Micky Makes: DIY Festival STEM Exhibitor

The 15th Annual Craft Lake City DIY Festival Presented By Harmons is returning to the Utah State Fairpark to celebrate a momentous 15 years as Utah’s largest local-centric arts, music, science and technology festival with a selection of over 350 local artisans and makers. In the following pages, read about a few of the exciting vendors and exhibitors you can expect to see throughout the three-day weekend, including performances from renowned national acts! Check out craftlakecity.com for more info.

Michelle Sharer of Micky Makes always loved making art. Despite this passion, she focused her career on software engineering, though she says the “itch to be creative” was always there.

Eventually, that itch turned into LED art after Sharer contributed her programming skills to friends’ group art installations. Within a few years, Sharer was creating smaller projects on her own. “I’ve always loved creative coding and using algorithms and math to create visual output and beautiful patterns that are often animated or interactive. For me, LEDs are such an amazing blend of two things I love a lot—art and code,” she says.

LED art uses light-emitting diodes (LED lights) as a medium to create installations, sculptures or interactive pieces. Alongside LEDs, Sharer uses various materials—wood, steel, plastic and yarn—to make each piece, such as a realistic snake plant sculpture with leaves of lights and yarn or a 3D-printed bonsai tree that glows under a “canopy of pom-poms.” Sharer says, “I usually come up with an idea first and then research a material that will work well for that idea, but sometimes I get excited to learn a new medium and then figure out a project to make with that material so I can practice.”

Check out some of Micky Makes’ LED art pieces on exhibition at the DIY Festival, and bring home a mesmerizing piece of your own. 

Read more on the local creative minds of SLC:
Commerce & Craft: A Bit of Magic in Sugarhouse
Kahve Cafe: Feels Like Coming Home