Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery Goodbye

Lowering the banner is gallery manager Emma Smith of LandfillDesigns

 This January we say goodbye to our gallery at 906 Queen St W! We had the ceremonial lowering of the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery banner. Our year long pop-up gallery adventure has come to an end. It was such a wonderful experience. We loved being able to curate art shows, bring handmade crafts into a gallery environment, have so many of you involved in our shows! Thanks to all the artists, makers, vintage sellers, and amazing volunteers and everyone who came out to our Openings, shows, markets and workshops! Special thanks to our fabulous curators, workshop hosts and volunteers!  Thanks to Graven Feather for welcoming us for the year! 



We’ll have to see what 2018 brings us now...

June Shows & Markets: Bees and Returning to Campbell House

Rusty-patched Bumble Bee, linocut, Ele Willoughby, 2017

This week sees a new show at the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery, the 3rd annual 'Bees (& the Birds)', which raises funds and awareness of our beleagered pollinators, hosted by my friend Christine Pensa of Art That Moves. Come by the gallery to see the show between June 7 to 20th or join us for the Opening party June 8! Along with 30 artists and craftspeople who've made art inspired by bees, you can see my latest linocut of the endangered rusty-patched bumble bee and a print I made for an entomologist earlier this year, Megachile brevis.

Megachile brevis, linocut by Ele Willoughbby 2017

I'm also taking part in the Toronto Etsy Street Team's Midsummer Market! This is a really fun indoor/outdoor summer show at the Campbell House museum, Queen St and University. Check out the fabulous lookbook and join us for the show June 17!

I've got a couple other exciting things coming up which I can't wait to share with you! I've been a busy week...

WUNDERKAMMER: The Cabinet of Curiosity Show

I'm very excited to have curated the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery's first group art show, WUNDERKAMMER: The Cabinet of Curiosities from May 11 to 28. This art - or science art - show, is inspired by the Wunderkammer or Cabinet of Curiosity, the immense, eccentric, encyclopedic natural history collections gathered by collectors since the Renaissance. Cabinets of Curiosities featured treasured zoological, botanical, anatomical, fossil and gem specimen, collected by early citizen scientists. WUNDERKAMMER features original sculptures, drawings, hand-bound books, prints, paintings, printmaking, ceramics, jewellery, generative and multimedia specimen of natural and unnatural history on all scales, from the microscopic to the macroscopic. We are featuring the work of local artists (myself included):

István Aggott Hönsch			Erin Candela
Gavin Canning			Andrée Chénier
Carolyn Eady			Leslie Fruman
Monika Millar			Heather Ibbott
Colleen Manestar			Peggy Muddles
Teodora Opris			Christine Strait-Gardner
Tosca Teran			Rovena Tey
Lauren Vartanian			Ele Willoughby

Explore our curiousity cabinet of wildlife biology, mathematics, chemistry, mycology, micro and cellular biology, marine biology, entomology, botany, and fantastical lifeforms through the lens of art.

Join us Saturday, May 13, 6:00 pm to 10:00 for our Opening! FOLLOW THE LINK TO RSVP

Also, check out this lovely little write up about my women in STEM on Women You Should Know!

Playing catch-up: Shows, SciArtist at home, Gallery & Astronaut recruitment

Life has been extremely busy of late and I haven't had any time to update my blog, so I'm planning to make a big post about everything. You've been warned. I've opted for chronological, rather than any other sort of ranking, since I know how to do that.

Find my #naturalhistory #SciArt #mapart of #Canada #linocuts and block printed animals in minouette 's booth F🐸13 at #ooakx16

A photo posted by Ele Willoughby (@the.minouette) on Nov 24, 2016 at 8:32am PST

I did the full One of a Kind show this year. It was a busy, exhausting time! Thank you very much to everyone who stopped by to see me, purchased art and my fabulous friends and colleagues for all your great company and support! I have the greatest customers. I love that I sold art to the parents of burgeoning scientists, neuroscientists, geologists, paleontologists, historians, and all sorts of other fascinating people. And an extra special thank you to those who allowed it to happen; my husband and Dad the booth builder and installation team, my mom the chief babysitter, my trusty assistants Becca and Karla, volunteer sales help and excellent company Peggy and Carrie, carpooling friends Leslie and Queenie, entertainment and bingo queen Emma.

We had a nice Christmas here in Toronto with family.

Big @torontoetsystreet announcement this New Year's Day! We're launching a year long Pop Up gallery in the Queen West @gravenfeather complete with art shows, pop up markets, workshops, our #Etsy Newbie Bootcamp in real life and more! We've got the keys and are getting ready for our launch party opening January 28! #printmaking cc: @etsyca #Toronto #artshow #craftshow #popupshop #workshops See our team blog for more.

A photo posted by Ele Willoughby (@the.minouette) on Jan 1, 2017 at 2:32pm PST

First big announcement of 2017: the Toronto Etsy Street Team has a brick and mortar incarnation for the year. While our team mate, printmaker and friend Pam of Graven Feather gallery takes mat leave, we will be subleasing her gallery for the year! We'll be hosting art shows, pop-up markets, trunk shows, workshops and more all year long. We started with a launch paerty and mini show from team leaders on January 28th. You can still find my art at our 906 Queen St W location and stay tuned for more of our exciting plans (including my plans to curate a SciArt show this spring)! My friend Emma is taking the lead on this project and I'm glad that she has the gumption to convince me that we should do it!

That's me in my #studio in the #Toronto Star, Homes section talking about my #art, #science, #sciart and working from home. I'm holding my #honeybee #linocut #printmaking

A photo posted by Ele Willoughby (@the.minouette) on Jan 14, 2017 at 10:15am PST

My home, studio and peculiar combination of jobs and interests were the subject of this Toronto Star article. It's part of their series on people who work from home. It was pleasure speaking with them about my blend of art and science. Roger's rocking horse and hand built furniture for Gabriel were also a hit. (Geoscientists will recognize that 'general physics' should read geophysics, but it's a nice little article).

Reflections by Ele Willoughby. Linoleum block print with chine collé / 2017 / 8 x 15 in. / $180 (SOLD). On view in our LUNAR exhibit for @Printaustin through February 18th. This print stems from my experience of working at sea, where in the absence of light pollution, celestial bodies like our moon and even planets, cast bright reflections as far as the eye can see. Moonlight in turn, consists of reflections of sunlight (with some starlight and some earthlight reflected back at us). So the light on the ocean is reflections upon reflections. #art #science #sciart #exhibition #gallery #instadaily #science #artoftheday #graphic #fineart #instaart #atx #texas #art #artwork #moon #artistic #design #artnews #artshow #blockprint #instagood #illustrator #artist #creative #astronomy #visual #austin #printmaking #printaustin

A photo posted by Art.Science.Gallery. (@artsciencegallery) on Feb 2, 2017 at 11:09am PST

I am very happy to have a print in Art.Science.Gallery's show LUNAR, their official entry in PRINT Austin for 2017. If you're in Austin, you can still catch the show until February 18th. I'm also very happy to learn that their crowdfunding efforts were successful and the gallery will remain open for 2017.

Last, but definitely not least, a few of you will know, but last summer I applied to be an astronaut! Selecting Canada's next two astronauts is a year long process. I'm very proud to say that I am one of 72 people still in the running from 3772 initial applicants! There's a lot of testing still to go before they make their selections by August but it's very cool to be part of this amazing group of people. From this incredible talent pool they will have to narrow it down to two new astronauts.

If you want to find out what I'm up to in closer to real-time, I recommend following me on twitter and instagram.

Etsy Team Captains Summit

I spent Monday and Tuesday at the Etsy Summit here in Toronto. Along with some of my fellow team captains and leaders from across the country, Etsy staff and guests, we've been planning the (anxiously awaited) follow-up to our amazing Etsy: Made in Canada show! It was such an astonishing success, we're going to try to make it a yearly event. Saturday, September 26th, the Toronto Etsy Street Team and 416Hustlers are planning to do it again, at MaRS. There will also be many more simultaneous shows from coast to coast to coast!

Besides meeting like-minded makers, sellers and leaders, we had a chance to really learn from everyone else's experience. We started with a bit of fun. The icebreaker challenged each table of participants to represent Canada using a bag of random craft items and items our peers had brought with them from their various home. Our diorama was the only one with an actual electrical circuit.... how could I resist? We had a PEI potato, wire, pliers and tape. In case you can't tell the first photo is supposed to be Celine (as wonder woman with balloons) and Cirque de Soleil acrobats (and former Olympians) preforming on a stage. It's a conceptual piece. Other hilarious and creative contributions included everything from maps of provinces, woodland and winter scenes, jewellery from artifacts, Niagara Falls, to wearable hats!




Some of the highlights included talks from our peers. The tireless powerhouse from WEST (the Winnipeg Etsy Street Team), Ruth Schulz Smith shared her Event Management expertise and enthusiasm. It's no coincidence she won the only award, having been nominated by her peers. Jessika Hepburn, one of the Halifax leaders and creator of Oh My Handmade! gave an amazing talk about community building and working with partners big and small. I don't want to sound corny, but it was really inspiring. One of my neighbours said she felt her mind so teeming with ideas that she couldn't sleep. As a group, we are consciously coming from the vantage of the handmade movement; we all want to grow our small businesses, but we are also fostering an economy that values the artists, designers, the handmade, the local, the eco-friendly, the repurposed or vintage treasures over the mass produced.  All of the captains and leaders volunteer their time for their teams, and are working to make things easier for all of these handmakers and vintage sellers to run their businesses and maybe even make a life from what they love. Maybe it isn't surprising that they had such interesting things to say about community, partnerships and creative businesses working to improve their corners of the world.

Ruth with rapt audience

Jessika talks about getting involved

We also heard from Etsy. We had some fun PR role playing with the lovely Etsy PR folks as well as their publicists. There was a great talk from their guest colleague Moishe Lettvin, an engineering manager for Seller Growth. He started his talk with images of his mother's pysanky (Ukrainian style) eggs to explain how he'd grown up surrounded by handmade items. While his creative outlet is writing code, he explained that finding a job at Etsy, after Microsoft and Google, felt like coming home. I enjoyed a peek at the technical stuff about the back end of Etsy, but it was also great to hear his enthusiasm for the things we do, and making it easier to run our businesses. Lastly, we got a chance to ask some questions about what the future may hold! I think people left reinvigorated, full of new ideas and happy, which is wonderful.