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There’s no bismuth like show bismuth

Posted on | September 23, 2009 | 562 views |

Geoffrey Taber uses unique metal to earn onCampus recognition for his art

By Adam King

It was in a scrapyard where Geoffrey Taber became intrigued with bismuth, a metalloid that forms intriguing crystal formations as it cools. He found a hunk of it in the fall of 2003 while digging through the Research Alloys yard on Goodale Boulevard for metal he uses to make equipment for materials science researchers.

“It had some really cool little crystals and colors,” said Taber, a laboratory technician in OSU’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. “Over the next several months I studied and experimented, trying to optimize the interesting features.”

In the view of the editorial staff at onCampus, Taber excelled in his artistic vision, honoring him with the first ever onCampus Editors’ Choice Ribbon for his entry “Hemisphere” in the Staff Arts and Crafts Exhibit at Bricker Hall.

The entire exhibit is on display through Oct. 2, but Taber’s piece, as well as the others in the exhibit honored by President Gordon Gee, the university’s vice presidents and the People’s Choice Award, will be moved to the Schottenstein Center for view by fans attending the Wisconsin home football game Oct. 10.

Taber was a medical imaging systems engineer until he walked into the Hoyt Sherman studio in Columbus in 1987 and fell in love with glassblowing, which he did for the next 10 years.

Taber was the first American student to attend the State School for Glass in Zelezny Brod, Czechoslovakia, in 1990, and he sold his creations locally at the Riley Hawk Gallery, the Columbus Museum of Art gift shop and the Ohio Designer Craftsmen “Show of Hands” retail stores.

Taber relishes developing his skills in both glass and metal casting techniques, and he said it’s the marketing and selling of his artwork that is the most “painful” part of his endeavor.

But he strongly believes in the science of art. After figuring out how to manipulate bismuth, Taber is trying to figure out how to turn practical applications into art aesthetics.

“I have been researching something called ‘monodispersed nanospheres,’ which all that really means is tiny balls, smaller than 1 micrometer, all within a narrow range of diameter,” he said. “After synthesizing such spheres, it is possible for them to stay suspended indefinitely in an ordered or structured solution, know as a colloid. This area is widely studied in search of functional optical devices, such as photonic crystals, but my intent is merely to exploit some of my favorite visually appealing features: Opalescence and iridescence.

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