Rusty patched bumblebee, In The Landscape and These Are a Few Of Our Favourite Bees

 

Some photos of my pieces in our art show, These are a Few of Our Favourite Bees, with my diorama like lambe lambe theatre box for a rusty patched bumblebee, and rusty patched bumblebee print along with the In the Landscape multimedia collaboration with Sarah Peebles.

Come see the show at the Campbell House Museum until July 16! Hear our artist talks this evening at the Canadian Music Centre, 20 St Joseph St, at 7:30 pm. Or you can watch the webcast here!

Prints inspired by art history

I am trying to participate in the #PrinterSolstice again this year. They have created a series of prompts for each of 13 weeks starting with the (northern hemisphere) winter solstice. This year the themes are based on 20th century movements in art. It's been challenging to find time; we're once again sheltering at home and schools have gone remote here. Facilitating remote school takes a lot of my time and I cannot print at the same time, though I can plan, draw and carve. 

We started with Abstract Expressionism, which is really outside my wheelhouse, since my prints are representational. But it gave me a chance to work intuitively to create a mono print with scraps of lino.

monoprint by Ele Willoughby, 2022

Next was Art Deco. I looked at a lot of Art Deco artworks. The frequent clamshell motif and the keyhole shape in Art Nouveau works, plus seeing a number of mermaid illustrations reminded me I had long wanted to illustrate the story of Mélusine, the legendary half-fairy ancestor of the House of Lusignan and royals including the Plantagenets, whose lower half became a serpent when she bathed. She marries a nobleman but insists he must never observe her in the bath; of course he does, and she leaves him - so the keyhole shape works just right to tell the story! There are many versions, like most folklore. Sometimes she has two tails, or a fishtail or wings. There are different versions of her name and various stories are found in different regions especially France, Luxembourg and the Low Countries. I first learned of her from Manuel Mujica Láinez’s The Wandering Unicorn, which tells her story through the centuries. Her story also appears in A.S. Byatt’s Possession amongst many other places from operas to video games.

Mélusine linocut, 8" x 10" by Ele Willoughby, 2022

These art history prompts have been a challenge to link to my art practice. I've  been seeking a connection to things like science art. The third prompt was Bauhaus. In looking at Bauhaus paintings I was reminded of nothing so much as Feynman diagrams, and the exuberance action on the quantum scale, so I decided to combine quantum physics with the Bauhaus vocabulary of lines, shapes and colour palette. 

I was thinking more of the paintings of Kandinsky than the regular geometric shapes in Bauhaus design: a welter of black straight, wavy and curly lines, stripes of colour, triangles, circles and concentric rings and washes of pale colour, often on a cream coloured background. 

The Feynman diagrams are a tool of particle and quantum physics to both denote a particle interaction and also can be used to make calculations of probabilities and physical properties. Straight lines denote particles (quarks and leptons like electrons). Wavy lines denote photons. Curly lines are gluons and the dotted line is a Higgs particle. I wanted to include an electron spontaneously giving off a virtual photo and particle-antiparticle pairs, production of a Higgs particle, one diagram of the sort of we see if we smash protons together, and one hilariously named penguin diagram (in this instance producing a gluon).

Feynman Diagram Bauhaus, linocut, variable edition, 8" x 10" by Ele Willoughby, 2022

Looking at all these prints as I try to plan ahead and link them to my art practice and science art I am reminded of Leonard Shlain's book Art and Physics. It should be around here somewhere but I can't find it on my bookshelves. (Aside: this house needs a librarian.) In the book Schlain linked major movements in art with advancements in physics. I am not sure I can agree with his thesis that movements in art presaged new physics (which feels like it violates causality to me) but I greatly enjoyed the book. Others have drawn parallels between art and physics and it's clear that both math and physics were an influence of some of these major modern movements in art. In fact, this has been true for centuries; consider for instance the development of artistic perspective, or the camera obscura. One of the obvious connections is between cubism and the math of the fourth dimension and the physics of relativity. So that is something I'm thinking about for an upcoming print.

Some of the other prompts (colour field, Dadaism, Fauvism, Harlem Renaissance, Minimalism and surrealism) are less obvious for me, but I'm thinking ahead. Op Art is rather clearly related to mathematics. I have a scientific idea for Conceptual art and the seed of an idea for Pop Art. Stay tuned for more!

Contemporary Renaissance Woman

Yesterday I gave a talk about my experience as an astronaut candidate for the Canadian Space Agency at Albert Campbell Library in Scarborough. Today, I'm in the Star. Online, it's 'Would-be astronaut is artist on the side, and one of a million Canadians with a side hustle.' In the print edition, it's in the Life section and called 'What drives the side hustle?' Here's what they had to say about me:

Ele Willoughby is a marine geophysicist who has a burgeoning art print business called Minouette on Etsy Canada. It’s a combination that suits her, and one she’s flexible to changing up. At the moment she is focusing on her art and is working on a book of portraits of female scientists and the stories behind their work.

“I was actually one of the astronaut candidates for the Canadian Space Agency in their recent search for an astronaut,” says Willoughby. “I’m still open to switching the balance, and being more of a scientist, and doing art on the side.”

If you're one of the people who attended my talk, thank you very much for coming out! It was lovely to speak with you and great to see there was interest from such a range of different ages of people. If you're interested in hearing my talk, you can catch it next at:

Tuesday April 2 at 6:30  pm
Coxwell/Danforth Branch
1675 Danforth Avenue
Toronto, ON M4C 5P2 

I continue to pursue the weirdest business card title combination, but basically I want to do the things that I love best and fill the world with more art and more science.

Looking back at my art and science 2019

Antoine et Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier,
linocut with collaged washi,
2018 by Ele Willoughby

This year started with the end of our tenure running the Toronto Etsy Street Team gallery. Though this meant a great deal less time curating shows, I did make a move to show my art more in gallery shows, and sell through galleries and shops and less selling in person. Early in the year, I decided I would not participate in the One of a Kind Christmas Show. Selling art in person is tough to do; it's hard on your body to stand for long hours, fine art can be a harder sell than handmade goods which serve more than just an aesthetic purpose, and retailing anything can be gruelling - perhaps more so if it is your own creation. But, I am quite pleased that I did participate in a large number of artshows, a sold art in a variety of cities this year.

The first show for me this year was The Tarot Lovers: Works of Heart exhibition, which showed (and sold) at the Wellington County Museum and Archives. Curated by Shelley Carter, this show is one in a series she has organized with themes based on Tarot cards. I enjoyed the challenge of mixing those concepts with my ongoing works about the history of science, as an excuse to highlight the loving partnership of Antoine Lavoisier (26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794) and his wife Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier (20 January 1758 – 10 February 1836). Lavoisier is often referred to as the 'father' of modern chemistry, without any reference to his wife, and yet, as their official illustrator, she shows herself participating in his experiments and her skills as technical scientific translator allowed him to be up-to-date with chemistry across the Channel.

The next exhibit for which I submitted work was also an exchange of multiples: The Matchbook Project Cabinet of Curiosities.

 The works, along with my previously exhibited 'Imaginary Menagerie' prints were exhibited at Balzac's upstairs gallery for the Curious Fauna show in the fall, and I got my very own wunderkammer of beautiful and very varied artist-made matchboxes on the theme of cabinets of curiosities. This delightful project was curated and created by Hearyung Kim and Natalie Draz (whom I know from PROOF Studio Gallery).

In March I took part in Graven Feather's 'What the Fukushini' exhibit, submitting a version of my pink fairy armadillo linocut with collaged washi papers. This show, in partnership with The Paper Place, had artists make works on or with a specific washi paper. There was a great and delightful variety of works.

 

 Pink fairy armadillo, 11" x 13", 

multimedia by Ele Willoughby, 2018 (sold)

The most significant creation of new work for an exhibit was my five new portraits of Canadian women in STEM which were part of Curiosty Collider's show Interstitial: Science Innovations by Canadian Women, along with two other artists, this June in Vancouver! Interstitial was curated by Larissa Blokhuis, who makes gorgeous natural history inspired works, mainly in glass. I had previously made Ursula Franklin's portrait for the Phylo Project from Dave Ng and the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory (the science education facility within the Michael Smith Laboratories, UBC): a trading card game about Women in Science and Engineering! I added geologist Alice Wilson, physicist Harriet Brooks, computer scientist Trixie Worsley, medical researcher and biochemist Maud Menten and geneticist and Down syndrome expert Irene Ayako Uchida. Of these new five, I had only previously known Menten, despite having worked at the Geological Survey of Canada (like Wilson), being an alumni of U of T where Worsley had taught physics and computing and being a physicist by training (like Brooks). I was very glad to become involved with a great science/art organization and take part in this exhibit. Some artwork sold and many others in these editions have since - and it caused me to do some research specically on the history of Canadian women in STEM. This was revealing in and of itself, and I also gained some useful insights into how to find great stories about underappreciated women scientists.

Redbud and the Bees, 18" x 24",
linocut with collaged washi papers by Ele Willoughby, 2018

I made 'Redbud and the Bees' for  Creature Conserve  a non-profit outreach organization which brings artists and scientists together to "foster sustained and informed support for animal conservation," and their show Urban Wildlife: Learning to Co-exist. I remembered the urbanredbud citizen science project here in Toronto. Local U of T doctoral candidate Charlotte de Keyzer is working with the public to gather data on flowering times of Eastern redbud trees (Cercis canadensis) and their pollinators using bee nest boxes and traps. She made the suggestion of highlighting how the redbuds are moving into Toronto due to climate change and gardiners, and though popular with our local bees, they also attract a less popular new species the Eastern carpenter bee, who drill holes in wood to build nests. (Because the world is very small, it turns out de Keyser is the sister-in-law of my friend Laura Watt who you may know from Cubits). This show was curated by Creature Conserve founder, artist and scientist Lucy Spelman. It has been shown at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in July, and ArtProv Gallery in Rhode Island in September. This year, the exhibit will travel to other galleries in the US. Stay tuned for more details and chances to see these works!

This August, the Ontario Science Centre (OSC) staged an exhibit called 'Quantum' about the history of quatum mechanics. My friends at The Maker Bean (where you can now find my art, at both their Bloor and Dufferin and OSC locations) asked if I had an artwork about quatum mechanics. Indeed I do! So my portraits of physicists Bohr, Meitner, Roentgen, Wu and Curie, as well as Schroedinger's Cat, have all been on display at the OSC since then!

Me, at sea and two of my space-related prints:
my portraits of astronaut Mae Jemison and
Space Race engineer and mathematician Mary Golda Ross

This October, I was invited to give a talk as part of Science Literacy Week about my experience being an astronaut candidate for the Canadian Space Agency. Since astronauts are both scientists and science communicators, I took this as an opportunity to talk about both my research and sciart, together for the first time. I spoke at an event called "Space Mythbusters" at Gerstein Library along with a couple of other scientists. I told them what the astronaut selection process was really like and a bit about the mission that Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques has now begun, onboard the International Space Station. I also gave a version of this talk to a Boy Scout troup and am planning to do so at a couple of Toronto Public Libraries in 2019. Jesse Hildebrand spearheads Science Literacy Week, and he invited me to submit a proposal for Story Collider, a science-themed storyteller series and podcast. He hosts the Toronto series along with Misha Gajewski. So, I'm going to be doing that too, very early in the new year! Catch me on January 14th.

Eastern carpenter bee multimedia (sold)

Once again, I participated in Graven Feather's In the Round Show, this year hosted at PROOF Studio Gallery in the Distillery. I made a couple of round multimedia works based on my new bee and redbud lino blocks and one on the pink fairy armadillo. Like other years, I also participated in and helped organize the Toronto Etsy Street Team shows, including the Summer Market (or, this year, our first Etsy: Made in Canada Spring Show), Etsy: Made in Canada in September and our TEST Christmas Market, less than a week ago.  I also participated in Peggy Muddles' Scienterrific Pop-up at Tosca Terran's new Co:Lab space - in the same gallery where we had our year-long TEST Gallery pop-up! Likewise, I participated in Graven Feather's Holiday Market too. I was very pleased to also send off a selection of women scientist prints to Anthology boutique in Madison, Wisconsin.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, linocut, 12" x 12" by Ele Willoughby, 2018

As well as all these shows and works created with specific shows in mind, I also added to my on-going collection of scientist portraits with neuroscientist and artist in his own right, Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 - 1934), 17th century scientist and scifi author Margaret Cavendish, ancient Egyptian court physician Merit Ptah (arguably the earliest recorded woman in science), pharmaceutical chemist Alice Ball (who made the first effective treatment for leprosy), mathematician and Space Race engineer Mary Golda Ross, and mathematician Emmy Noether. All of these involved research and writing on my part too. I also managed to complete my long-awaited chair reuphostery personal project, with involved printmaking, patchwork, applique and embroidery.

On a personal front, we managed to also sneak in trips to Sault Ste Marie for my family reunion and out to New Brunswick to see my husband's family. Amazingly, our - now five year old son - has been raised to be a good little traveller, and we managed to do this by car! My husband has some new, hard-won job security. Our son started French immersion in senior kindergarter this year. All of this is good.

When I looked back I see that in fact, a lot happened this year, and while it sort of feels sometimes that I have never accomplished enough, I have done rather a lot. I know that this year will bring more art shows, already in the planning and several more speaking engagements. I have several collections I am continuing to build and I would like to do more varied multimedia work. It isn't always straightforward to navigate a path as self-employed modern day Renaissance woman, but I think (I hope) that I'm on the right patch to carve out my own place at the intersection of art and science.

Looking back at 2017: science, art and life

Wunderkammer, interactive multimedia: linocut, collage, wooden box, electronics, sound files, 2017 by Ele Willoughby

With the new year, like many, I often like to look back. I find sometimes you don't see things accumulate or note acheivements. So, briefly, on a personal front, 2017 was a very interesting year. It was challenging, but over all, I'm quite proud. On one hand it's funny to start off talking about the acheivement of being in the running for a job I didn't get, but astronaut is no ordinary job. I was proud that I even had the guts to submit my application in the summer of 2016 for the Canadian Space Agency's job search. Each step of the year-long search, as I continued to advance I was a strange mixture of astonished yet confident that after all, it was something I could learn to do if selected. So I was very proud to be  one of the top 72 people selected from 3772 initial applicants, who were invited to the Astronaut Recruitment Assessment Centre! It was a unique experience; 3 and half days of gruelling mental, psychological and physical assessment, along with a very impressive and fascinating cohort of fellow applicants (only a third of whom were women). I've had so many questions and comments from people since this experience that I didn't expect. People I just met told me they were proud. Parents told me that they followed my progress with their kids, or asked me advice about how to encourage the next generation of potential astronauts. I wouldn't have imagined that even making it that far in their job search could impact people, but I'm humbled that it did and thank you all for your kindness, encouragement and support.

Another new experience this year was running an art gallery! I'm so glad that Emma talked me into taking on the Toronto Etsy Street Team Gallery, because truth is, I think I would have shied away from the financial risk. But it was a great experience and I'm proud of what we pulled off. I curated my first show, Wunderkammer, with a wonderful collection - a cabinet of curiosity in fact, of science art from some favourite and new-to-me artists. I went on to curate and organize shows about Canada, help foster Rebecca Vaughan curate and participate in Love Your Body, curate and participate in a Mesozoic themed the Dinovember show. I was also really pleased to take part in Tosca Terran's UnNatural History show at the gallery, where I showed my entire unnatural print collection.

2017 also some some great collaborations. WWEST's Phylo Women in STEM trading cards came out this spring. Definitely my favourite commission of 2016, was making and submitting five of my portraits of women. I have previously submitted some art for UBC's Dave Ng's earlier project to use trading cards as a natural historian's version of Pokemon. This latest set brings attention to women in science and technology, throughout history, and the hurdles facing women and under-represented groups. He told me he had seen my blog post about the death of physicist, material scientist and archeometry pioneer Ursula Franklin and it encouraged him to include her, as a great scientist, role model and Canadian. As you can see (above), I've also illustrated marine geologist Marie Tharp, physicist Lise Meitner, seismologist Inge Lehmann and proto-computer scientist Ada Lovelace. The sets are available from Phylo and you are even free to download and print your own! 

Because life is odd, the day after I learned that I did not advance to the top 32 astronaut candidates, Anthropologie approached me about collaborating on tee shirts. They loved my 'terms of venery' series of group nouns for animals.  They licensed two of my existing prints, 'An Ostentation of Peacocks' and 'A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies' and commissioned a third work. They wanted my portrait of my beloved, late, great Minouette the cat, but wanted it to fit in the venery series. While a group of cats is often known as a clowder, I remembered that it can also be called a glaring, and I thought that was a perfect combination for her fierce "Stop carving lino and feed me now!" look. I was very excited to work with one of my favourite clothing stores and it was a lovely experience to work with them. I was gratified that they wanted artwork that I had made simply because I wanted to.

 2017 also saw my home, studio and peculiar combination of jobs and interests as the subject of this Toronto Star article. I participated in another Bees (& the Birds) show. I did all the Toronto Etsy Street Team craft shows: the Midsummer Market, Etsy Made in Canada (where I enjoyed playing second fiddle for the first time) and the Christmas Maket. I sold at the One of a Kind Christmas show once again. I had artwork selected for the Leftovers VI Silent Auction, in Boise, Idaho, and 'Life as we knew it' and 'LUNAR' art shows at Art.Science.Gallery in Austin, Texas.

On the home front, our son turned four at the end of November, which means that he was able to start kindergarten in September. This is a big shift and I'm still getting used to it. He's now at school 6 hours a day, which frees me up to have much more freedom and control of my time and schedule and he loves it and is flourishing!

I love most of all that this list is very mixed: art, science, family life, and I'm keeping people guessing. When I was young I thought I had to choose, but I think in 2017 I did a good job of not choosing and being as much of a Renaissance woman as I can. I'm rather enjoying not having to define myself one way. This year once again promises new things and I'm looking forward to seeing what it brings.

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.

Bee Homes - linocut bees interactive audiovisual multimedia piece

For a long time, I've had some version of this in my head. This week I finally managed to complete my multi-bee interactive audiovisual multimedia piece... just in time for the Bees (& the Birds) show at Graven Feather. You may recall that a few years ago, I made a linocut bee in electrically conductive in (specifically Bare Paint, which I mixed with some block printing extender to get a better viscosity for making a linocut). I combined this with an Arduino microcontroller so the bee itself could act as a capacitative sensor. In simplest terms a capacitor is made of two electrically conductive - usually metal - plates with a gap between them. The gap can be nothing but air, or a variety of electrolytes.  If there was a wire between the plates, charge would flow freely. Because of the gap, charge builds up on one plate a dissipates at a certain rate to the other. The rate at which this happens depends on the capacitance, which in turn depends on things like the physical properties of the plates, electrolyte and the size of the gap. So, a capacitative sensor takes advantage of the latter to sense proximity, or, measure capacitance to tell you the gap between two "plates". In my case the "plates" are bees printed in electrically conductive paint and my hand. This is the principle behind the theremin (though, they are of course, a great deal more sophisticated, but the idea is the same)*. Here's an example of an earlier prototype from 2012:



So, I can use my linocut on paper connected to an Arduino microcontroller as a sensor, and use the Arduino then to trigger a audio response when someone approaches the linocut. A very simple speaker can be made from a current-carrying wire in a spiral, affixed to a membrane, next to a strong magnet.** So, above I made a speaker with a piece of paper, copper tape as wire and a magnet. The next step was to carve a spiral lino block and block print a speaker on paper with electrically conductive paint, which I did. Thus an actual print, a sheet of paper, becomes both sensor and speaker. I had planned to then make a piece which had multiple bees as multiple sensors which would trigger different reponses. I created the artwork in time for my show about bees in 2013.

The Bees, Ele Willoughby, linocut on various Japanese washi, 18" x 24", 2013.
I had planned to add sound to this piece, but didn't have the opportunity.

I had two issues. First, my prototype used only an Arduino. I was able to play back sound by keeping the recording length quite short and the sampling rate low. There's only so much on-board RAM. I could make multiple sensors each play the same recording, but I simply ran out of memory using only an Arduino.

Secondly, I got pregnant and chose to put electronics aside for a while. I couldn't find any reliable medical guidance about soldering electronics while pregnant or in the proximity of babies (as if there aren't in fact large numbers of engineers, scientists, artists and hobbiests who are women of child-bearing age, ahem!), but jewellers were warned to avoid lead solder, and I opted to err on the side of caution. Lead and developping nervous systems struck me as a bad combination.

So, now that my son is one and a half, I've had an opportunity to return to the idea. The obvious way to add more sound to a project is the off-the-shelf solution of adding a Wave Shield to the Arduino. This is a second circuit board which plugs into the first to let you control and play files from an SD card to a speaker. (Bare Paint has recently released their own microcontroller, the Touch board based on the Arduino, but specifically with their applications for their paint, such as capacitative sensors, in mind. This might have been an easier way to go... but I had an Arduino, so I chose to add a Wave Shield).

My bee lino blocks and spiral lino speaker block, along with the Arduino and Wave Shield. You can talk to the Arduino via serial port. I combined the open source code wavehc_play6.pde (which plays different 6 audio files when 6 different buttons are pushed) with ArduCapSenseBlinky.ino which employs a collection of capacitative sensors to trigger a collection of LEDs to flash.

To make an electrical connection from my 6 bees (honeybee, bumblebee, leafcutter bee, long-horned bee, blue orchard mason bee and sweat bee), which I block printed in Bare Paint with block printing extender on Japanese kozo paper, I sewed through the paper with electrically conductive thread. I wanted the speaker, magnet and electronics to be behind the sheet, so I needed to pass through it. 

I also printed each bee block on a variety of Japanese washi papers, to get the colour and texture of the bees and wings. This also hides the stitching/electrical connections. The story I'm telling with the piece is about how bees live here. We all know the honeybee, with its hexagonal cells in its hives, but it's not native to North America. Most of our native bees live in holes and burrows. They also come in a wide range of colours. So the other collaged, handmade papers, represent how the bees live, from the hexagons with the honey bee at the top in yellows, to the circles in blues and greens at the bottom. In this shot you can also see the spiral speaker printed on the reverse. The sheet is on kozo paper which is very strong, but not at all stiff. So I backed it with book board to have something on which to mount the electronics. My trusty multimeter is there so I can check that each bee does have good connectivity through to the digital I/O pin on the Arduino.

This is what's hiding behind the piece. I affixed a small box to hold the Arduino. There are six DIO pins at the top of the Wave Shield board connected to wires in purple, green, yellow, orange, red and brown. These in turn are connected using copper tape to each of the 6 conductive threads coming from the 6 bees. The threads from either end of the speak spiral are likewise connected to the speaker output and ground.

I made a short recording for each bee. I tried to find audio recordings of each different species. Back in 2012, Sarah Peebles directed me to some of her audio recordings on Reasonating Bodies. I also simply searched YouTube for videos of each type of bee. I combined these (using Audacity... which is pretty awesome freeware for simple sound applications) with my spoken words about the bees and save these as .WAV files which can be played by the Arduino Wave Shield. So I was able to say how though the honeybee might be our idea of the canonical bee, our "default" bee, it is in fact not native to North America, and many of out native bees are quite different; many are solitary, producing neither hives nor honey, and coming in all sorts of colours. You can see and hear my piece at the Graven Feather show the Bees (& the Birds), which runs June 4 through 27. I'll post a video of the piece in action later. You can find each of my bees prints separately here (and learn a little bit about each species too).

*In fact, this is how the gravimeter I used for my doctorate worked too. Picture a mass suspended on a spring such that the spring force upward is balanced by gravity downward. Should the force of gravity change as you move the sensor (due to a large buried mass below, for instance) the mass on a spring will no longer be in equilibrium. The sensor was the most extraordinary, delicate, tiny, spun quartz spring terminated with a tiny piece of quartz coated in gold between capacitative plates. When the mass moved, an electrical restoring force was applied to the plates which returned the sensor to equilibrium. This restoring force could tell you the change in gravity, or, in my case acceleration (since I kept the gravimeter still, it was the seafloor which moved up and down).

**A good source of strong magnets: old hard drives

Art shows: Sheep, Space & Bees

I feel so behind in my blogging. Sometimes wrangling a very busy toddler, running a business, making art and running a thousand-member team (thankfully with help from excellent collaborators!) and you know, basic life stuff, like buying, cooking and eating food seems like more than enough to fill my days. Recently, we had a bit of a photoshoot in my studio... and I don't mean with the official family photojournalist (aka my husband). Some of the things I do for things from secret minouette places and for the Toronto Etsy Street Team will soon be getting a little press. Can't wait to share that! All these things keep me very busy, but, I don't want neglect blogging. Let me play catch up.

Year of the Goat show at PROOF Studio Gallery in the Distillery District

Like previous years, I was happy to take part in PROOF Studio Gallery's international print exhibit celebrating the Chinese New Year. This year of course is symbolized by yang, an animal which can be translated as sheep or goat. I've leaned towards 'sheep' and included my Cloned Sheep (the 'Hello Dolly!' one) and Yang: the Sheep or Goat prints.  (I can see them in the photo: Cloned Sheep is the colourful one with the blue mat in the centre and Yang in three over to the right). The show ran from February 18th to March 1 at PROOF and then hit the road, visiting OCADU print department, the Ottawa School of Art,  Concordia University Mouse Print Gallery in Montreal and Muskoka Arts Place.

Local gallery Artisans At Work is hosting
Terra Nova & Friends Exhibit
Show runs through April 2015
Artisans At Work
2071 Danforth Avenue, Toronto
Hours: Mon: Closed; Tues & Wed: 10-6; Thurs & Fri: 10-7; Sat & Sun: 11-5pm
Terra Nova & Friends Exhibit: Mother Nature, Intergalactic & Extraterrestrial Art.
First Friday Reception: April 3, 2015, 7:30-10pm. Music by The Sidewalkers, licensed bar, treats, art, and local artists.

So, I've been framing some of my earth and space science and scientists prints for the show!

My friend (and fellow TEST leader) Christine Pensa is co-curating a show about bees in June with the lovely women of Graven Feather gallery, so I'm planning to show my bee prints there, perhaps including some new ones. See Christine's Art That Moves blog for more information, or to apply to the show.

Coincidentally, Art.Science.Gallery in Austin is also hosting a bee themed show. The Buzz Stops Here (April 18 - May 30) will feature encaustic artworks (which involves painting with melted beeswax) about the science and conservation of bees! The medium really is the message here. I've never tried encaustic, so I won't be participating in their show, but I've recently sent a big package of my bee prints to their shop the Supply Room, to be available during the show.

This is January

The Stork linocut, 28 cm by 21.6 cm or 11" by 8.5"
on creamy Japanese kozo paper with colourful confetti-like inclusions

I wanted to wish you all a happy new year, as we are well into January. I'm afraid I haven't been around very much, because baby, as they say. He's doing well, keeping me very busy and changing every day. He now walks or runs everywhere - badly, like a drunken sailor, but on his own two feet... until he isn't. It's hard to let him fall, but I think I have to, at least sometimes. For one thing, he's fast. For another, learning does involve trying, failing and trying again. He says a lot of things, though there's still some interpretation going on. He definitely says Daddy... though, much to my amusement, he kept gleefully pointing to the Christmas tree and saying, "Daddy!" RJH likes to believe he was trying to indicate that he (RJH) carried our tiny tree into the house, or that he set it up, or that he was excited... not that the tree was his father. But, in fairness, Little Monkeytoes does know who Daddy is. Likewise, he's clearly indicated that I am... Wubwub. I believe he's trying to say Mama. If you watch, the way his lips move is almost right, but the 'm' sound is more of a 'w'. Sometimes it's more like Wawub. Anyhow, he know what people mean by Mama or Mommy. Clearly, they mean Wubwub. He's even said "Cat" now and again. Minouette is much kinder to him than to anyone else, despite the fact that he has yet to master gentleness. He even - I think - is saying a couple of simple sentences. He says, what sounds like, "Lookit! What dat?" and points. This is all very good for a 13-month old wee person. It is currently quiet time, which is his vaguely naplike time. He's not big on napping, but enforcing quiet time has changed our lifes for the better. I was extremely skeptical that forced naps could lead to better sleeping at night; I was wrong. It may be illogical, but it's working. Unfortunately, he's spent most of quiet time doing laps of his crib and stopping only to 'read' his baby books (probably upside down, but adorable nonetheless).

Cinders McLeod, for The Walrus magazine online gallery

I'm afraid 2015 in the larger world has not had a lot to recommend for itself. I don't have anything articulate to say about senselessness, but I did like my friend Cinders' cartoon. I have very strong opinions about the importance of freedom of expression, to be honest, which extend to art and opinions I don't like. Many have been misquoting Voltaire. As his biographer, Beatrice Evelyn Hall using the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre wrote of Voltaire (in 1906), summarizing his sympathy for a fellow author, whose books had been burned, ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’

Locally, here in Toronto, winter has come, complete with some frigid temperatures and cold weather alerts. Two homeless men have died of exposure. When faced with senselessness, I am most impressed when someone imagines something positive they can do to counteract. A handmaker I know, Nathalie-Roze & Co. takes donated knits and polar fleece to make hats and neck warmers for the homeless. I recently succumbed to the peer-pressure and joined Instagram, where I was reading about The Lennie Project. In an example of when social media can work well, I suggested we post about it to the Toronto Etsy Street Team blog - when our mutual friend Adrienne, captain of the 416Hustlers made a further (better!) suggestion of getting together to help. Now, the two biggest Toronto Etsy teams the Toronto Etsy Team and 416Hustlers are going to co-host a sewing bee to help, January 24! We're still finalizing details, but have managed to put this together very quickly. If you're in Toronto you can take part or find somewhere to donate your cozy knits at this link.

OOAK Prep - Multimedia

My next big adventure is the Christmas One of a Kind Show! I have a piece in the upcoming 'X Marks the Spot' show at Art.Science.Gallery and I need to complete my 'In the Round' artworks for the Graven Feather show, but the big thing on the horizon is OOAK. RJH has been building parts of my booth. We're planning hard walls on which I can hang framed artwork, with an overhead lighting system affixed to it, and some hopefully simple flooring. He's also planning to build me frames for my artwork. I've been researching where I can get glass, and we've ordered a proper mat cutter and we hope to have this scheme underway shortly.



Right now, I want to stock up. I've been making more of my multimedia series: unicorns, ships and balloons. Soon I'll move on to two-headed turtles! I've also been printing second editions of popular prints. I'm almost out of poppies so I made a new edition with thicker scarlet kozo paper. I want to list it before Remembrance Day.



On the home front it's been a challenging week. When I was doing laundry, soapy water started flooring up from the basement floor drain. It turns out that the roots from the neighbour's tree have crushed our clay drain pipe underneath our front lawn. While the water appeared soapy it had gone down the drain until it couldn't proceed and then came back - which means it had been where our sewage goes. This needs an immediate and expensive fix. I also did some emergency gardening as I suspect plumbers might destroy my garden if I didn't transplant any fragile plants before they did up and replace the pipe. Meanwhile, I think the baby must be getting another tooth because it's been some pretty sleepless nights. I'm not always sure when I can get some studio time; he's not much of a napper, and if I try to work after he goes to bed the cat stages a vocal protest*, which risks waking him up (and another sleepless night). So, I am now trying to make art when there is a quieter moment during the day and working at the computer after baby's bedtime, whilst keeping our cantankerous elder cat company.

So it's 8:40 pm and I'm going to bed. G'night!

*she makes this cry which would be useful if you were producing sound effects for horror movies, which means "I'm bored and lonely, come downstaits". It's horrible.

Blog hop

I haven't been blogging as much as I am usually wont to do these days. It's hard to find time for everything, with busy Mr. Monkeytoes around. But, I've been given a little nudge by the lovely and hilarious Michelle of thunderpeep. She asked me if I would take part in a Blog Hop. It's like a round robin, but with blog posts. No, that's not quite it... we don't make people battle it out. Um... it's like a spread the love to your fellow creatives pyramid scheme... or something. So each participant writes about their nominator, answers some questions and then tags two more people to keep the whole thing moving along. She tagged me here.

I first 'met' Michelle online through Etsy and then later in person. She was moving from Vancouver to Toronto and she wanted to find the local Etsians and join the Toronto Etsy Street Team right away. It wasn't always easy to find people who would participate, especially when we were a smaller team. This, clearly, was someone who was engaged in the Etsy and arts community. She was itching to join while still four provinces away. Plus, we had the transplanted Ontario girl moves to BC for a few years only to return to Toronto thing in common. So we cleverly welcomed her and quickly recruited her to team leadership, in one of our smartest moves ever. Michelle is a graphic designer with a newspaper background, growing her online business to be her full-time gig. She also knows everything you need to know about printing artwork. I love how we managed to get a leadership team for TEST with all these complimentary skillsets, serendipitously. I confess there was no master plan... but our instincts were right. We not only got a great leader for our team, Michelle does all the graphic design for TEST.  You'll recognize her distinctive style from the TEST blog.

Often, what I most admire, are things that I couldn't or wouldn't create myself. So while I often go for colour and patern in a big way, and have a style which is fairly naturalistic with a lot of lines and texture, I really admire artists who have mastered symplicity and economy of line. And, I don't know if it's obvious to others or not, but I'm completely obsessed with typography. I have dozens of books on the subject. So I really enjoy her work, from the somehow magical Arctic animals (Scandinavia is what you might call her spiritual home, an inspiration from folklore, to flora and fauna to design - hence, the trolls) to the typography of cards with her trademark humour, sass and pop culture references.

Arctic animals illustrated card set by thunderpeep

Happy Halloween card Gimme all your candy ax murderer by thunderpeep

Family Christmas wally wagon card by thunderpeep

And now, the questions.

1.What are you writing/working on?

We're both working on making the flagship show of the inaugural trans-Canadian Etsy: Made In Canada pop-up market extravaganza a show to remember - which runs smoothly. It's only 10 days away now and you should all come join us at MaRS, or your nearest show on September 27th. It should be a great show! That's been keeping me pretty busy. I'm also working to prepare for the Christmas One of a Kind Show! RJH has been building prototypes of parts of my booth. We're planning hard, plywood walls, framed in wood and debating the merits of different shelving, lighting and flooring solutions. He even built me a wee diorama at 1/12th scale. He thinks it's hilarious that I printed out scale models of my framed prints.

I've also got several print series on the go, including: scientists, my biology imaginary creatures mini prints, the collaged block prints with multiple Japanese paper and other ephemera, my terms of venery series and more.

2.How does your work differ from others in your genre?

Somewhere along the line I think I developed a distinctive style. I often have a subject which sort of floats against a blank field. This comes, I think, from absorbing a lot of Japanese art at a formative age. I recall pooring over an encyclopedia of Japanese art, which I could barely lift, when my father brought it home from Japan when I was three. On the other end of the complexity scale I have prints with elaborate inking schemes. The whole idea of inking à la poupée where different areas of a single block are inked in different inks (as if you were a tiny doll with tiny brayers, I guess) is very freeing for me. It allows me to make multi-colour prints without having to make reduction prints or carving multiple blocks. Likewise using chine collé (which comes from the French expression for glued Chinese paper... and means using small pieces of delicate added papers to add colour and texture to regions of a print). Also, there are the more multimedia collaged block prints, where I print onto and collage printed papers. This satisfies my desire to just luxuriate in a sort of bohemian clash of paterns, and excuses my fantastic hoard of paper and ephemera (ahem). But, in any case, I think you can recognize the prints as mine: having my lines, shapes and textures. I'm getting quite good at fur, if I do say so myself. Perhaps most telling is the choice of subject matter. I do really think of my work as a wunderkammer. I am trying to gather exotic natural specimen, in print form. The terms of venery are about taxonomy as well as a love of words and type. I do think that one should make art of one's own time... so I am interested in depicting things which haven't been depicted before, including say, previously unknown microscopic, prehistoric, or underappreciated creatures. Last, but not least, I am making my own, opinionated, history of science. My own knowledge of and love for science makes my work unique.

3. Why do you create?

Not creating is not an option. I really am driven to create. It's a need and I don't ever recall a time it was any different.

4.How does your creative process work?

I always have ideas on the go. I do make a lot of series of things, which I think works well for prints. I use a lot of photographic references. So, when I choose a subject, I do some research and look at a lot of images. Sometimes I work on the images - very badly and inexpertly - in Photoshop. Then, I draw the image in reverse on to lino and plan how it would work as a print (what is positive, negative space and how it will be coloured). I like the soft artist's lino. I carve away the negative space, pulling the odd proof as I go. Sometimes, when removing material, less is more, so it's important to know when to stop. So proofing is important, cause you can't go back. When the block is done, I cut Japanese paper for an edition. I ink the block and place my paper on top. I burnish my prints using a baren, as one would with a traditional Japanese moku hanga woodblock print. Using Japanese papers and a baren means I can work in my own home, without a press. It also means I can use beautiful Japanese papers.


Now, let me introduce two creatives who inspire me with their work.


Carolyn Eady of Sprouts Press Designs is another local on our team. She's a bookbinder and printmaker. You probably can guess how I feel about books. As well as literature, I love books - the physical books themselves. I've made some of my own, and even took one of Carolyn's workshops (which she graciously offered to her team mates, in our first art/craft skills-based workshop). She is one of the artists I know who does come out and share her knowledge and help others. She makes objects of beauty, simplicity and honest craftsmanship, with real playfulness with the medium. Her entry in last year's 'In the Round' show at Graven Feather, was one of the most original... a sort of deconstructed circular book.

I love the idea of wearing your books:

Mini Book Necklace - Leather Journal pendant from Sprouts Press Designs

You can find all sorts of different types of books in her shop:

Montreal Embroidered Coptic Bound Travel Journal from Sprouts Press Designs

Japanese Stab Bound Journal, Hemp Leaf Binding, Painted Cover, Journeys in Winter Browns by Sprouts Press Designs

I wanted to also profile someone who isn't a Torontonian, whom locals may not know. My friend Tanis is awesome. I first met Tanis Alexis Laird online, on Craftster, years ago, when I lived on Vancouver Island and she lived in Vancouver. She was an artist seeking to learn more about physics, since she was working on a series of paintings about particle physics. I was a scientist needing to make more art. We became friends... though it was harder to manage to meet up in person than you might imagine. I didn't meet her in real life until I'd moved back to Toronto, and came to Vancouver for my job. (She's since moved with her family to the Island.) Tanis is an immensely talented fibre artist, painter, multimedia artist, artisan and all around good person. When I joined Etsy she was Captain of the Trans Canada Etsy Team, and I thought how lucky I was to know someone who was important for Canadian sellers (and I'm sure she'll get a hoot from that). She's not only someone who rallied and organized Canadian Etsy sellers, she's the sort who maintains an international network of artist friends and is more engaged in trying to make the world a better place for all than pretty much anyone I know. She makes all sorts of different beautiful things. You can find her work on flickr,  her blog and on society6. I love having her art in my home!

Tanis Alexis Laird, 2012. soft sculpture.
wired ears, handmade felt fabric, needle felted tail, vintage button eye.

mini nuno wraps and felted fascinators by Tanis Alexis Laird

I love the multimedia combining drawing, painting and sewing.

We Shall Live Here #6, by Tanis Alexis Laird