July is heating up and the river will be leveling off soon so its time to turn our attention to summer activities. This month we're continuing our Maker Summer, learning about the art and culture of "America: Now and Then", checking out the "Ascent" project from Dark Matter, playing with the KC Space Pirate's Archimedes Death Ray, and learning about chemistry of Dyes, Mordants, Pigments, and Oils for the DIY enthusiast. As always we invite you to bring out your own projects to share with others.

Maker Summer

After the success of Make:KC's own Kansas City Mini Maker Faire last year, the merchants of Main Street Parkville Association asked us to bring our own grass-roots celebration of Makers back to Riverfest this year on August 19, 20, and 21. Last year's Riverfest brought a crowd of around 20,000 people to enjoy the parade, arts, crafts, food, carnival, and Makers. We're planning a Steampunk party as part of the event's activities too.  This is free to the public and provides an opportunity to introduce many new people to our Maker culture.

As we prepare for this event we're continuing our Maker Summer. We hope to encourage everyone to get busy building projects to Show, Tell, and Interact with the public.

America Now And Here

Kansas City was the first stop on the inaugural tour of America: Now And Here. They've moved on to Detroit but we've asked them to bring an essence of what this art exhibit says to represent American culture. We are looking forward to hearing from local and national representatives about their goal. Lets also turn our attention with a Maker Summer to ways we can participate in this discussion. Lets look at ways to creating our own art projects by making a statement about our culture of technology and fun.

Archimedes Death Ray

We have Brian Turner from the Kansas City Space Pirates stopping by to talk about an offer to bring their bank of mirrors out to the Riverfest Maker Faire and set up an Archimedes Death Ray. These mirrors were used to power their first generation Space Elevator robot climber.

Dark Matter "Ascent"

Daniel Eichenbaum, curator of Dark Matter, will talk about their latest project called "Ascent". They are a recipient of this year's Rocket Grants funding to creat a community-built balloon project carrying high-defination video equipment to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere above Kansas City. The resulting pictures and video will help generate an hour-long performance of electroacoustic music at Union Station's Arvin Gottlieb Planetarium.

Natural Dyes, Mordants, Pigments & Oils for the DIY’er

Natural dyes have been in use since humans started weaving and wearing cloth. These were supplanted by coal-tar dyes in the 19th century, but there are still thousands of DIYers and crafts folk who still prefer to make their own dyes from the natural world.  Presenting several natural dyes and some exotic mordants that are used to make the dyes “bite” into the cloth fiber and which make the dying more permanent, along with examples of some of the dyes dissolved in water that visitors can place on spot plates and then add drops of different mordant solutions to observe what colors are produced.

Paint and ceramic pigments have also been around for a few thousand years. Many of the great art masters often ground natural pigment “earths” and mixed these with various oils (for oil paints) or with gum Arabic for water colors and other applications.  Many pigments when ground with water and a little water glass can be made to form a slurry that when painted on unfired ceramics and fired to a sufficiently high enough temperature will produce vivid glaze colors. These same pigments can also be mixed into molten glass to produce dazzling glass colors.

The extraction of the fragrance essences of plants has also been practiced since the earliest times.  Many different oils and incense resins are mentioned in the Bible and all other religious texts.  The use of copal as a ceremonial incense was well known among the Aztecs and Incas.  A demonstration of these incense resins will be shown by burning some of them during the demonstration.   Many incense resins served other purposes such as for lacquers and colorants for lacquers.  The essential oils not only were used as perfumes and flavorings but as vehicles and thinners for oil paints.  Examples of several essential oils will be shown.

Come join us at the Make:KC Show & Tell

- Where: Metropolitan Community College, Business & Technology Campus - Fab Lab.

- 1775 Universal Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64120

- Room TC 200, Enter through the South entrance.

- When: Tuesday, July 5, 2001

- Time: 7:00 to 9:00 pm.

- Live Webcast Event