astpierre, Author at Baton Rouge Maker Faire

We’re thrilled to welcome back Meagan Moore to the Baton Rouge Maker Faire! She’s the director of STEM Lab at St. Joseph’s Academy and Robotics coach. But she’s be giving a talk on her recent residency at Atelierhaus Hilmsen in Hilmsen, Germany.

The talk will go over materials and methods of designing and prepping 3D Models and prints for casting in metal, the process of building a tilt-furnace, assisting in a holocaust memorial and so much more!

Her talk will be @ 12:30 PM on Saturday, October 7th! Check out the rest of our amazing schedule of events!

makerspace classes

As the faire this year is 100% virtual, there is so much happening throughout the livestream!

PANELS

10:15 – 11 DIY PPE: Making Us Safe Together

11:30 – 12:15 Building Communities: Library Makerspaces

12:45 – 1:30 Viral Business: Business During Covid

2:45 – 3:30 Full STEAM Ahead: Teaching for Tomorrow, Today

3:45 – 4:30 Art & Activism

LIVE BUILDS

ALL DAY Making as a Family with Knock Knock Children’s Museum

2:00-2:30 Soap Sculptures with LASM & BASF

OTHER THINGS TO WATCH FOR

4:30 – 5 BRMF Film Festival

Live Take aparts!

Recycled Robot challenge!

We’re thrilled to welcome back Amy Renee Nicosia – handmade for the third year! Amy Renee Nicosia started sewing for her family and friends when her children were young and began sewing to sell about five years ago. She loves to read, cook, sew, and spend time with her loved ones. The pieces she creates are makeup bags, minky blankets, chair pockets, and various handmade accessories

This year Amy will be demonstrating how to make jelly roll rugs at her booth. Check her and them out!

greatweathertodaystillhappeningthisweekend

There’s gorgeous weather today in Baton Rouge! The #BRMakerFaire this Saturday, October 21st, will go on RAIN or SHINE so dress accordingly! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for rain updates!

That’s right, y’all The Baton Rouge Mini Maker Faire’s Call for Makers is now open! This year’s family-friendly celebration of creative hobbies and projects from hi-tech to low-tech will have a special focus on Louisiana Food Culture.

Explore Engineering with Louisiana Art & Science Museum at the 4th Annual Engineering Day!

The fun-filled festival will feature interactive stations showcasing a wide spread of engineering and STEM disciplines such as robotics, 3D Printing, bridge building, electricity, nanoscience, architecture, chemistry, solar powered cars, medical physuics, and such much more!

Hope to see you there!

1.) Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Boeccure is a soap and cosmetic company started in 2014 by Baton Rouge natives Kyle Baker and Melinda Thiessen, Graphic Design graduates from the LSU School of Art & Design. We hand-craft small-batch natural bath products in a studio at N the Art Space, which is an artist studio community in the Bocage Cultural District melindakyle

2.) What are you presenting at the BRMMF?

We will be giving a presentation and demonstration on how to hand-make soap using the cold process method. Real soap is different from the bars that you will often find in stores in the sense that “true” soap is made from the combination of fats and oils with a sodium hydroxide solution, an ancient method used to create soap since 2800 B.C.

3.) Why is making important to you?

Boeccure grew out of our love for craft, health, and nature. We knew we wanted to start a business that involved making things by hand, but it took us a while to decide what exactly that would be.

When we thought deeper about why we wanted craft to be the foundation of our business, it became apparent that our product needed to be more than just a material good or commodity, but something that could deliver an experience that exemplified what we believe is the cornerstone of craft – quality.

In our time of mass production, when quality, consumer health, and consequence to the environment are often an afterthought, we believed that we could provide an eye-opening, revolutionary experience with one of the things we apply to our skin every day – soap.

We create soap and other bath products to bring quality back into our everyday lives, and help communities realize that by making better choices about what you consume, either externally or internally, you take better care of yourself, your family, and your planet.

Craft represents so many things that have largely been forgotten today – not just quality, but also tradition and community, along with the appreciation and stewardship of our diverse and abundant natural environment. At Boeccure, our goal is to manifest and advocate all of these things.

4.) What was the first thing you remember making?

Melinda: Purses out of printer paper, staples, and puffy paint.

Kyle: Spaceships and houses out of legos.

5.) What have you made that you are most proud of?

Melinda: What a tough question. The LSU School of Art and Design really challenged me to make pieces that I was/am proud of while I was in school. The one I think I appreciate the most still today is a bronze sculpture I made in a foundry class at LSU. It’s a small abstract, figural piece that represents our implicit need for companionship and community. I still often need to be humbled by this thought, and be reminded of my role in the lives’ of others.

Kyle: I’d have to say I’m most proud of a photo I took in my early college years. It’s a double exposure print of my friend by a campfire. It’s the best photo I’ve ever taken, and was printed in my college apartment with a makeshift setup.

6.) Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?

As a couple, our dream is to create a multi-use, non-profit art and craft center, with many different spaces for creators to rent studios, share tools and facilities, use communal spaces for galleries, installations, outreach, educational workshops, creative collaboration, and fellowship

1. Tell us about yourself.

My name is Glenn Kauffman and by trade I am a Creative Coder, working in interactive media, interactive installation, prototyping and R&D. While doing that I end up crossing over into many different disciplines such as PC and A/V hardware, networking, microcontollers, photography, music and fine art. Currently, I’m exploring VR and other physical computing technologies, how we interact with them and how we can use the for productivity and play.

2. What are you presenting at the Baton Rouge Mini Maker Faire?

As a follow up to my presentation last year, “Oculus Rift: A VR Primer”, I’ll be talking about all that has changed over the past year, the upcoming consumer release of the Oculus Rift and where we go from here. Afterwards, I will be giving hands on demos, so attendees can experience VR for themselves.

Everyone loves Oculus Rift demos!

3. Why is making important to you?

Making is a way of life. As makers, we create things we don’t have, fix things that are broken and modify things to make them better. We are in the perfect place and time to use our grandfathers spirit of ingenuity and do-it-yourself attitude with a vastly wider range of technology and materials along with a nearly infinitely deep library of information via the Internet. (As long as we don’t get sidetracked by the sheer number of cats)

4. What was the first thing you remember making?

I’ve had the joy of tinkering most of my life. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, heavily invested in Lego for me. Worth their weight in gold, they were (and still are) an endless source fun and education. When I would get a new set, I would always follow the directions the first time around and build what was on the front of the box. I’d learn a new technique along the way, but soon after I’d complete it the new kit would be ripped apart and the tinkering and remixes would begin. I particularly liked making fanciful Rube Goldberg contraptions that did complex, but unnecessary things, probably inspired by the opening scene of ‘Back to the Future’.

5. What have you made that you are most proud of?

While there are many projects that I’m proud of, including my two Oculus VR Jam submissions, there is one project that provided me with some of the greatest satisfaction; my x0xb0x. Before Adafruit had become as big as it has and before the Arduino was a household name in the maker world (and the term maker was a still in its nascent stage), Adafruit had created an obsessively sourced kit replica of the Roland TB-303 Sequencing Synthesizer. http://www.ladyada.net/make/x0xb0x/ I missed the first two runs of a hundred, but managed to get one from the third. Building it was immensely satisfying and it continues to be a part of my regularly used hardware, often showing up in the soundtracks for games, videos and other projects I work on.

6. Given an unlimited budget, what would you make?

While Second Life and others have brought to life the cyberspace visualizations of Neil Stephenson’s Snow Crash, none of them have managed to fully capture what was in my imagination after reading it. A digital world to build, meet, collaborate, and share within. If I had an unlimited budget, I think that would be an amazing project to bring to life. With technologies like Oculus Rift, Microsoft HoloLens, Leap Motion, Microsoft Kinect and many others available to near future users in a ubiquitous manner, we are closer than ever to being able to bring that idea to everyone.