Burke Artist Studio: Xiaomei Wang
Video by: Sven Haakanson
Xiaomei Wang: In my eyes, every student and teacher at the University of Washington is like a gentle Husky, their beautiful souls blending with nature. They have a deep love for wonderful handicrafts, and the little artists gathered in the museum’s artist residency patiently waiting their turn. As they slowly started crafting, each person was filled with creativity, fully immersed in the process, brimming with vitality.
For me, a most joyous moment was in the afternoon when three of us worked together to scrape off the tofu powder from a dragon print. We worked together perfectly, and slowly
the dragon patterns appeared, with white flowers gradually emerging against a blue background. The most stunning part was the ice-cracked patterns that appeared between the breaks, which are subtly revealed, just like the misty realm in Chinese landscape paintings.
On the first day of the workshop, a Mexican boy left a deep impression on me. He is a Ph.D. student in archaeology at the University of Washington's anthropology department . He is Maya and came to the U.S. as a child with his parents. Later, he learned that his people were called the Blue Finger Tribe because they also produced indigo dye, although many of their techniques are disappearing. He noticed that many of the ethnic patterns from Guizhou are similar to those of his own people and said that the swirling water pattern in our batik is the same as theirs, representing water. The octagonal pattern on my batik, he said, represents the morning star.
For this trip, we selected 20 batik exhibits from the “ Hands on Memory Museum” to be displayed at the Burke Museum’s artist workshop space. I also appraised 20 of the museum’s own batik artifacts, learning a lot about global batik techniques.
From the records on the collection cards, the Burke Museum has been collecting batik artifacts since the 1920s. The collection spans a wide range of regions, including Guizhou and Hainan in
Gorgonopsids are not dinosaurs, despite their appearance. This is the first thing Kelsie Abrams (@pinup_paleontologist - IG), our fossil lab manager, explained to me as she excitedly compared our gift shop gorgonopsid plushie to real gorgonopsid fossils in our collection. In fact, gorgonopsids went extinct before dinosaurs walked the earth.
Kelsie has nine years of experience preparing fossils in the lab and 14 years of experience in the field. She has helped prepare the fossils for two gorgonopsid papers published by our curator Dr. Christian Sidor, uncovering information on their feet and sternums.
We cut a lot of details about gorgonopsids from the full interview, but we may release a longer video and do a full deep dive. Leave a comment if you’d like to see that!
This video features paleo art by:
Mark Witton
Dmitry Bogdanov
Gabriel Ugueto
Julio Lacerdo
Nobu Tamura
Michael B. H.
Music: Dead Already - Thomas Newman
Burke Ornithology Collections Manager Kevin Epperly manages over 100,000 bird specimens and — in the rare moments of free time — has picked up both 3D photogrammetry and 3D printing.
“He is an artist,” Burke Curator of Ornithology Dr. Alejo Rico-Guevara explained as he shared a 3D printed hummingbird head that effectively mimicked the iridescent feathers of a real hummingbird.
Epperly uses these skills to assist Rico-Guevara in his research on the beaks of nectar drinking-birds (mostly hummingbirds). To get the accuracy they need, they have developed a system called PicoCam, which will be published soon.
The 3D models allow researchers to observe features of the beaks without damaging real specimens. They can even load the models into stress test software to see how different beak shapes may affect their strength in combat.
This video features clips from Dr. Alejo Rico-Guevara and YouTube Channel: Nature Shared. Music is Arrival of Birds recorded by The Cinematic Orchestra.
