And to get started

As for the International Laboratory Animal Technician Week project — November has yielded a project brief and some priming of the creative pump. I’d meant to be writing short, frequent blog posts as I was going along, but life’s exigencies* brought other plans. Will post more regularly from here on out.

For today’s update then —

In answer to my question of how to acknowledge lab animal techs, a project brief:

And to get started, two more things:

On-line Research — a look at some specifics of the lab environments; voices of technicians from Tech Week’s past (why they love their jobs, what’s important to them); the research animals under their care; specific biomedical research and the animals that contribute. What is “refinement” in the lab setting. …what are the relationships between technicians and laboratory animals?

Drawing and media exploration — always primes the creative pump.

95% of animals in laboratories are mice and rats. Time to do some charcoal studies of both.

Media exploration 1— looked around for real world textures to bring in digitally. My cement drive-way — what happens when combining?

Media exploration 2 — Last week’s mouse, cupped in gentle hands — and this week's virtual visit to a biomedical research lab got me thinking about blue surgical gloves, and working behind glass.

*Post script: Just emerging from 10 days of Covid isolation. A bit draining, but not a bad case thankfully. And this coming on the heels of three weeks in the UK, which were tough ones for family reasons. I’ll remember this November for cool walks along Morecambe Bay and warm meals with family, reminiscing about one particularly dear life well-lived.