da Vinci Workshop at the Discovery Museum

As I wrote in my previous post about my design work for the Water Gallery, The Discovery Museums in Acton, Massachusetts were recently renovated to combine both the original Science Discovery Museum and Children's Discovery Museum into one 16,000 sq ft. redesigned space now called the Discovery Museum. I was hired by Paul Orselli Workshop to create the environmental graphics and artwork for some of the new exhibit spaces, one of which was da Vinci Workshop. The da Vinci Workshop is a hands-on STEAM makerspace where kids can design and engineer their own creations using tools and a variety of recycled materials. Outside the workshop area are several simple machines and engineering interactives. 

The project called for an entry/title sign that incorporated a full-body portrait of da Vinci in the style of da Vinci based on his only known self-portrait. This was quite the tall order and, I'll admit, a bit intimidating. It required some research on my part since there are no full-body paintings of da Vinci and the drawing is only of his head.

*Interesting side note: No one can say with absolute certainty that the portrait is actually of da Vinci. The drawing was done when he was 58-60 years old (he died at age 67) and his portrait is of a much older man. Some people have speculated that he purposely made himself look older for reasons unknown or that it's a portrait of his father. 

In order to render his body, I researched the clothing of his time period, confirmed that he was most likely left-handed and based on his skeletal remains, approximately 5'9" tall. I re-drew his self-portrait in my own hand in order to make the full-body portrait look like one cohesive drawing. The next challenge was to make it look like the drawing was created during the Italian Renaissance. Incidentally, I studied Renaissance painting techniques in Italy 20 years ago and this was the perfect opportunity to put some of that knowledge to use. I wasn't able to use the exact tools and materials that da Vinci would have used so I improvised with a Tuscan red Prismacolor pencil on parchment and then used several different computer programs to make the drawing look appropriately aged and colored. 

We also wanted the title sign to look like it was hand-painted. I decided the best way to do that would be to actually paint the lettering by hand! Many people have speculated about why da Vinci wrote from right to left and I can tell you why without even having to ask da Vinci. It's because, like myself, he was left-handed. Even though I tried to channel my inner da Vinci, I didn't paint the lettering from right to left strictly for authenticity purposes. It was actually because my hand would've smeared black paint across the entire sign. Any lefty can relate to this dilemma. 

I laid the lettering over the background which I painted on a canvas texture using Photoshop and then added several filters in On1 Photo RAW to give it an aged and weathered look. If the sign ever gets damaged, a new one can be printed to replace it. This turned out to be a wise decision since this is already the 2nd printing of the sign!

These are shelves where the children can leave their inventions to dry. I was pretty much given free rein to design something that incorporated da Vinci's sketches for the back of the shelves.

I created a 12' wide image of what I imagined da Vinci's workbench might have looked like. I looked through more than a thousand of his sketches which have been archived by the British Library, National Library of Spain and Cornell Library. This part of the project was fascinating and also made me feel really lazy. He filled so many books with drawings, inventions, and observations. I really need to start sketching more!

This wall is all about simple machines. Around the corner is a gear wall so I tied the two together with these wall-mounted circles using a similar color scheme. Again, I searched through the archives of da Vinci's sketches until I found some that were great examples of the six simple machines. I then added a tint of color to each of them to make them more appealing to kids and to further distinguish them from my own illustrations of basic simple machines on the smaller circles. Each simple machine illustration corresponds with one of the drawings of da Vinci's inventions.

The exhibit included a working replica of da Vinci's ornithopter. I was tasked with creating a wall mural that integrated drawings of da Vinci's flying machines. The size of this mural is 12' wide by 6' high.

Pictured above is the flying machines mural with the replica ornithopter installed. Kids can design their own flying machines and use the nearby vertical wind table to test them out.

This project was both technically and creatively challenging and I hope da Vinci would've been pleased. I was personally thrilled to have the opportunity to contribute to the creation of the exciting new Discovery Museum.

Discovery Museum Water Gallery

The Discovery Museums in Acton, Massachusetts were recently renovated to combine both of the original museums into one beautiful redesigned space now called the Discovery Museum. 

They have created new and reimagined immersive STEAM 

exhibit spaces for all ages. 

I had the opportunity to design some environmental graphics

 for a couple of the new galleries.

 These are pictures from the Water gallery where I designed

some fun little wall graphics.

The Water Gallery is an immersive experience where children can explore the properties of water using all of their senses.

Since the water gallery is adjacent to the sound gallery, we played with onomatopoeia to create some watery sounding words.

              

I paired each word with a corresponding water picture such as

 Slosh, Splash, and Ripple shown above.

I created five signs altogether: Splash, Drip, Ripple, Bubble, and Slosh to go along with the exhibit components.

Also, be sure not to miss da Vinci Workshop when you're visiting the Discovery Museum. I contributed art and environmental graphics to this really cool space where you can get creative and tinker.

5 Great Museum Store Gifts for Travel

Museums and travel have a lot more in common than you may think. It makes sense that museum gift shops would have lots of great gifts and gadgets for travelers because many of their patrons are vacationing families or visitors from out of town.

Whenever I went on a school field trip as a kid my mom would give me a few dollars to spend in the gift shop on whatever I wanted. This was very exciting and overwhelming for this young museum lover as museum gift shops can often seem like mini-museums themselves. How could I be expected to choose one item when there was so much colorful packaging to distract me and everything was so beautifully merchandised?!

One of my childhood favorites was the Astronaut Ice cream I bought from the New York Hall of Science. It's basically freeze-dried ice cream that comes in a silvery pouch that looks very spacey. As an adult, I wound up working for the New York Hall of Science and they still sell it there! It's definitely not as good as real ice cream but it's a pretty good travel purchase. Pouches of freeze-dried food are available in many sports and camping stores but you never know when you'll wind up in outer space with an ice cream craving!

One of my favorite gadgets that I'm fairly obsessed with is the Gorilla pod. My friend Anthony who was my flat-mate in New Zealand introduced me to it and now I don't know how I ever traveled without one. It's basically a small tripod with bendable joints that can wrap itself around almost anything. It's great for us solo travelers who want to get a shot of ourselves once in a while and far less cumbersome than a conventional tripod. Just wrap it around a tree and put your camera on self-timer. Voila! You've got a beautiful self-portrait. The Gorilla pod is made by a company called Joby and has become very popular now so you can buy them on Amazon.com or even at Walmart but I bought mine at the Museum of the International Center of Photography in New York City. And now I own two of them. One for my little point-and-shoot camera and another for my DSLR.


You can buy these little roll-up tote bags just about anywhere these days but I purchased this particular one at the Discovery Museum in Times Square. This is definitely one little item I always take with me on any trip. It's great if you need a bag for shopping and will eventually be a money saver when you are checking in your luggage at the airport and your bag is overweight. Just pull out your tote bag, fill it with some items from your luggage and bring it on the plane as a carry-on bag. No more overweight baggage fees!

Besides, saving you money, it also helps save the environment. Plastic shopping bags are banned here on Maui so I always bring a few of these bags with me when I shop for groceries.

Speaking of money savers, this New York City subway map is actually a wallet. There's no more need to travel around wearing an unflattering money-belt under your clothes to protect your money. This wallet is made out of Tyvek so it's waterproof and won't ever rip and since it looks like a map and not a wallet you won't need to worry about it getting stolen. It has two pockets so you can separate different currencies and it can hold many credit cards, ID's etc..I purchased this wonderful wallet at the NYC Transit Museum.

                                    

This last one, was a gift from my good friend Jess who I worked with at the Wildlife Conservation Society. She purchased this lovely WCS Safari hat for me at the WCS Bronx Zoo store. This hat came to the rescue when I was climbing up Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa. I thought my husband packed the sunblock and he thought I packed the sunblock. I know I look like a nerdy spy in this photo but my safari hat protected my already massively freckled face from being scorched by the merciless African sun. As we got higher and higher I eventually had to resort to putting on my rain coat to protect the rest of my skin. Another great use for the hat is that if it gets really hot you can cool yourself down by dunking it in a stream and plunking it back down on your head. Instant air conditioner.

There are so many other great finds in Museum Stores so don't forget to stop in and have a look on your way out of the museum!

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Pompeii comes to Times Square

Earlier this month a friend and I visited the Pompeii Exhibit at the Discovery Museum in Times Square.
First, we were brought into a room where we watched a short movie that gave an overview of what Pompeii was like before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. When the movie concluded the doors swung open and we were led into the exhibit which had displays of artifacts that have since been unearthed. Many of the artifacts were still in pristine condition. Because they had been encased in volcanic ash for over 2000 years, they had been protected from damage by the elements and remained virtually unchanged. This part of the exhibit introduced visitors to the history, culture, and lifestyle of the people of Pompeii, giving a glimpse into their everyday lives.

Once we had worked our way through the entire room, a docent announced that there was another movie to watch which would be played every five minutes. She said that visitors should make sure they took their time to see everything in the exhibit before viewing the movie because once you went into the theater there was no coming back. At this point, my friend asked me if I thought this was the mid-way point or if the movie was the end of the exhibit. I said that it would be very unusual to put another movie right at the mid-way point of the exhibit but I later found out why.

We stepped into the movie theater and the doors closed behind us. The lights went out and the screen lit up showing a view of Pompeii as if we were standing in the middle of the city looking out onto Vesuvius. The ground began to rumble and smoke started to come out of the volcano. The movie continued to depict what the eruption would have been like, revealing a sped-up time-lapse of the eruption and increasing temperature reading. Then smoke began to fill the room and the screen went dark. Suddenly, the doors swung open to the next room. This room, which was hidden from the first half of the exhibit, was dark and somber and had casts of human bodies that had been encased in the volcanic ash. At this moment I realized why they chose to put the movie at the mid-way point. Pompeii before Vesuvius erupted and Pompeii after Vesuvius erupted. Well done.

This part of the exhibit was extremely moving and powerful. The casts showed so much detail that you could see the folds in their clothing and the fear on their faces. While conducting excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. These were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so a technique of injecting plaster into them (today resin is used) was developed to perfectly recreate the forms of the victims in the moments just before Vesuvius took their lives.

The room was black with just spotlights on each cast and there were curtains with colored lights dancing around on them. I'm not sure what they were trying to do with this effect. Maybe something to do with the afterlife? The lights were a bit cheesy and it would have been much better off without them. Whatever effect they were going for really didn't work on me or my friend. But overall this was the best part of the exhibit.

That room then led out to another room. At this point, the exhibit got a little too long. The room had even more artifacts and a timeline of Pompeii's history. There was a ton of reading to do and it became exhausting but I really did enjoy seeing all of the artifacts. My friend was amazed at all of the glass bottles that were left completely intact. It was most fascinating to me to see the everyday objects like the hairbrushes and mirrors and cooking pots. It reminded me that these were people living everyday lives just like myself and they and their entire civilization were frozen in time the moment that volcano erupted. Their whole city became a giant time capsule that has now allowed us to learn so much about what life was like 2,000 years ago. After seeing the technology they created such as medical instruments, pots that filtered water, and an aqueduct that provided water for more than 25 street fountains, at least four public baths, and a large number of private houses and businesses, I imagine how much more they could have invented and how advanced they would have become had they not been wiped out.

It's unfortunate that more people haven't chosen to visit this exhibit but it seems that Pompeii is doomed with misfortune and has found itself competing with the Discovery Museum's extremely popular Harry Potter Exhibit next door. I personally think it's a wonderful thing that this exhibit was developed so that we can learn about this once forgotten civilization. In a way, this exhibit has brought Pompeii back to life.