Hi, I’m Brett, a year 10 student at Moriah College.

I’ve been doing work experience here at BEES for a couple days now. Besides all the office and computer work I’ve been doing, I have had the opportunity to work with Dr Sarah Jane Moore on some of her artwork.

She got me started rasping some oyster shells, and I tried to be as careful as possible not to leave any sharp edges because little kids are going to be handling them. Next I washed them using the lab sink, and watched how the light reflected off shiny parts of the shells. I thought it would be very attractive if we could display those beauties in good lighting.

I’m rasping the shells. I’m actually left-handed, so holding the rasp in my right hand was a little awkward. Luckily it wasn’t for a long time.

At the same time, I was learning about nature based art-making practices, and Dr Sarah Jane even showed me how to detail an art piece using an echidna quill, which really gave the piece a more authentic feel. She got the quill from Georgia Badgery, an honours student studying ecology, specifically echidna diets and foraging. Georgia lived out in Fowler’s Gap for two months at the Arid Zone Research centre in Western NSW and tracked 7 echidnas, including one she named Snuffy.

Georgia gave Snuffy’s quill to Dr Sarah Jane to use in her artwork collection, which will displayed in at the entrance to the bioscience building at UNSW during NAIDOC week, right next to the cave bear skeleton.

I need to determine the eight best-looking shells out of 33. Only 24 of those are actually shown in the photo. There wasn’t enough space in the container.

The collection is titled ‘I know where Oysters Lie’, and it will also be shown at Culture At Work in the Accelerator Gallery at Pyrmont, 6-8 Scott Street. It will be displayed from the 6th until the 16th of November, and the opening night is on a Saturday, from 5-7pm.

Working with Dr Sarah Jane has been a great experience, and I’m looking forward to seeing the complete collection.

I’ll be involved with setting up the artwork tomorrow, which I’m very excited about.

See ya,

Brett.