multimedia progress

I've been working on this for a long time now, and though it's still in progress, I thought I'd share my mediocre photos. It's hard to photograph, because of the reflectivity of the glass, and it's rather heavy, so I can't place it just anywhere. I made this with the group show in mind. She's in a submarine, looking out windows and thinking.



Most of the papers are Japanese washi, including all papers involved in block prints and chine collé, but the textured silver paper I bought in Amsterdam many years ago. Yes, I hoard paper, so what? I appropriated the old dials from our lab. I intend to wire up the LEDs and add a switch. There's a yellow LED in the anglerfish's lure, and a red one on one of the dials. She's painted in acrylic ink on water colour paper.

spectacularly ugly

The Mad Scientists of Etsy theme for June is Ichthyology. I can't even spell Ichthyology, as will come as no surprise to Reynardin. I look it up every time. Anglerfish are spectacularly ugly fish of the order Lophiiformes who use a fleshy growth from their heads (ummm... doesn't that sound appetizing?) as a lure to fish their prey. This one is a bottom-dwelling (benthic) predator with a bioluminescent lure (the esca or illicium). It's like Nature decided, well it's too dark down there to see much, let's make it as ugly as possible. If any little fishies think they see a big gaping jaw full of sharp, pointy teeth, by the eerie blue glow of the bioluminscent lure, they'll assume they must be imagining things. Nothing could be that ugly.

This is a lino block print of an anglerfish in white and blue ink on Japanese teal unryu paper, 7.35 inches by 15.5 inches (18.4 cm by 39.4 cm). It is one of a hand-pulled edition of 6.