Please Touch Gallery at Center Arts (by sarah)

Today has been hectic with far to much crammed in but we are very glad we managed it all. One of the highlights was going to the Please Touch exhibit at Center Arts in Cheltenham.

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.

Goldy (by sarah)

This is a rubbish photo of the fish but until he becomes a bit more accustomed to things it is probably all we are going to get - his name is Goldy the Goldfish and Jean won him at the Fair. We were a bit alarmed to see that this was still going on and the more we explained why it wasn't a good idea to get one of the fish the more determined she became to get one as they looked so sad :/

So to cut a long story short she had a set budget for the Fair - she got a goldfish - we all went home to sort the gold fish out - she insisted on carrying him home herself and fretted about weather he could breath and showed him to any and all other children we passed along the way.

I told of my carnival fish Sandy and Shelly that I had at her age and Daddy spoke of how he and his mother used to win as many of them as they could in order to save them when he was little.

Alaric turns out to be a fish expert (at least as far as goldfish are concerned) and we had wanted to get fish as the New House Pets as there had been fish here when we came to look around.

Once home Alaric and Jean set about equalising temperatures of water with the bag in a bowl - so that the poor thing wouldn't get shocked being put in new water. Then we zoomed out to buy supplies. Which being a bank holiday wasn't that easy!

It is only a small tank for now as we just don't have the money but hopefully say next month we can get a larger one - Goldy seems abit worried about the space to be honest and has mainly hidden behind the plastic plant and dug himself a little whole in the gravel.

Today we went to the Aquatic Habitate to get a real plant and a snail - Jean wanted a shrimp but apparently Goldy would eat it (it was not much smaller than Goldy!). Anyway Jeany has named the snail Slimy and is now obsessed with alliteration :/

Again Jean insisted on carrying the snail and has been very militant about feeding the fish and has even taken to remembering to feed her rabbit without being reminded.

I'm glad we have the fish and we are all looking forward to establishing an ecosystem but we were not happy to find them at the Fair and worse than that - in rescuing Goldy we are supporting the trade :/ But Goldy actually came out to see us today when we came in which we think is a good sign 🙂

Me, Science, Geekery and Art (by sarah)

I have two thirds of the funding I need for phase on of Science-Art for all. It would be great to get that last bit of money in the pot so I start work on the project.

Also I am working hard on getting Ballads of the Scientifica in all of its forms ready. In case I haven't mentioned it before I have my Science-Art website and I also have Astronomy@Geology.

I am very happy about my science-art at the moment and where it is going. I feel that art is probably the best way in which to get the general public to engage with science and communication of the ideas and concepts to EVERYBODY is of upmost importance.

Science permeates every aspect of our lives and I do not just mean medicine and technology. Food, water, our clothing - all of it relies on science. But understanding that science is important - that it is the cure rather than the disease is still being lost.

Science is still seen as a dead boring subject - but it really isn't. It uses creativity as much as any art. The wonder of everything around us - this we need to show people. There has been some wonderful popular science programmes over the last few year which are helping to instill the awe of everything in people but we are a long way off.

I use art to try and communicate emotions and concepts. And am very pleased to have had some of my work likened to Carl Sagan.

I started the Ballads of the Scientifica to help me put all of my spoken and sung science-art in one place but have found it is linked to my visual art very much.

Here it is though it is still being worked on:

But my work is still infantile compared with the group I found yesterday called Symphony of Science. Mary and Jean both love the songs - that are made out of snippets of documentaries and the like.

And then just as I was thinking about it all I turned around to find the baby now 15 months had been selecting books off the bookshelf. She had a maths book, another on electrical experiments and the last was 40 More Gadgets For the Evil Genius - the geek in me found this halarious 🙂

I do still miss the lab - though and the deeper into art I sink the more keenly I feel the lose. I want to blast rocks with military grade lasers to see what they are made of - to make element maps and to piece together the evolution of systems be they life or rock.

But this isn't doable for me - not at the moment and I am over whelmed by the wonder of the naked ape infants I have in this house ie Jean and Mary. My main hope is that I am showing them the beauty of it all and how to think for themselves.

And I do actually feel very hopeful at the moment - I have a meeting about my science-art this afternoon then tomorrow I'm performing in Gloucester.

The Annes and C J Cherryh (by sarah)

This post is about inspiration and following dreams and what I consider good fiction writing. However before I begin let me just say that I don't believe gender has anything to do with someone being a good writer - but this post is about females and their perceived place in literature.

Now I have always loved stories, loved hearing them, creating them and taking part in them. My dad used to read or make up stories for me pretty much every night until he had to work nights stacking shelves in Tescos, then the stories were restricted to holidays or sometime he would read out bits from what ever novel he was reading at the time.

One of my early favourites was Anne McCaffrey and her Dragons of Pern, though I actually started with the Doona books. What child head full of Thunder Cats could not like these stories?

I struggled with reading as many of you know but the burning wish to read these stories for myself grew until I was painstakingly stringing the sentences together myself.

Then I read Anne McCaffrey - everything the library had (though after I had read all of their point horror collection I will confess). You see I went from a can't read to an avid reader - I used to walk home from school reading a book and I walked home to do this as the bus was too noisy and crowded to read.

From the First Point Horror book that I managed to read at 12 years old - I was consuming the bigger of Anne McCaffrey's books in 2-3 days by the time I was 14.

This was also the point at which me and my friends became obsessed with horror movies and of course being teenage girls we fixated on VAMPIRES!

Which we avidly watched at our sleep overs - films like Lost Boys, and My Best Friends a Vampire and the new movie Interview With A Vampire - oh we were obsessed. Which was better Louis or Lestate? But for either you would need to kill them or become like them and surely they were dating each other? And so on (remember we were teenage girls).

This was another Anne having an affect on me - this time Anne Rice.

I mention this as it ment I suddenly started trying to write about vampires but due to the influence of Anne McCaffrey's books I felt I wanted to have my vampires explained with soft science fiction - essentially I had the idea of not just writing Scifi or even scifi fantasy but of melding the genres having a scifi fantasy horror cross breed and of course it all had to be mixed up with legends and myths ranging from norse to ancient greece and aztec. I had not yet touched on India or China or Japan and their myths.

At around this time I discovered another Anne - Anne Auel and her Clan of The Cave Bear series. Now it turned out my Mum was a fan of her books and I was only just allowed to read them!

The strength of the main character in at least the first two books (I start to have issues half way through Mammoth Hunters with how she treats men) led me even more onto the idea of including pre-history and the mysteries of our origin as a species.

It was then that my friends aunt having heard us go on and on about Interview with a Vampire bought my friend Taltos - a story by Anne Rice. We were like wow there are books by the vampire lady? And that was the next thing - starting with The Witching Hour.

These were along with Stephen King, Stephen Lawhead , Dean Koontz and Clive Barker were my big inspirations. Now imagine my shock to be told that a) these books and authors don't count as great works of literature and b) that girls don't write scifi or even read it?

During my A'levels I took a creative writing short course to help me as I was trying to write and side tracking myself with new stories and the like. The result was I got several poems published, ended up as part of a team doing a magazine which I lost heart with as the two main people had very different ideas of where it was going. And told by the Lady running it that my scifi vampire story had the makings of a best seller.

I doubt if this was true but I needed that boost - especially after being told by peers I couldn't have my female assassins and vampire warriors without it being all about the boobies. I didn't understand this as concept as I had been reading books with strong female characters doing all sorts, half of which were written by women. And of course though I wanted to punch her half the time there was Buffy the Vampire Slayer around as well.

I found the vampire story I was working on back then - the first three chapters printed on old yellowing tractor paper (yep I was retro as we had like fifth hand computing equipment). It was called The Forever Criminals and reads unsurprisingly like a point horror story as does The Crystal Singer (nothing to do with Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer - mine involved jade skulls and a female mulan-esk warrior) and The Warrior Monks (a story of post apocalyptic epic adventure). I can see I was aiming for the epic even then.

And the thought that I was supposed to write ROMANCE sickened me - it was something I found anathemous. I didn't like reading romance so why should I write it?

But I have found this repeatedly with people and I think I was also lucky to go to Imperial College were there was a whole Scifi Library. I had by this point also discovered Terry Pratchett who's female characters again were not the weak and willing and nor where they there just for the boobies.

However as I found more and more great scifi authors moving away from my beloved horror I started to feel the doom. I had proof that women could write horror and fantasy and scifi fantasy but what of scifi?

And then Alaric stepped in with CJ Cherryh and I knew I was right and that it shouldn't even be questioned that women like scifi or that they should even think of perhaps writing some of their own!

Anyway I what I have found is that two of these authors have continued to be an inspiration in me in my writing and creativity. This is CJ Cherryh who is on twitter and has partaken in some of the # scifichats I attend and the other is Anne Rice who has her Face Book page and actively encourages interaction and discussions - part of the reason this has been so valuable to me is that these two people who's work I love - I get to see they are people like me - they have cats and rooms stuffed with books etc... They are people who have struggled and suffered and not some mysterious force that churns out books.

Now it is important for me to see this sort of connection with people who have succeeded in an area I want to succeed in. Especially as I am still coming across people who are horrified that I wrote that horror story when they would have been fine with it if Alaric had written it. But I am no Mary Shelley - I do not need to hide behind a surname - women have the vote and have proven time and again that they can achieve if given a chance.

Our society has changed but there is still alot of prejudice out there - this is a minor thing to most people but even in rescent publications I have seen it suggested that you submit your scifi under a male pseudonym which is horrendous!

Gloucester Creative Olympics and The Launch of The Wind Vessel (by sarah)

Yesterday I went to The Battle For The Winds Episode One in Stroud, I had won a bronze medal for my song Windy Gloucestershire. This was part of the creative Olympics and also saw the launch of the Wind Vessel which will be in Cheltenham for the Torch and then will be going on to Wynmouth with the rest of the South West efforts.

It was in the Brunel Goodshed - there was a parade as well but with the weather an us all having been so ill recently we decided to miss that bit. The place was jam packed!

What we could see of the vessel being launched though Alaric and Jean seemed to really enjoy 🙂

There is unfortunatly no video or photos of me on stage - Alaric managed to take two one second videos at the beginning and end of my bit being presented my medal - it would have been a good angle too 🙁

My medal was made by the graphics students at the college. It was presented by Old Mother Gloucestershire who's outfit was brilliant 🙂

But here are the photos we did take of the general stage stuff before and after my bit 🙂

The we saw the launch of the Wind Vessel - which I actually really like - plus it doubles as a musical instrument and I always like things like that 🙂

After the main bit people started to disperse a bit and there was more space to see the martial art dancers and various other little shows. I went to the tent with the Creative Olympic stuff in but though people were asking to listen to my song - it was unfortunatly the only one not there - even though the organisers said it had been - so someone has borrowed it I assume or it's down the back of tent or something!

The place was full of little cafes and a giant junk igloo called the Mould Cafe - this led through to a section where kids could put their heads through and seem themselves as part of a video.

Mary was desperate to join in so once the crowds had thinned a bit we let her loose to toddle - but the main thing she wanted to do was be held up to the gymnasts ring!

And because I am me - I took arty shots of things 🙂