How to Become a Force of Nature

I want to tell you about the most beautiful thing I have ever made. It started as an idea I had in March of this year (2025), and it went on to change the way I view the world. You are coming on this journey with me, my dear reader, so get comfortable. Are you relaxed? Shoulders loose? Good. Let’s jump in:

 

Have you ever heard of ferrofluid? If you have, it was probably in the context of some novelty product, or perhaps a fun little science experiment. Essentially, "ferrofluid" is a bunch of iron molecules that have been suspended in a colloidal (read: microscopically homogenous) mixture – usually some kind of oil. The fact that the iron molecules are so evenly distributed within the oil gives them the ability to move the oil-glob around like a big globby puppet in semi-predictable ways, and since iron molecules are highly magnetic (or ferrous, hence the name), the magnetic field is thus rendered visible in this fascinating globular display. It really is something to behold: depending on the strength and proximity of the magnet(s) acting upon it, the ferrofluid takes on all kinds of surprising and beautiful dimensions.

 

It can become spiky or rounded, kiki or bouba; it will sometimes break off into separate smaller orbs that bounce off each other for a while before inevitably recongealing back into the Mother-Glob. It’s truly absorbing to watch, especially when you add an electromagnet into the mix – because then you can make your little glob friend dance to music! I think that what makes it so fascinating is the combination of order and surprise: you can watch it go for a while, just bobbing up and down in a little bubble to the music you’re playing, when all of a sudden the beat changes and it starts doing something completely different. It makes full use of the chaotic, inscrutable nature of magnetism to display a beautiful and engaging delight. 

 

Credit: The Crafty Chemist on Tumblr

So, my idea began with ferrofluid. I knew I liked it, and I knew I wanted to get my hands on some. I knew that I wanted to experience it in a particular way. There was one product already on the market that employed a sound-attenuated electromagnet to make the ferrofluid move around. The product is called Venom Sound, and you can look it up yourself if you’re curious because no one is paying me to advertise here. The product is kind of boring, though: its design language, in my opinion, is pretty sterile and does not do justice to the mag(net?)ical nature of the ferrofluid itself. It just looks like a cool novelty gadget -- which is fun, I guess, but not exactly what I was after. So I decided to shop around a little.

 

Right away, I found a ferrofluid merchant on Etsy that piqued my interest. The merchant in question had anodized the iron particles! (In the off chance that you’re not a metallurgist, that means they used electrolysis to oxidize the surface of the iron particles before mixing them into the oil-glob, so that the iron particles display a beautiful iridescent color.) See for yourself: 

 

Are you seeing this??

Yeah, yup. I desire to have some of that, please. It was around $40 ($65 if you wanted the electromagnet and microphone module too, which I did), so I forked it over and waited. What I received in the mail a few weeks later was a small round bottle containing a pearly metallic glob of ferrofluid, my own little Hobbit-door to an adventure of creativity.

If you know me, you know I am a "DIY-or-die" type of person. I love Agency and Gumption and Initiative. I love a Project. This was clearly going to be a Project. For this next section of the essay, you will be looking at my own pictures taken with my own digital camera, so please gaze lovingly at them, even if they are not very good. These were my original schematics for a custom ferrofluid music box display:

 

Pretty decent start, I would say.

My basic plan was to make a wooden box that would house the ferrofluid bottle and conceal the electromagnet behind it, then affix a microphone module to the back, then hook that up to the power supply which would power the whole thing when plugged into the wall. The voltage from the power supply gets attenuated through the microphone module, and the electromagnet exerts magnetic force on the ferrofluid according to the sound levels. Simple. My rationale for using wood -- even though I was not a woodworker and had never meaningfully worked with wood before -- was that I figured I could use my silversmithing tools on it the same way I do in my jewelry class, more or less. For the thin planks of wood I would (ha) be dealing with, I could use my jeweler's saw and files to get the job done. As for joinery, I left that bridge to be crossed when I came to it, and plowed ahead sawing out my planks.

 

I must confess that after I sawed out those planks I lost steam on this project for months. For months this project consisted of some static schematics, my bottle of ferrofluid, an electromagnet and microphone with some vague semblance , and about six panels of wood (including a beautiful piece of cedar MDF that I found at my local hobby store) sitting abandoned in a bag, just gathering dust in a corner of my home. A sad state of affairs for any creative, really. My roadblock was actually quite simple: I had no way of sawing out the thicker chunk of wood for the "platform" that would support the electromagnet in the middle of its compartment (which would keep the ferrofluid centered in the display instead of sinking to the bottom). I didn't have a reciprocal saw or any other tool capable of sawing through a thick chunk of wood, nor did I know anyone who did (or so I thought). Anyway, I had a hard time visualizing myself using power saws and belt grinders in my one-bedroom condo. So I was stuck.

 

Then, some time later, my friend Zack came over for the first time in a while. We always get talking about STEM-related things when we hang out, and on this particular evening we were reminiscing about his scientist friend Richie from Boston, who had kindly explained electromagnetism to me on a three-way FaceTime call some months prior. That got us on the topic of electromagnets, and I remembered the electromagnet in my dusty abandoned bag of project. Just then Zack asked me, "Hey, did you ever make any progress on that ferrofluid project you were talking about?"

 

Well, I got out my bag of project, and saw all the pieces of wood I had already painstakingly measured and cut, and remembered my initial conviction that this beautiful thing should exist. I started thinking about it. "Hey Zack, do you see how we have all these super-thin pieces of basswood?" I asked. "What if we just cut five or six of them individually to size with kitchen shears, then glued them together like an inch-thich wood-glue sandwich, then after the glue dries we can just work with it like it's plywood?"

 

Here you can see the components, including the glued-together "plywood" and the panel of maple wood that we cut for the back-plate behind the ferrofluid.

Well, that solution worked! And once that initial roadblock was out of the way, we were off to the races. The next time Zack and I both had a free evening, I packed up my tools and components and headed over to Zack's parents' garage, where there were wood tools galore!

Zack doing some bench grinding. Please use proper PPE when working with power tools.

Here we were able to really get to work cutting and shaping the pieces of wood to fit the various components. At this point we could see the whole thing starting to come together, which was really quite exciting. It is so important to have friends who are willing to get swept along in excitement with you, because let me tell you: that was happening, and it was fun. We were hardly saying a word to each other, just sawing, filing, sanding, sawing, and filing... And every time we brought the various panels together and held them haphazardly to see how--really, if--they would fit together, we could see the initial vision getting closer and closer to reality, and we were buzzing with excitement.

 

It's coming together...

Okay, so now seems like a good time to get a little conceptual with it. You might have been wondering about the title of this essay: "Kyra, what does any of this this have to do with becoming a force of nature?", you might be asking the version of me that you have created in your mind. Well, I'll tell you, you ephemeral concept of a reader. 

 

I believe that it's possible for small communities (i.e. friend groups) to experience each other, both within and among themselves, the same way that nature experiences itself: as an unfolding series of processes oriented toward beauty as a shared goal with inherent value. Now, by beauty I refer not to a sparkles-and-rainbows type of beauty, nor even a pastoral-rolling-hills type of beauty. No, the definition of beauty I am using here is informed primarily by Chaos theory. The nature of this beauty is order and surprise, and it comprises the entirety of the natural world and all its chaotic systems and processes. The idea goes like this: There must be enough order and predictability to create balance in nature (think of ecological systems like seasonality and food webs, and nature patterns like the Golden spiral). But there must also be surprise, which arises from this order as the result of spontaneous innovation in nature (think of adaptive evolution and mimicry in animals). This innovation is the vehicle for systemic growth, which allows for order and balance to continue. If everything was static and nothing ever changed, the whole system would grind to a halt. If there were to be an over-abundance of change, the system would never have a chance to establish itself. So we need both, and we also need to start thinking of ourselves as capable of bringing about this harmonious disruption directly!

We are mammals, and we collaborate to survive. In doing so, we become stronger. When we work together to create something of beauty, we are playing a hands-on role in our own cultural evolution, not unlike nature itself has been doing with our biological evolution for millennia. We participate in evolution! We have all the raw creative power of nature inside of us -- it brought us here, so why wouldn't its willpower continue through us? -- and we also have direct control over how and why we choose to manifest this creativity. We can consciously choose to make the world around us a little richer, a little more beautiful. That desire is shared by Nature, and it is Nature. It brings us closer. 

 

So, back to the project! Things were really starting to take shape at this point. We had all the pieces of a functioning prototype, so now it was just a matter of assembling the whole thing. But the important thing is that we were able to see the vision come into being with our own eyes, and let me tell you that mine had the beginnings of tears in them. It was so deeply moving to realize that we had worked together to give tangible form to an idea, and that the result was more beautiful than even its creators thought it could be. Art often defies expectations, and this blew mine out of the water. See for yourself:

Look at that little nature sprite brought to life. It's so friendly, isn't it? And so fascinating to watch. It feels almost like the music is embodied in this dynamic otherworldly pearl. I went home and hot-glued the whole thing together that evening, so that my musical fairy-pearl had a sturdy place to call home. Then I started decorating!

 

Upon seeing the glued-together box, my dear friend Taranee had the idea that it should have vines incorporated into it somehow, kind of like the vines I have hanging over my doorways. (In my home, I have faux ivy draped over most of my door-frames, for reasons involving whimsy and mysticism.) Well, I looooved that idea, and it made me realize that I wanted this whole ferrofluid display to be experienced like the observer is unearthing an artifact from another planet. So I took a pair of scissors and cut about eight inches of faux vine from my least favorite doorway, and then I got to work figuring out how to attach it to the front of my little fairy-box.

 

Being a metal artist, my first instinct was to drill holes in the wood and give it jewelry, essentially wire-wrapping the vines into the wood. I felt like that idea was pretty cool, but I hemmed and hawed about it for a few hours because I was having trouble working up the courage to drill holes in the beautiful smooth piece of maple wood that my friend and I had so lovingly cut and shaped the day prior. What if my idea didn't work the way I thought it would? Would it ruin all that work Zack and I had put in?

 

I felt myself arrive at a crossroads. On one hand, I have such a deep respect for the creative process and all its sacrosanct rituals. Every careful measurement and tool-mark reflects the love of a human creator, and that should be respected. On the other hand, what had gotten me this far into the creative process if not a willingness to venture into the unknown, to take intentional risks? When I thought about it like that, the correct path became clear. I have a phrase I like to keep in mind when I'm at work in my little home studio-corner: Nothing here is sacred except the spirit of creation! So I fired up my rotary tool and got to work.

 

I had to take a moment here to appreciate the beauty that was taking shape.

 

It was around this time that I realized that what I was making was art, and that I am not only a metal artist but I am actually a pretty metal artist. And that was significant for me, because I had never really thought of myself as a bona fide artist before. I am aware of the existence of "outsider art" (see my blog post on Early Netherlandish Art), but I had never considered myself capable of making such art myself. Maybe that's because I don't really draw or paint? I don't know. But the important thing is that this was something of a personal awakening, and at risk of being too sappy about all this I will simply say that it constituted a peak experience for me.

After I had finished the basic framework of the wire wrap, I started adding coral, shells, and beads to fill out the jewelry "forest" that was taking shape.

It's coming together...

 

It's done!!

After I finished all the wire-wrapping, I stood up from my desk to see that the sun had risen. I think I sat down around 1:00 AM, so I must have been sitting there working for close to five or six hours. I was both dehydrated and desperately had to pee, which is the worst combination of water levels ever. I had only just declared myself an artist, and here I was already was suffering for my art. Do it all the way, I guess.

 

The next day, I took a fresh look at my copper wire wraps (after catching up on sleep) and held the whole thing up to the sunlight. I realized that, of course, there needed to be more copper. I had some copper tape on hand that I use for soft-soldering, so I simply used it to cover the hot-glue seams on the outside of the box. Once I saw how beautiful it looked, I kept going and wrapped all the edges. Gaze lovingly now upon my pride and joy:

 

 

I think this is where "Ferrochamber v1" stands for now. I considered adding a lid, and I even measured and cut a piece of wood for one, but the lid prevents any light from getting in and makes the whole thing darker. I wanted to put a cute little fairy-door clasp and hinge on the lid, and I still think that would be super cute, but the lid itself would need to be made from a clear material and I don't know how to cut glass or acrylic yet. I also want to try using different electromagnets, but we'll see if I get around to that. It's a good thing I have another little mantra for this situation: Leave something for v2.

 

This project taught me a lot about myself. I learned that even if I am really into working on something, I still need to drink water and pee. I also learned that it's so much fun to make things that confuse you at first, and to do it with friends. You don't need to have it all figured out, you just need to follow the creative force of nature that dwells within you. Get excited about it, then let that excitement drive you forward. It's easy to experience one's creative output as a tortuous obligation, but it can also be appreciated for the sanctity of its processes and collaborations. Appreciate the process the whole way through, and you can't lose.

 

Speaking of, remember all that stuff I was saying earlier about Nature and Beauty?

Well, I have recently come to believe that Beauty can be conceptualized as something of a "force-field" maintained by Nature to keep Entropy at bay. You can see this on an individual scale -- the "tortured creative" archetype is really just a microcosm of this dynamic. For those who feel the urge to create, it really is a matter of life or death. And it's true on a larger scale, too. Nature evolves because it continuously faces a choice between creation and extinction, and it is our duty to continue choosing creation at the risk of intrapersonal extinction. When we choose to create something beautiful, we are using our human agency to keep entropy and disorder at bay. The stakes are high, yes -- but the game is also really fun to play. 

 

You -- yes, you! -- can make the things you want to exist in the world. It is factually within your power to not only visualize something totally unique and pleasure-giving, and then to make that thing, but also to take pleasure in the process of creation itself. Bring in the people around you; they are waiting to be invited into something. Look, aren’t you having a good time? You’re still reading, so you must be somewhat entertained. And I'm so honored that you are still here reading my words -- truly. I think people are predisposed to display enthusiasm if you display it yourself first. Allow yourself to get excited about your own ideas -- the world desperately needs them. If anyone ever tries to make you feel that your self-expression is small or meaningless, remember that it is not just self-expression, and it's not just meaningful: On scales both personal and universal, it is the thing that shields us from darkness. As Dostoyevsky wrote, “Beauty will save the world.”

I’m going to expand more on these ideas about love and beauty and invention and community in the future, but I feel that I will have a lot to say about those topics and thus I will percolate for a while longer. (Also, I must read more Wendell Berry, whose work has been inspiring me to think about these topics recently. I will leave you with a quote from him.) But for now, I hope you feel called to action, or at least called to thought about future action. Make friends with time, and creativity will flow. I wish you blessings always, dear reader.

 

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“The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.”

- Wendell Berry, “Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community”
 

 

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