Taking a break ..

Having spent the last few days (Weeks ? - it feels that way) covered in pollyfilla and paint as the studio gets all its work done, yesterday we decided to take a day out. Himself was talking about the Horniman Museum mid week, which I had never heard of so I google'd it and saw the info about the "Bail: Dancing for the Gods" exhibit and mentioned that I would like to go, so yesterday off we tootled.

The Bali exhibition was fantastic, masks and costumes and shadow puppets and patterns, Oh the patterns !! I spent ages admiring the pieces and taking photos. There is also an amazing musical instrument collection and you can even play some of the instruments (great fun, although I bet the security man who had the job of watching that room turns the volume down !!). But what stole the show for me was the Jellyfish.

Yes Jellyfish.

I hadnt realised there was an aquarium when I looked at the website, having been a tad engrossed with with Bali pictures, but when we got there and the ticket lady said there was an aquarium I had to see (Entry is free to the museum but the Bali exhib and the aquarium you do have to buy tickets for).

The Jellyfish were magical. Despite taking lots of photos, they mostly turned out terrible. These were transparent jellies as you can see in the picture above, and they were so graceful moving about in the tank, visible where the light caught them but almost invisible when they moved out of the light. I was fascinated.

Himself took this short film of them -

So, amazingly, Im now liking Jellyfish (amazing considering when I was little I was stung by one and strangely enough haven't been very fond of them ever since) and Im thinking its quite possible at some point Im going to have to try and make one in glass. Maybe I'll just need to pop back to the museum for a bit first...