359189 4 Location 539144 <p>As we have mentioned, our son is a dinosaur nut.&nbsp; We may not have mentioned that he is also an accomplished artist, who sold his first sculpture at the age of 7.&nbsp; It was, of course, a T-rex.&nbsp;&nbsp; He's a pretty normal kid in other regards, until you put a lump of polymer clay in his hand.&nbsp;&nbsp; He makes dinosaurs, fossil dinosaur parts, movie monsters, and he is driven by a passion to make them look real.&nbsp; And so we came to this small museum in southeastern Utah, a pilgrimage of sorts.&nbsp; Not a large museum yet, but important because it is the workshop and art studio where dinosaurs are made to look absolutely real.</p> <p><a href="/go?l=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dinosaur-museum.org%2F&tracking=external" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Dinosaur Museum </a>is a small square building in an out of the way four corners town.&nbsp; They don't charge much to get in.&nbsp; In fact, they told us that the museum does not really pay for itself; it is not expected to.&nbsp; The curators, Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas, have other activities that keep the museum going.&nbsp; They are artists as well as paleontologists, and they work to sculpt dinosaurs as they might have looked.&nbsp; Stephen Czerkas is also one of the world's experts on dinosaur skin impressions, and he uses that understanding to great effect in his sculptures. Stephen and Sylvia Czerkas' sculpture is known at museums around the world, from their <em>Carnotaurus</em> sculpture at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the <span style="font-style: italic">Herrerasaurus</span> at Chicago's Field Museum, and <span style="font-style: italic">Maiasaura</span> baby at the Philadelphia Academy of natural Science, to <em>Deinonychus</em> sculptures in Japan, Germany, and Austria.</p> <p>The sculpture technique is elegant, beginning with the cast skeleton of the animal, or an armature of similar proportion.&nbsp; Clay is used to apply flesh to the bones, and finally a layer of skin, complete with the textures that they know so well.&nbsp; The clay covered model is then painted with a rubber material that hardens into a pliable mold, and covered finally with a layer of either plaster or fiberglass.&nbsp; Once the clay model is removed, the rubber insert faithfully reproduces all the artist's detail in the cast resin.&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br /> Inside the museum, we found 4 main galleries, and a long center gallery.&nbsp; The animals are life-sized, and must be seen to be believed.&nbsp; Their most recent effort has added one final layer to the outside of the finished animal... feathers.&nbsp; The feathered dinosaur exhibit is spectacular, and is in fact a traveling exhibit that may be found on temporary display all over the world.&nbsp; If you are in the Four Corners area exploring, the museum is worth a look.</p> <p>GT</p> 2007-08-13T01:51:21-07:00 816676879 2007-08-04T00:00:00-07:00 0 18 230574 5290333 359189 0 150418 0.0562132397599171 2007-08-04T00:00:00-07:00 Published 20.0 Dinosaur Meets Art 2009-04-29T22:55:56-07:00 97719 0