the series "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" I presented a display I crafted based on the stuffed bird specimens installed at Boston's Harvard Museum of Natural History. Today I would like to share another piece I did that was inspired by the museum's impressive Mineralogical wing (pictured below).



The display below doesn't look like much when it isn't lit. It is a wood lightbox I made, about 14 inches wide x 17 inches tall, and 4 inches deep. The face is 4-ply mat board; I used a mat cutter to cut 12 bevelled windows into it, behind which are affixed my mineral images.



To create the images, I used a technique I developed many years ago that involves layering color transparencies, carefully aligned so as to create a subtle sense of dimension; the use of more than one layer of imagery also saturates the colors, lending an intense, gem-like quality to the images. The area around each mineral image is blacked out from behind, so that the light only shines directly through the mineral. The result when lit is, I think, quite lovely to behold!



And it looks even better in a completely dark room:





Although I wouldn't go so far as to consider myself a "rockhound" I have long enjoyed casually collecting specimens that catch my eye, some of which I display in the metal box pictured below:



I recently picked up a box of these "Ed-U-Cards" from the 1960's that feature a mineral image on the front and give detailed information on the back of each card. They are pretty neat, and have some nice mineral images.



Last month I was at a bookstore and was excited to see contemporary reprints of many of the old "Golden Guide" field guide books that I remember from my childhood, including my much loved "Rocks, Gems and Minerals"! While the cover has changed, everything inside is exactly as I remembered it, including the vividly colored illustrations!







Below is an excerpt on Geiger counters from the book, and a picture of my own bright yellow Geiger counter (great fun in determining the radioactivity of vaseline glass and original red-glazed Fiesta ware!)







Thank You for joining me for part two of "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" and now please excuse me while I begin preparing the third installment in the series!