Jim is talented artist, specialising in cast glass and sculpture. One of his exciting projects involved capturing lightening. He located lightening attracting structures along the Galena Ridge on the West Coast. These structures contained a careful arrangement of the raw ingredients of glass with a lightening rod terminating directly above the canister and another rod beneath which acted as an earth and secured the canister to the mountain. A weather balloon was attached with a conductive line prior to the approach of a thunder storm.
Lightening was attracted - it travelled through the lightening rod and arced through the ingredients in the canister to the earth beneath, forming a fulgurite in the process. A fulgurite is a hollow tapering tube of glass.
The design work for Jim involved art funding proposals and creative submissions.