Traditional Skin Preparation Methods

I am an Alaskan Native artist who is trying to learn more about my culture and to pass the information on to others before it is lost. Alaska Native cultures have been working with animal skins for thousands of years. Very few people today possess the knowledge to work these materials. I am interested in the use of the material for home dwellings and clothing. I am researching different ways that animal skins are turned into leather, specifically moose and salmon skins. I conducted interviews with local elders. I investigated the contrasting chemical material process that modern industry uses to produce tanned skins. The research has culminated in an installation made out of moose hide and wood in the Regents Great Hall April 23-27, 2012. The space will provide the viewer with a life sized environment simulating a traditional skin dwelling. I took a traditional preparation method used for salmon skins and transformed them into pieces of contemporary native art

More Sound-Spelling Correspondences

This article is a sequel to Sound-Spelling Correspondences in the May 1985 Word Ways, providing additional spellings for the indicated pronunciations. All have been taken from Webster\u27s Third Edition

Lost Wax Method Bronze Casting

Large scale bronze casting is a work intensive process that requires adequately equipped studio space, time, and a set of highly refined skills to complete the eight stages of the process. My goal was to construct a life sized bronze statue of a traditional Athabascan fisherman. I chose to sculpt a classically proportioned Greek style statue, using similar processes and ratios. I looked over photographs that I took in the Vatican museum and several anatomy books. Wendy Croskrey supported my research in large scale bronze casting a project this size. Through experimentation I discovered the importance of using the correct plaster and reinforcing molds properly. The process provided me with many firsts, such as a mold cracking open, plaster not setting, and having to recast a piece. Through hard work and careful consideration I was successful in completing the project

Religious Heterogamy, Marital Quality, and Paternal Engagement

Using data from a nationally representative sample of married fathers of school-aged children, we examined the association between religious heterogamy of parents and fathers’ involvement in children’s lives. We further examined whether that association is mediated by marital quality and father–child religious discord. Results showed that greater religious heterogamy is associated with less interaction and more relational distance between fathers and children. Results also suggested that fathers’ reports of marital happiness play an important role in mediating the association between religious heterogamy and paternal engagement. We concluded that religious fathers are more involved in their children’s lives insofar as their wives are equally religious and they are in happy marriages

Death Ground

Death Ground is a competitive musical installation-performance game for two players. The work is designed to provide the framework for the players/participants in which to perform game-mediated musical gestures against each-other. The main mechanic involves destroying the other player’s avatar by outmaneuvering and using audio weapons and improvised musical actions against it. These weapons are spawned in an enclosed area during the performance and can be used by whoever is collects them first. There is a multitude of such power-ups, all of which have different properties, such as speed boost, additional damage, ground traps and so on. All of these weapons affect the sound and sonic textures that each of the avatars produce. Additionally, the players can use elements of the environment such as platforms, obstructions and elevation in order to gain competitive advantage, or position themselves strategically to access first the spawned power-ups. All of the game's real-time parameters, such as player speed, health, types of power-ups collected, collisions and ground materials, are used to control musical parameters driving bespoke digital musical instruments