The Dancer

The Dancer.

Currently on exhibit at the Granoff Atrium Gallery (hours) through February 23rd with a closing reception from 5-6pm on the 23rd.



First question always is, "What is it?" I can only answer that I don't know for certain. My guess is that it is a a bit of plant trichome (likely from a flowering tree, maybe a Maple). The 'legs' are about 30µm wide, flattened by drying either in the vacuum or before it landed.

This sample was collected in May, during a very heavy pollen set a few years ago, while riding home. I did a quick fabrication of a sample holder and brought a few samples and some containers to transport them once the ride was finished. Then the stubs were coated and imaged.

The idea came from one the curiosity to see what was covering everything, cars and roads and the bike path were green from plant pollen and flower debris one day and I did a quick sampling of a surface but wondered what I would find in the air on the way home. Many years ago in Michigan I did some work looking at airborne samples, Particle counting and evaluating, scoring what we saw. In that case stubs were placed on location for a certain period of time, sealed and then we imaged them.

So I made a holder for the stubs, loaded them up before the ride home, took the stub off the holder, put a new one on for the ride back to work and thus I had two temporal samples of what was floating around in the air that day. I took a peak and saw quite a bit of variation.

 SEM stubs threaded onto a post attached to the top of the steertube with gaffer tape. The black is a double stick conductive adhesive. Airborne particle stick there and then I can coat it with a bit of gold and get a glimpse of what's floating around. 

This particular bit instantly stood out as I started to image the stub on the SEM. Nothing around it, just this small bit with some interesting form.

Here's a shot at the lowest machine magnification to give a bit of an idea of what caught my eye and drew me in to explore a bit more.

At this point my oldest was absolutely committed to ballet, she was a Dancer, still is, just taking a pause to focus on finishing HS and expanding and exploring other interests. A dancer's life in a high pressure pre-professional ballet program is intense. But dance is more than just the rigor and routine of ballet class. There's movement. Music, and visual expression.

The visual was such an obvious reference I couldn't ignore it. I was captivated but the image, the parallel, the connections. It became the focal point in the entryway to the Firefly Gallery show. How this bit landed there, in the perfectly smooth part of the double sided conductive carbon tape, no divot or debris in the field of view. The image is essentially raw out of the microscope, no retouching of the background, printed as captured.

-Nanoscape