Vivarium
Maker Faire Bay Area 2026
September 25th-27th
Three six-foot columns of clear acrylic, each one a slice of wetland caught mid-glow. LED strips hidden along PVC spines light the water from within, turning every tube into something between a display case and a living thing. Inside, three habitat layers stack on top of each other. Aquatic grasses settle at the base, clusters of frog eggs hang suspended mid-tube, and papercut wetland plants reach toward the top, all built from found and fabricated materials, made to move.
Each pod holds three tubes on a weighted triangular base. Sand ballast keeps it grounded while power supplies and lighting controls stay hidden inside, so the whole pod runs off a single plug. The finished piece will scale to three pods and nine tubes, glowing the same whether it's noon or midnight.
Vivarium takes the specimen jar and blows it up past the point of clinical, into something people want to circle, crouch by, and look up into.
Twisty Maurice
Twisty Maurice is the collaboration between Therese Gietler and Misty Post, artists who turn found materials into modular light installations for public spaces. The work stays playful and tactile on purpose: paper, plastic, salvaged objects, LEDs and code, rebuilt into pieces people want to walk through, circle, and light up for themselves. Past installations include Oscillara, Samyra Drift, A Thousand Tiny Currents, Frangible Dreams, Disco Dragons, and Afterglow, each one a different answer to the same question, how do you make a public space glow. Therese and Misty are the primary artists on every piece, from concept through build. They work closely with technical director Andy Batt, who designs and builds the custom LED power and lighting systems that keep the work running on-site, and who is, by all accounts, a Tetris-level expert at packing the van. His contribution is significant and structural, turning each idea into something that lights up reliably, night after night.
