Dan giving forge instruction at the Milwaukee Makerspace Norwich location.
Every Friday forge area champion Dan teaches a class for members. If you have not taken Dan’s Hook making class you are missing out. It is amazing what you can do with a hot piece of metal and a hammer. It can bend, twist, flatten, or curl and it’s so much fun. You will never look at a hand made hand rail the same way. If your a member stop by the Norwich building around 5 and meet in the forge area with your closed toe shoes.
I love it when an area champion for the painting area shows up wanting to help right when painting needs to happen. You have all seen that the Flugtag Team has been hard at work for the last month building “The Leap of Faith”. We are less than one week from flight day and there is still work to be done. Come by on Wednesday and help paint the cart that will launch our craft and be there for last minute changes. Get a selfie with the craft for your social media and encourage friends and family to vote for “Milwaukee Makers” as the People’s Choice Award winner.
Make sure you are subscribed to the Makerspace Instagram to see build videos posted every day this week. Like and comment so the internet gods smile on us. Today I posted the video for week 2 of our build.
The last Zine Fest I tabled at was in 2019 – there had been virtual and non-existent Zine Fests since then but this year was the first one back in action and in person. If you don’t know what a Zine is – yes, it Is short for “maga-zine.” (And you do pronounce it as such) Zines can be anything! Primarily they started out as quick and easy ways to share information and art without needing professional book binding. Zines are punk and d.i.y. in origin and the classing 8 panel folded format is still used by most people. In that vein – Zines are pretty cheap to make and therefore a really affordable way to get work from people whose work you admire. I myself had a mix of smaller art / poetry zines at my table this year. Trading is also a huge thing in the culture – Milwaukee actually hosts a really incredible Queer Zine Archive that will usually be present at Zine Fest to collect more work for the archive. You can totally bring your own work and ask people what they’d be willing to trade for it! (This year I traded a sticker pack for a crumpled up green piece of construction paper with a heart on it, drawn by a 7 year old) Zine Fest happens annually so if you weren’t able to make it out this year you should totally sit down and trying to make something fun to bring and trade next year!
Once again its time to meet to discuss legal matters and resolve disputes. Time to enter the temple of Vesta and leave offerings to the goddess in exchange for blessings for your family. A time when magic is the strongest, the Summer Solstice. Although we might not celebrate the sun being at it’s highest point in the sky with those traditions anymore we can celebrate in the way of the maker, by starting a new project. I got a suggestion to design a pin hole camera that can be used for Solargraphy in Model Monday. According to Google;
“Solargraphy is the art of long exposure photography that captures of the image of the sun moving across the sky.”
You use a pin hole camera to take an exposure that lasts months and capture the changing path the sun takes across the sky between the Summer and Winter Soltis. It sounded fun so last week we got started. Next week Monday we will pick up where we left off and finish our designs. Join us 7pm @ Norwich or via Google meeting at the bottom of the new Model Monday website!
Objectively the best manned flight competition is coming to Milwaukee on July 16th and the Milwaukee Makerspace has put in an application. For the past month a group of makers has been meeting and working on a design. As you read this judges are painstakingly looking over all the applications finding the craziest ways teams want to push their friends off a 30 foot drop into Lake Michigan. It has been fun working out our design and fingers crossed that we get the chance to build our design and attempt to take flight this summer. Cross your fingers for us.
