Friday, April 2, 2010

A Mammoth Undertaking

Yes, we are milking that pun for all it's worth. And maybe more...

In any case, we've gone a little mammoth crazy around here. If you're not local, you may not have heard about the Wenas Creek Mammoth, which was discovered a few years ago about 35 miles south of campus. It's kind of a big deal. Several large bones have been unearthed, including a humerus, femur and vertebrae. The project was even featured in the History Channel's Journey to 10,000 BC (the only link on the History Channel website seems to be to their video shop - but at least it has a description).

And now, the Wenas Creek Mammoth project will be our inaugural exhibit of our Window on Central series, small exhibits which showcase work being done on and around campus. The exhibit itself will be featured in our hallway facing corner display case, but a mammoth calls for something a little more... dramatic. Like a full size mammoth in the lobby.

Mammoth in the lobby

And how does one create a full size mammoth? In this case, interim museum director Bill Wood enlarged and refined artist's Carl Buell's rendering of the mammoth and separated it into sections we can print with our 24" plotter. Once printed, the strips were cut down to fit on pieces of foam core and then glued to the foam core. Then we reassembled the whole thing on the lobby wall. No small project!

We started near the front and worked out.
Mammoth in the lobby

Bill Wood places the final tusk piece.
Mammoth in the lobby

When it was all done, we put together this little video of the process.


Definitely a lot of fun, and a very cool thing to have in the lobby.

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