Soooo I have some exciting news!!!!

A couple months ago, I submitted an entry to the Waterhouse Natural Sciences Art Prize, a pretty fancy art contest hosted by the South Australian Museum. This was the piece I submitted, a papercraft lightbox entitled “An Outback of Ice and Sea”, and it’s taken a good month of my life getting it all together!

And I am very excited to announce that I have been selected as a finalist! Any of y’all who are in South Australia, you’ll be able to come and see my work (and a whole bunch of others’) on display at the SA Museum from the 4th of June to the 7th of August!

This piece is a scientific recreation of the Bulldog Shale formation, an opal-rich fossil locality in the desert of my home state of South Australia. 110 million years ago, this place wasn’t a desert, but an icy inland sea near the South Pole that was brimming with life! Every animal species in this artwork is based on fossil evidence from the region, down to the crinoids and brittle stars and bivalves!

The star of the piece is Umoonasaurus demoscyllus, a small plesiosaur with crests on its head that was local to this area. The Umoonasaurus is pursuing Ptyktoptychion eyrensis, a giant relative of modern-day ratfish while belemnites and ammonites bod in and out of the seaweed. And overhead amongst the icebergs, the giant pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicus looms.