"Waves of Migrations & Rhythms of Cycles" 2016

My main project at Cabrillo is a new sort of clock that I've invented. It charts waves of migrations and rhythms of natural cycles over the course of an entire year. I will be working with an expert biologist and an engineer to design and construct this clock over the coming summer.

In conjunction with my clock project, over the course of this school year, I have had a special focus with all my art & science classes on the subject of migrations & natural cycles. We used our studies to design and produce an interactive installation that Cabrillo funded. 

I worked with about 150 of my K-12 art & science students. We studied natural cycles & migrations that happen within San Diego county. I wrote & shared this article with most of the older classes, followed by rich discussion...then challenged them to choose a couple subjects to research on, and create a comparison & contrasting  paper that would be simplified into an image with relative points, of course this was differentiated for age and understanding.  

Then, I guided our middle school through a field trip to Cabrillo for live exploration & art!
We hit the tide pools at a minus tide to see lots of organisms & I offered an art project based on the cycle of kindness.
Students made "Thank you" cards one water color paper, but instead of normal water color paint,
​I researched & brought natural pigments such as turmeric, black berries, charcoal, & coffee. 

The field trip infused our studies and we finished the interactive installation.
We added a special focus on Cabrillo and Global Warming
and have already exhibited it at the San Diego Festival of Science & Engineering.
Students ran the installation. I love it when the student becomes the teacher!
Hundreds of people interacted with our project.

This installation consists of 2 rooms:  The Global Warming Room & The Migration Room. The 1st room is a global warming workshop. Public is invited to come in and learn about the causes and effects of global warming, and may do any of several art projects. They may add to our paper mural on global warming with markers, or create a butterfly or whale to add into the migration room, or they may color a CO2 dinosaur to put into the model of earth's atmosphere found in the migration room. The Migration Room is fronted by a giant clock with 12 months instead of 12 hours. It shows the seasons, but has a crack in the clock that the public may enter. Once inside the painting, we find ourselves in a circular room. The walls are covered in studies on migrations and natural cycles. The floor shows the seasons, and the ceiling is crisscrossed with migrating whales & butterflies. In the center of the room is our model of earths atmosphere. It is a transparent tube over a fan. The fan blows air upwards. People add their CO2 dinosaurs into the model where they blow around like pop corn. The more you see, the hotter it is. A soundtrack plays on loop with contrasting sounds of man & nature. The soundtrack was custom created for us by David Samas and Ian Saxton (Brother's Quarrel) .
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Soon we will also share our installation at the BioBlitz event with Cabrillo! 

Click here to see my progression on FaceBook!