Blast from the past

The Norman Transcript

May 22, 2008 12:22 am

— Sam Noble exhibit four billion and two years in the making
By Julianna Parker
Transcript Staff Writer
There's more to a museum exhibit than meets the eye. Just ask Terry Chase.
The director of Chase Studio, which creates exhibits for natural science museums, has been working on the new permanent exhibit at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History for more than two years. The Paleozoic gallery will open May 31.
The new gallery in the museum's Hall of Ancient Life looks like something out of a Disney World attraction, with fossils brought to life in the form of forests and seascapes.
"Making all this stuff is the most intensive part of the process," Chase said as he gestured to one of the plastic trees in a display. "I mean, I guess people just assume we go out and buy this stuff at Michael's."
Unfortunately, the craft store doesn't stock extinct trees. So artists from Chase Studio create metal molds from the fossils and build each tree themselves.
Chase pointed to a tree the size of a man and said it took about a month to build it.
The Paleozoic gallery will be a permanent addition to the museum's Hall of Ancient Life totaling more than 4,600 square feet.
The new addition covers more than 4 billion years of Earth's history, from the formation of the planet itself through the first stirrings of life in the early oceans, to the strange plants and animals that inhabited the earth millions of years before the appearance of the dinosaurs.
Hundreds of specimens will be displayed in dozens of exhibit areas. This gallery is unique in the museum because it has not only fossils but also models that make them come to life, said Linda Coldwell, museum spokesperson.
The gallery also will have hands-on interactives and a walk-through diorama of a Pennsylvanian coal swamp that will give visitors the chance to stroll through a landscape that existed in Oklahoma more than 300 million years ago.
The gallery has been part of the museum's plan since it opened on the University of Oklahoma campus in 2000. The completion of the Hall of Ancient Life will be the next big project with an introduction gallery that will explain the mission of the museum to visitors at the entrance, Coldwell said.
The museum maintains a blog to keep the public informed of the latest progress of the Paleozoic gallery's construction at http://snpaleozoic. wordpress.com/.
Andrew Jumonville was working on the gallery Monday. He described the prep work as "an amazingly painstaking process."
"Someone had to go in and hand cut each of these leaves," he said as he tugged a branch toward him.
He pulled out his paintbrush and added finishing touches to one display. Each tiny plant and leaf needed some sort of touch-up, making them look real and not uniform.
"I spend a lot of time hiding my work," he said.
Jumonville has been in the museum-exhibit-creation industry is a sculptor, painter, scientist and more on this project. He brings together his artistic training and interest in science to create a world that's been gone for billions of years.
Chase said he founded the Missouri-based Chase Studio in 1973 to combine his love for art and science.
"I think we're the only ones in the whole world who do natural history exhibits exclusively," he said.
From a young age, Chase loved both art and science, but teachers always told him he had to pick one or the other. But he proved them wrong.
"You can create all kinds of interesting occupations if you let kids combine their interests," he said.
Julianna Parker 366-3541 jparker@normantranscript.com