Mad Trigger Crew Is The Place To Be

Deadass woke up 10 minutes ago and just had to draw it

damn near every time I mention im working on a fic or piece of fanart, he gasps in hopeful anticipation and asks "tamatoa and heihei?!" and he always acts bitterly disappointed

Well I’ll be damned, Spiderman did it. He saved Thanksgiving.

He was so mad, and so wrong, that I just listened to him until he was done.

Then I said, "Well, some of the art I made inspired a scientist who stuck the landing on Mars, so."

I know you're thinking "and then everybody clapped" but it really happened. I just pulled the line from my speech, since it was on my mind.

To his credit, he tried to walk it back. He tried to say that arts and sciences are equally important but separate. While I furiously disagree with that, I let it go, because we both knew I was right.

Dudes, I am not joking when I say that the science the ceramics undergrad did was VASTLY more intensive and rigorous than what I, the "real" scientist was doing. I was essentially playing with sludge, figuring out which processing method (diluting and blending it, then pouring into a plaster mold, or dehydrating, powderizing, and reconstituting) was most efficient and made the best product for my purposes (I wanted to make substrate for oyster larval settlement for oyster bed restoration). The ceramics undergrad was taking the products I made (the powder or the play-doh-like reconstituted sludge) and testing what firing and glazing methods worked well with it. She also mixed it with locally sourced clay (that she located and harvested herself) as a way to bulk up the volume but still keep the properties of the natural clay. She was manipulating the ratio of algae to clay, using different amounts of algae powder as a glaze on natural clay, testing different firing methods/temperatures and had replicates of everything she was doing. She took meticulous notes. She formed HYPOTHESES and PREDICTIONS based on the chemistry of the algae (something about the silica in diatom shells and high salt content, I think) and evaluated them with her results. I was in awe of her. Art IS science and art and other sciences need each other. We don't make progress as a civilization by keeping all of our innovations isolated. When we cross those boundaries and make new connections is when we discover greatness.

Here are some of the sculptures made by our faculty mentors and the ceramics undergrad! Sadly we ran out of algae biomass before I was able to attempt sculpting something myself.