- These are made by an animal that extracts silica from seawater and builds their skeleton in life.

When I was very young, I was interested in both art and science and going through school, the counselors and the teachers always said, well, eventually you're gonna have to decide one way or the other because the courses are so different.

And I said, well, it's hard for me to decide which way I want to go.

So all through school, even into graduate school, I took art and science courses and eventually decided I was going to combine the two and form a business.

So Chase Studio is a company that I founded 50 years ago that builds museum exhibits for natural history museums all over the world.

And it combines both science and art.

We actually build more than just models or dioramas.

We actually build complete museums.

We can go into a blank space and do all of the graphics, do all of the computer interactives, build the walls, do the lighting, do all the electronics, absolutely everything there is to do and changing a bare room into a museum.

So that's what we do here at the studio.

And there are basic principles that you follow which relate to human nature on which way they go, which things they're attracted to.

How much light to put on something.

Do they go to the right or the left intuitively so you take all of these basic principles in consideration when you're designing an exhibit.

And of course you have the storyline.

How do you develop the storyline?

Do you do it chronologically or do you do it some other way?

So that all has to be in consideration.

And then you have these wow factors, how are you going to stimulate and keep the interest of the person going along this pathway through the museum?

You have to develop things that will capture their attention.

One of the things that is, I think, most important in designing exhibits is to, develop something that involves the visitor.

These museums that have row after row of dioramas that are basically just pretty pictures to most people.

I've watched people walk through these museums, some of the bigger museums, and they won't even break a pace.

They'll just look from one side to the other, at one diorama to the other, they're like pictures in the calendar.

What you have to do is you have to develop techniques to involve people, participate in the activity of going through the museum.

So you do things like, well we do a lot of computer, touchscreen things where people can interact or you have even simple things where they can touch things or they can press buttons and something lights up or any kind of thing that you can do to involve the visitor, to make them stop long enough to actually absorb at least the basic principle of what you're trying to exhibit is important.

And that's what we try to do.

We try to develop participatory exhibits rather than passive exhibits.

One of the reasons we get all these high profile projects from the big museums, the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, is because of our scientific background.

In many cases, we know as much or more about the science behind the exhibit than the client does.

And so, very often we'll actually write the text for the exhibit and do all of the research and present that to the museum as part of the project.

That's where my science and art background come together in this business.

Everybody is amazed when they come here and they come in and they realize that we have actually done exhibits all over the world.

In fact, we've done exhibits for hundreds of museums, including over a hundred of the national park visitor centers.

When people come here and they realize the scope of what we do, they're just absolutely amazed that a place like this exists.

In fact, we have school groups come through here and I get thank you notes and some of the kids will write things like, it was a life changing experience.

I'm thinking, wow, that same thing happened to me when I was young.

My father took me over to one of his coworkers who had a big mineral collection, this was when I was in grade school and he showed me his mineral collection and gave me a few specimens.

And from that time on, I was just absolutely hooked.

It only takes one little spark to change a whole person's life.

And people going through here, young kids going through here, I always think, wow, I could have changed their whole life just because very few of those people will even be familiar with this kind of work or even think this is a possibility.

But once they come through here and they see, wow, this is something I'd like to do for my life.