Maude Delap and the Lifecycle of the Jellyfish for Ada Lovelace Day 2024

Ada, Countess Lovelace, 3rd edition linocut by Ele Willoughby 

It is once again Ada Lovelace Day, the 15th annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology, science and math, Ada Lovelace Day 2024 (ALD24). I'm sure you'll all recall, Ada, brilliant proto-software engineer, daughter of absentee father, the mad, bad, and dangerous to know, Lord Byron, she was able to describe and conceptualize software for Charles Babbage's computing engine, before the concepts of software, hardware, or even Babbage's own machine existed! She foresaw that computers would be useful for more than mere number-crunching. For this she is rightly recognized as visionary - at least by those of us who know who she was. She figured out how to compute Bernouilli numbers with a Babbage analytical engine. Tragically, she died at only 36. Today, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging.

 

You can find my previous Ada Lovelace Day posts here.

Maude  Delap, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

This year for Ada Lovelace Day I thought I would write about a woman outside of academic science who lived far from centres of learning:  self-taught trail-blazing Irish marine biologist Maude Jane Delap (1866 – 1953)* who was the first person to successfully breed jellyfish in captivity and document their full lifecycle, something extraordinarily hard to do. To this day, her work is still cited in laboratory manuals for jellyfish rearing. She also discovered a sea anemone named in her honour, Edwardsia delapiae. She became a respected independent research scientist despite her distance from universities and research institutions, making an extensive study of plankton over many years from her remote location on Valentia Island offshore Ireland's west coast. Further, she did this despite society's and specifically her father's attitudes about the roles of women. In my portrait she is surrounded by different stages in the blue jellyfish (Cyanea lamarckii) based on her own illustrations of her published research.

Born the seventh of ten children to Rev Alexander Delap and Anna Jane (née Goslett) in Templecrone Rectory, County Donegal, Maude moved with her family to Valentia Island at age 8. Her father had been assigned to the parishes of Valentia and Cahersiveen, and, a keen sailor, he sailed around the coast with two of her brothers. Their possessions, following in a second boat, arrived a little worse for wear. Her mother and the rest of the children travelled by train. While the girls had less formal education than their brothers, they had some progressive primary school education and their naturalist father encouraged Maude and her sister Constance (1868–1935) in their interest in biology and zoology. He himself had published articles in the Irish Naturalist and the whole family were avid naturalists. Maude and Constance became prolific collectors of marine specimen, many of which are still housed by the Natural History Museum, Dublin. Maude and her sister got reports from visiting fishermen of interesting species in all the their catch, for which they would pay a few shillings, encouraging what is now often known as "citizen science" or "community science" (to avoid the political overtones of the word "citizen").  They were sometimes invited aboard to observe finds and jellyfish. Since the family enjoyed boating and fishing, Maude and Constance learned how to handle a boat and would row out alone, exploring the coast and caves. The Fisheries Board granted them part-time access to their steam boat for their research.

The sisters' work lead to a survey by the Royal Irish Academy headed by Edward T. Browne of University College London in 1895 and 1896. Browne was particularly interested in plankton, the floating marine organisms ranging in size from microbes to large jellyfish, which are often the basis of the food chain and indicative of ocean health. Maude and Constance continued with their systematic study, gathering specimen of often tiny jellyfish and plankton by dredging and tow-netting, as well as recording sea temperature and changes in marine life for 28 years! They brought specimen back to the lab to identify and sketch them. Maude's patience, attention to detail, skill with her microscope and as an artist allowed her to document microscopic details of jellyfish structures and organs. Maude corresponded with Browne for forty years until his death in 1937. It's speculated that she had fallen in love with him; it was unrequited and he married a colleague. She sent him a box of violets she grew in her garden each year for his birthday. Browne thanked both sisters in his publications and jointly published research with Maude. 

Maude became fascinated by the life cycle of jellyfish. She painstakingly developed a means of keeping them alive in captivity - something which other scientists had struggled and failed to achieve. She determined their diet, at each stage of development, through trial and error and explained the paramount role proper diet plays in being able to keep them in captivity. She changed the water daily, adjusting temperature to match that in the habour, where they thrived, and carefully monitored the jellyfish. She was the first person to breed them successfully in her home laboratory. The life cycle of the jellyfish is unusual: an adult medusa can procreate by producing a planuala (or egg), which implants on a surface like the seafloor and grows into a polyp (which looks a little like a plant rooted in the ground). The polyp can grow into a budding polyp. This stage of the cycle can go either direction; in less than optimal conditions the budding polyp can revert to the polyp stage. In optimal conditions the budding polyp will bud off ephyrae and these eventually grow into adult medusae. Previous to Delap's work, these various stages could be misinterpreted as separate species. She bred four species of jellyfish including Chrysaora isosceles (the compass jellyfish) and Cyanea lamarckii (the blue jellyfish shown in my print) and documented their life cycles and feeding habits and published her results. Her trailblazing research was the first identification of the various life cycle stages (medusa and hydra) that belong to which species. Quite unusually for a woman at the time, Maude published several influential scientific papers under her own name: she published six articles, and three short notes, including two co-authored by Constance. Thanks to her contributions to marine biology she was offered a position in 1906 at the Plymouth Marine Biological Station in England. She declined the job; her father had apparently declared,  "No daughter of mine will leave home, except as a married woman." While this lost opportunity must have been an immense disappointment, she continued her work at home. Leaving Valentia, and her sisters, at age 40 might also have been quite a daunting prospect. Staying in Valentia allowed her to produce her incredible lengthy study of Valentia harbour, and support her unmarried sisters for the rest of their lives, growing and fishing for food and earning income from selling flowers from her garden.

When her father died later that year, the her mother, two sisters and Maude moved out of the Parsonage and were permitted to use Reenellen House by the Knight of Kerry. There, they hosted many guests including friends, family, visiting scientists and naturalists, and fishermen seeking safety and shelter in bad weather. While remote, Valentia was home to a telegraph station which was the European terminus for the trans-Atlantic cable, a weather station and an observatory, which did lead to a number of visiting engineers, scientists and marine biologist. The Delap sisters were highly-regarded members of their community, who helped run the local cottage hospital and fisherman's hall, known for their charity and generosity but also for wearing outdated Edwardian clothes, both for propriety and economic necessity. Her nephews recalled going fishing in the evening to feed all the guests, along with fruits and vegetables they grew in the garden. They set up a laboratory they fondly dubbed "The Department" which was described by her nephew as an "heroic jumble of books, specimens, aquaria, with its pervasive low-tide smell." Aquaria contained not only jellyfish, but fish, starfish and even a thornback ray Maude reared from an egg. She buried dead marine vertebrates in her garden to recover their skeletons. 

In 1920, as the official whale-stranding officer for south west Ireland, appointed by the British Museum and the local contact for interesting wildlife, she was alerted to a stranded 16-foot whale on the rocks beyond the lighthouse. So she rowed out with her handyman, and she correctly identified a rare True's beaked whale, only previously been known from an incomplete US specimen. Unable to save it, she sent its head and flippers (on request) to the Natural History Museum and buried the rest in her garden. The Museum later requested the rest of the skeleton, causing her to dig up her asparagus garden to gather them. The Museum wrote again that two tiny vestigial pelvic bones were missing so Maude dug up her garden again and sieved the soil until she received a telegram from the Museum which read, “Stop! New York Museum informs us that True’s beaked whale does not possess vestigial pelvic bones."  

In 1928, she found a previously undescribed sea anemone burrowing deep into the eelgrass. Named in her honour, the Burrowing Sea Anemone (Edwardsia delapiae) has only been observed in Valentia habour.  In 1936, she was made an associate of the Linnean Society of London. In 1937 she was made an associate member of the Marine Biological Association. She submitted specimen and corresponded with the Natural History Museum from 1894 until 1949, when she was 83. Like her father before her, she submitted observations to Dr Scully’s “Flora and Fauna of Kerry” and both are acknowledged in the text. Maude was also interested in folklore, geology, botany and archaeology and she published several papers in the Kerry Archaeological Magazine. Her grand-nephew recalled Maude, the "old-school Victorian all-round naturalist”, saying, “Wherever we went, she was instantly recognized and greeted with delight”. She died in 1953, and was buried alongside her sisters near Knightstown, Valentia Island, County Kerry. There is now a plaque from the Irish National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology to commemorate her and her work, on the island.

 *I have written previously about Delap's life and work here.

References,

Byrne, Patricia M. Delap, Maude Jane. Dictionary of Irish Biography. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002516.v1 

Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography

Last revised October 2009

 

Cronin, Nessa. Gendering Natural History: Maude Jane Delap, Valentia Island, Ireland (1866-1953). Land Lines Project. January 7, 2019.

M. J. Delap. 1905. Notes on the rearing, in an aquarium of Cyanea Lamarcki, Peron et Lesueur. Annual report of Fisheries, Ireland 1902-03. II (I(ii)) 20-22.

Maude Delap, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2024. 

Muka, Samantha Kay. Maude Delap: Jellyfish Goddess of the North Atlantic, Through the Aquarium Glass blog, October 29, 2012.

Sheehan, Jane. Finding Maude Delap, LIVE – Llŷn, Iveragh Ecomuseum blog, accessed January, 2024

Sheehan, Jane. Finding Maude Delap, Online Lunchetime Talk, LIVE – Llŷn, Iveragh Ecomuseum, YouTube, February 11, 2022.

Sheehan, Jane. Maude Delap Heritage Trail. 27 July 2023. (Accessed January 2024)

Marine Biologist Maude Jane Delap and the Jellyfish

 

Maude  Delap, linocut, 11" x 14" by Ele Willoughby, 2024

The next prompt for #PrinterSolstice is "cool colours" and I was reminded of the sea, and a woman suggested to me for my women in STEM series. 

This is my linocut portrait of self-taught trail-blazing Irish marine biologist Maude Jane Delap (1866 – 1953) who was the first person to successfully breed jellyfish in captivity and document their full lifecycle, something extraordinarily hard to do. Her work is still cited in laboratory manuals for jellyfish rearing. She made an extensive study of plankton over many years near her remote home on Valentia Island, off Ireland's west coast. She also discovered a sea anemone named in her honour, Edwardsia delapiae. In my portrait she is surrounded by different stages in the blue jellyfish (Cyanea lamarckii) based on her own illustrations of her published research.

Born the seventh of ten children to Rev Alexander Delap and Anna Jane (née Goslett) in Templecrone Rectory, County Donegal, Maude moved with her family to Valentia Island at age 8. Her father had been assigned to the parishes of Valentia and Cahersiveen, and, a keen sailor, he sailed around the coast with two of her brothers. Their possessions, following in a second boat, arrived a little worse for wear. Her mother and the rest of the children travelled by train. While the girls had less formal education than their brothers, they had some progressive primary school education and their naturalist father encouraged Maude and her sister Constance (1868–1935) in their interest in biology and zoology. He himself had published articles in the Irish Naturalist and the whole family were avid naturalists. Maude and Constance became prolific collectors of marine specimen, many of which are still housed by the Natural History Museum, Dublin. Maude and her sister got reports from visiting fishermen of interesting species in all the their catch, for which they would pay a few shillings, encouraging what is now often known as "citizen science" or "community science."  They were sometimes invited aboard to observe finds and jellyfish. Since the family enjoyed boating and fishing, Maude and Constance learned how to handle a boat and would row out alone, exploring the coast and caves. The Fisheries Board granted them part-time access to their steam boat for their research.

The sisters' work lead to a survey by the Royal Irish Academy headed by Edward T. Browne of University College London in 1895 and 1896. Browne was particularly interested in plankton, the floating marine organisms ranging in size from microbes to large jellyfish, which are often the basis of the food chain and indicative of ocean health. Maude and Constance continued with their systematic study, gathering specimen of often tiny jellyfish and plankton by dredging and tow-netting, as well as recording sea temperature and changes in marine life for 28 years! They brought specimen back to the lab to identify and sketch them. Maude's patience, attention to detail, skill with her microscope and as an artist allowed her to document microscopic details of jellyfish structures and organs. Maude corresponded with Browne for forty years until his death in 1937. It's speculated that she had fallen in love with him; it was unrequited and he married a colleague. She sent him a box of violets she grew in her garden each year for his birthday. Browne thanked both sisters in his publications and jointly published research with Maude.

Maude became fascinated by the life cycle of jellyfish. She painstakingly developed a means of keeping them alive in captivity - something which other scientists had struggled and failed to achieve. She determined their diet, at each stage of development, through trial and error and explained the paramount role proper diet plays in being able to keep them in captivity. She changed the water daily, adjusting temperature to match that in the habour, where they thrived, and carefully monitored the jellyfish. She was the first person to breed them successfully in her home laboratory. The life cycle of the jellyfish is unusual: an adult medusa can procreate by producing a planuala (or egg), which implants on a surface like the seafloor and grows into a polyp (which looks a little like a plant rooted in the ground). The polyp can grow into a budding polyp. This stage of the cycle can go either direction; in less than optimal conditions the budding polyp can revert to the polyp stage. In optimal conditions the budding polyp will bud off ephyrae and these eventually grow into adult medusae. Previous to Delap's work, these various stages could be misinterpreted as separate species. She bred four species of jellyfish including Chrysaora isosceles (the compass jellyfish) and Cyanea lamarckii (the blue jellyfish shown in my print) and documented their life cycles and feeding habits and published her results. Her trailblazing research was the first identification of the various life cycle stages (medusa and hydra) that belong to which species. Quite unusually for a woman at the time, Maude published several influential scientific papers under her own name: she published six articles, and three short notes, including two co-authored by Constance. Thanks to her contributions to marine biology she was offered a position in 1906 at the Plymouth Marine Biological Station in England. She declined the job; her father had apparently declared,  "No daughter of mine will leave home, except as a married woman." While this lost opportunity must have been an immense disappointment, she continued her work at home. Leaving Valentia, and her sisters, at age 40 might also have been quite a daunting prospect. Staying in Valentia allowed her to produce her incredible lengthy study of Valentia harbour, and support her unmarried sisters for the rest of their lives, growing and fishing for food and earning income from selling flowers from her garden.

When her father died later that year, the her mothers, two sisters and Maude moved out of the Parsonage and were permitted to use Reenellen House by the Knight of Kerry. There, they hosted many guests including friends, family, visiting scientists and naturalists, and fishermen seeking safety and shelter in bad weather. While remote, Valentia was home to a telegraph station which was the European terminus for the trans-Atlantic cable, a weather station and an observatory, which did lead to a number of visiting engineers, scientists and marine biologist. The Delap sisters were highly-regarded members of their community, who helped run the local cottage hospital and fisherman's hall, known for their charity and generosity but also for wearing outdated Edwardian clothes, both for propriety and economic necessity. Her nephews recalled going fishing in the evening to feed all the guests, along with fruits and vegetables they grew in the garden. They set up a laboratory they fondly dubbed "The Department" which was described by her nephew as an "heroic jumble of books, specimens, aquaria, with its pervasive low-tide smell." Aquaria contained not only jellyfish, but fish, starfish and even a thornback ray Maude reared from an egg. She buried dead marine vertebrates in her garden to recover their skeletons.

In 1920, as the official whale-stranding officer for south west Ireland, appointed by the British Museum and the local contact for interesting wildlife, she was alerted to a stranded 16-foot whale on the rocks beyond the lighthouse. So she rowed out with her handyman, and she correctly identified a rare True's beaked whale, only previously been known from an incomplete US specimen. Unable to save it, she sent its head and flippers (on request) to the Natural History Museum and buried the rest in her garden. The Museum later requested the rest of the skeleton, causing her to dig up her asparagus garden to gather them. The Museum wrote again that two tiny vestigial pelvic bones were missing so Maude dug up her garden again and sieved the soil until she received a telegram from the Museum which read, “Stop! New York Museum informs us that True’s beaked whale does not possess vestigial pelvic bones."  

In 1928, she found a previously undescribed sea anemone burrowing deep into the eelgrass. Named in her honour, the Burrowing Sea Anemone (Edwardsia delapiae) has only been observed in Valentia habour.  In 1936, she was made an associate of the Linnean Society of London. In 1937 she was made an associate member of the Marine Biological Association. She submitted specimen and corresponded with the Natural History Museum from 1894 until 1949, when she was 83. Like her father before her, she submitted observations to Dr Scully’s “Flora and Fauna of Kerry” and both are acknowledged in the text. Maude was also interested in folklore, geology, botany and archaeology and she published several papers in the Kerry Archaeological Magazine. Her grand-nephew recalled Maude, the "old-school Victorian all-round naturalist”, saying, “Wherever we went, she was instantly recognized and greeted with delight”. She died in 1953, and was buried alongside her sisters near Knightstown, Valentia Island, County Kerry. There is now a plaque from the Irish National Committee for Commemorative Plaques in Science and Technology to commemorate her and her work, on the island.

 

References,

Byrne, Patricia M. Delap, Maude Jane. Dictionary of Irish Biography.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3318/dib.002516.v1

Originally published October 2009 as part of the Dictionary of Irish Biography

Last revised October 2009

 

Cronin, Nessa. Gendering Natural History: Maude Jane Delap, Valentia Island, Ireland (1866-1953). Land Lines Project. January 7, 2019.

M. J. Delap. 1905. Notes on the rearing, in an aquarium of Cyanea Lamarcki, Peron et Lesueur. Annual report of Fisheries, Ireland 1902-03. II (I(ii)) 20-22.

Maude Delap, Wikipedia, accessed January, 2024. 

Muka, Samantha Kay. Maude Delap: Jellyfish Goddess of the North Atlantic, Through the Aquarium Glass blog, October 29, 2012.

Sheehan, Jane. Finding Maude Delap, LIVE – Llŷn, Iveragh Ecomuseum blog, accessed January, 2024

Sheehan, Jane. Finding Maude Delap, Online Lunchetime Talk, LIVE – Llŷn, Iveragh Ecomuseum, YouTube, February 11, 2022.

Sheehan, Jane. Maude Delap Heritage Trail. 27 July 2023. (Accessed January 2024)

Immortal Jellyfish

Immortal Jellyfish, Ele Willoughby (c) 2015, 11" x 14" (27.9 cm x 35.6 cm)

This hand-printed linocut of the Turritopsis dohrnii is the only known animal to be able to revert to its younger colonial stage after having reached maturity - that is the full-grown T. dohrnii jellyfish medusa, if it gets stressed, or old and sick, can revert back to the polyp stage, form a new polyp colony and start all over. So in theory, the jellyfish can bypass death and this cycle can go on forever. The jellyfish is "biologically immortal"! In the real world, there are diseases and predators which interfere with the T. dohrnii's plans of immortality, of course... but unlike the rest of us, it's not an impossible jellyfish dream.

T. dohrnii are hydrozoans which begin life as a sort of free floating fertilized egg known as planula larvae, a sort of plankton. These settle on the seafloor and a colony of polyps, or hydroids, attached to the seafloor like a little garden of multi-branched soon-to-be-jellyfish. The jellyfish, or medusae, bud off these polyps, each a genetically identical clone to the next. The medusae swim freely until sexual maturity. After that, should the T. dohrnii face environmental stress, assault or simply age and illness, it can revert to the polyp form, found a new colony and begin again! This cycle can, in theory, repeat ad infinitum.

The "immortal jellyfish" was formerly classified as T. nutricula, which had also been confused with the similar T. rubra. It turns out that it's quite the challenge to tell one Turritopsis from another. Currently only one scientist, Shin Kubota from Kyoto University, has managed to sustain a group of these jellyfish for a prolonged period of time in captivity; in two years, his colony rebirthed itself 11 times! Wanting to avoid the mistake of confusing one Turritopsis for another, I was glad to read the New York Times Magazine profile of Shin Kubota and the Turritopsis dohrnii - so I could be confident their images were of the right animal!

Incidentally, googling "immortal jellyfish" turns up a lot of strange things, including harebrained anti-aging schemes and vampire fans.

Æeolian Jellyfish

Æeolian Jellyfish, linocut with chine collé and glow-in-the dark in, 18 cm x 18 cm, by Ele Willoughby, 2014

This is a whimsical mini lino block print of the Æeolian Jellyfish, a widely unknown, and quite possibly, completely imaginary creature. Unlike other jellies, the Aeolian Jellyfish floats in the upper ocean of air, which blankets our planet.

The printed area is only 10 cm (3.9 inches) squared. The jellies have collaged or chine collé fine translucent white Japanese paper with visible fibres. The jellies are printed in UV-activated glow-in-the-dark ink. If exposed to ultraviolet light, including direct sunlight, the jellies glow. Each sheet is 18 cm (7.1 inches) squared and printed on white Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. There are 15 prints in this first edition.

The Aeolian jellyfish (Æolia noctiluca) looks much like its sea-borne cousin Pelagia noctiluca (where "Pelagia" means of the sea, "nocti-" refers to night and "luca" to light). Similarly "Æolia" and Aeolian come from the Greek Æolus, the keeper of the winds, and refers to its air- or wind-borne nature. Also, both jellies are bioluminescent. That is, they have the ability to glow in the dark. There are some important differences between the two, including, of course, habitat. While both animals have radial symmetry, the Pelagia noctiluca has a single body cavity, called the gastrovascular cavity. In contrast, the Aeolian jellyfish has both an outer gastrovascular cavity and an inner air bladder. This latter organ performs analogously to the swim bladder found in some variety of fish (though more closely related to the swim bladder found in Siphonophore colonies like the Portuguese man o' war). It is essentially an enclosed, impermeable, gas balloon, which can expand and contract to allow the Aeolian jellyfish to rise or fall in the air column by adjusting its shape such that the pressure in the air bladder matches that of ambient pressure. The Aeolian jellyfish also has a special adaptation to evade predators like birds; it can rapidly metabolize any food to produce a flash of heat in the gastrovascular cavity wall, lining the swim bladder. This allows the trapped air balloon to be heated, causing it to rapidly expand and the Aeolian jellyfish to rise. To move laterally, the Aeolian jellyfish employs its tentacles to ride the winds.

Æeolian Jellyfish, glowing in the dark

As you might expect for a bioluminescent animal, the Aeolian jellyfish is noctunal. During the day the jelly passive rises as it warms in the sun and its air bladder heats and expands. Thus it spends the heat of the day in the stratosphere, out of reach of predators. As temperature falls at sunset, so does the Aeolian jellyfish, disguised as a twinkling star to the flying insects who are its prey. Hence, while lulled to complacency by this lovely light display, it's death from above for these unsuspecting insects.

Like many jellyfish (but not the Pelagia noctiluca), the Aeolian jellyfish begins its life as a bottom-dwelling polyp - where "bottom" refers not to the seafloor, but the ocean-air interface. They have been found on certain recently-discovered very shallow seamounts in the Pacific. Thus the polyps rest with their holdfast on these plateau-like features, bathed in seawater, while their "mouths" reach out into the air. When they metamorphose into the medusa form, the jellies float up into the sky.

A smack of Jellyfish

My latest 'term of venery' print is done! This linocut shows a smack of jellyfish. The collective noun for a group of jellyfish is a "smack". This amuses me, because I imagine them smacking their tentacles together in some sort of deepsea high five. To be honest, marine biologists speak of 'blooms' and we do tend to lump in a bunch of soft-bodies marine creatures into the term jellyfish, all of the gelatinous zooplankton (there's a term for ya) in fact.... but 'a smack of jellyfish' is the traditional term of venery for a group of such creatures. I've included only those translucent, tentacled umbrella-shaped creatures, which are truly jellyfish, or the major non-polyp form of individuals of the phylum Cnidaria.

The typography I designed for the words represents their meaning; "smack" mimics the motion of a smack with the letters colliding; the word "Jellyfish" is made of tentacle and bell-shaped letters.

These linoleum block printed jellyfish are printed on Japanese kozo, or mulberry paper. The block is inked 'à la poupée', meaning the multiple colours (blue-black, navy, pale violet and pink ink) are all inked at the same time, in small areas, and the print is pulled all at once. Each print is 15.5" by 12.5" or 39 cm by 32 cm in dimension. There are 8 prints in the edition.

Jellyfish Tattoo

A woman contacted me to let me know that she got a tattoo on her forearm, inspired by my jellyfish linocut. She explained that she found my artwork by searching for images of ukiyo-e style jellyfish prints, contemplated it for months and only discovered that I was the artist after she had completed her tattoo. I think the tattoo artist's translation of the image into line art, and her choice to have it in red, have made this re-interpretation her own. I'm flattered that my art turns up in a search for ukiyo-e (traditional Japanese woodblock printing) and that it spoke to her strongly enough that she would want a version as something so intimate, personal and permanent as a tattoo.

It's funny to me that there seems a theme of other people reinterpreting my art of late. Case in point: the knit version of my Mercator linocut. Wonder what's next?

Narcomedusae Jellyfish Linocut

I made this dainty lino block print of a Narcomedusae order of jellyfish on beautiful handmade deep blue Japanese Chitose Gunjo paper with silk fibres which add to the organic feel of the piece and makes each print rather unique. Each print in this edition of 10, is 4.5 inches by 8 inches or 11.3 cm by 20.3 cm.

Jellyfish have such beautiful, fluid, organic lines. This seems to mirror the view of Ernst Haekel, the famed German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist (and influence on me), whose book "Art Forms in Nature" filled with lovely 19th century scientific illustrations of biology inspired my original drawing and then carving in linoleum of this creature. In fact, Haekel himself named this order of animals in 1879.

I've been wondering about their name. The discomedusa sounds like a medusa (as in jellyfish, rather than Μέδουσα the snake-headed Gorgon of Greek myth) boogieing on the dance floor, but of course, the "disco-" refers to its disk-like shape. "Narco-" means "numbness or torpor" rather than indicating that this jellyfish is somehow involved in the drug trade. Now, I don't know if these jellies are numb or torpid, or whether they sting (something which often leads to numbness). Haeckel's other medusas are the tracho- or tranchymedusa ("rough" medusa), leptomedusa ("thin, fine or slight" medusa), peromedusa ("malformed" medusa, ouch!), anthomedusa ("flower" medusa), stauromedusa ("cross", as in the shape rather than the mood, medusa), and cubomedusa (which are the box jellyfish). So now you know.

minouette comb jelly on Adafruit

One of the places you can find great items for incorporating some electronics into your art, as well as tutorials, kits, links, forums and useful information is Adafruit. I like their attitude, and I like seeing a company lead by a female electrical engineer and entrepreneur be such a success. She (founder Limor Fried) named herself and her company in homage to Lady Ada Lovelace, the first computer programmer. I added my pictures of my comb jelly light box to their flickr pool and was asked by one of their engineers if they could feature the comb jelly project on their blog. One of my motivations is often sharing and teaching; I personally think comb jellies are undeniably cool, and I want artists I know to see how easy it is to wire up a simple circuit and add light (or even changing coloured light) to a project. I'm a believer in 'open source'.* It's why I like their attitude, it's why I made a point to explain what I'd done and how, and it's why I'm flattered to be featured.

*It's not always obvious how to make information free, but I think it's a concept which will, combined with a rapidly improving communication system, lead to faster innovation and change civilization.

Comb Jelly Linocut

I also made a straightforward linocut of the comb jelly. It's a monoprint on black Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper. It is 20.5 cm by 25 cm or 8.1 inches by 9.8 inches. The handmade paper has a deckle edge.

Sneak peek of the Bioluminescent Comb Jelly Light Box

I haven't posted much by way of new creations lately. That's because I've been working on some larger projects (including the Space Jellyfish Fractal Triangle Quilt). I've been developping a prototype of a planned Bioluminescent Comb Jelly Light Box. What's a comb jelly? Well, they are these marvellous jellyfish-like marine creatures, the Ctenophora. The combs are the celia (the hairy bits) which they oscillate to swim. They are also voracious, invisible to prey, hermaphrodictic, and bioluminescent. Sometimes, I think that our science fiction depictions of space aliens are too tame; there are stranger creatures here on earth.



Compare, for instance with this:



The flashing is actually quite rapid. I took some artistic license here. Though it would be easy to use rapidly flashing LEDs to imitate the natural rythms of the bioluminescent comb jelly, I was concerned about the irriations/potential for inducing seizures of rapidly flashing lights.



I've been wanting to combine the two sides of my brain my scientific/technical background with my art, or to continue the trend (started with my experiments in thermochromic ink). I thought I would begin encorporating some electronics into my pieces. I am starting small. This is actually, a very very simple circuit.



I've simply combined a 9 Volt battery, with a and on/off switch on the positive rail, and a series/parallel LED array of these nifty, Diffused 5mm Slow Fade Flashing RGB LED. If you aren't used to thinking about electronics, this really is simple - trust me. If you can screw in a lightbulb, you can do this... with a little bit of practice. There are many LED calculators (like this one, for instance) which will tell you how to hook up arrays of LEDs. Basically, you need to make sure you have they with the right polarity (positive end to positive, negative to negative), you limit current (include appropriate resistors), and provide power. That's it. It is posible to get colour changing LEDs which you control with a microcontroller (the guts of a simple computer... basically a chip, which may have some bells and whistles), but since I just wanted the colours to change, these slow fade, self-flashing LEDs make everything simple. They only have the two leads (positive, and negative), so you can treat them like regular LEDs and they automatically fade and change colour. Because they are not manufactured completely uniformly, they do not synch up - which was precisely what I wanted.



I say 'transparent' when I mean 'translucent', but there you are. I plan some better images and video soon.

Space Jellyfish Fractal Triangle Quilt

Yes, you read right. Reynardin seems to have given me the plague her cold, but I have managed to sew with a fever this week. See, I had some completely awesome (if I do say so myself) space fabric printed with imagery I downloaded from NASA (credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org). They kindly keep the vast majority of their photography open source and you can use it, though they appreciate a credit. See? I did too need more fabric.



So, I planned this quilt as a giant fractal Sierpiński Triangle, with nested lino block printed fractal Sierpiński Triangles). Also, some of the downward pointing triangles which by default are space imagery are replaced by my block printed jellyfish on dark blue fabric). I carefully arranged the triangles so that areas with nebulae were nearby one another (nebulous areas? nebularful? nebulicious?) and the starry, mostly dust-free regions were near one another. So it's space, jellyfish, fractal triangle FTW. This is just the quilt top, so this is still a work in progress. I bought some glow-in-the-dark thread for the actual quilting, bwhahaha!






I'll get some proper photos of it when it's complete.

Monoprints

I had one final screenprinting class yesterday, so I thought, since I had only 3 hours of time, to make some monoprints. This is not a method I've used before. The word 'monoprint' can be applied to unique prints made with a variety of printmaking methods (so long as there are not multiples). In this instance, I mean screenprints made by applying a pigment directly to the screen and then lifting and disolving it and printing with the squeegee as if one were printing with ink. You can do this with, say, silk paints and screenprinting medium, or even wallpaper paste. Any sort of decent medium which can disolve water-soluble pigments, and has good printing properties (like viscosity - not too thin or too gloopy) will work. I printed all of the following on heavy weight paper with a deckle edge (moreorless 10 inches by 14 inches). I experimented with the silk paints:



There are white areas where the pigment was too thick, and actually blocked the screen - but I like them.Also, you can see the mesh, which is interesting to me. I also tried paper stencils (snowflakes) combined with a silk paint + wallpaper paste monoprint:


Then, I tried the crayons (also with cut-paper snowflake stencils). My first attempt wasn't quite what I intended (but still sort of pretty I think). The instructor pointed out that there was still pigment on the screen, and with more medium and pressure (a recurring problem for me, I feel like a weakling) that I might be able to get another print. He gave it a try and got much better results:



Lastly, I drew a discomedusa jellyfish directly onto the screen with colour pencils and crayons. This proved harder than expected. The screen itself is not an ideal medium for drawing. The mesh tends to hinder smooth, curved lines (which are sort of necessary, at least if you are me, and you are attempting to draw the least rectilinear animal in the world). Here's my first attempt, which is pale, but appeals to me:



Again, there are places where the pigment blocked the mesh, but I think it works. There is white, often, within water, and I think it helps give a sense of movement. Here's the no-nonsense instructor's 2nd attempt:



which shows hom much more can be transferred with more strength and experience. I also like the surviving snowflake stencils. The ones made from strong Japanese kozo paper survived:


I feel I should do something with the screenprinted snowflakes, but I'm not sure what.

Scrappy Strip Quilt - and butterflies, dinosaurs, fractals and more

I finished my quilt. I was torn on whether I wanted to block print the fabric or not... but I'm glad I did. Here's the reverse:



I made this quilt with stripes of fabric scraps from my stash, including vintage thrifted fabrics and contemporary prints. I block printed the sashing with my own carved monarch butterfly lino block. The reverse is a patchwork with the green sashing fabric, rectangles of the fabrics used on the front and a series of my block prints on fabric including a dinosaur, jellyfish, bees, butterflies, Russian nesting dolls, a fractal triangle, a quail, a rhino, and a blue whale. The quilting is done in a couple of variegated threads, by machine. The quilt is 39 inches by 57 inches (1 m by 146 cm), maybe the size of a child's bed.



Pretty nifty what one can do with scraps, imagination and patience, no?

Discomedusa

I made this lino block print of the fabulously-named discomedusa jellyfish. As you may suspect, it's inspired by Ernst Haekel, the famed German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist, whose book "Art Forms in Nature" filled with lovely 19th century scientific illustrations of biology. It's printed in white, water-based block printing ink on 'unryu teal' Japanese paper. (I would describe the paper as navvy not teal, but that's what the paper was called nonetheless). The paper has many visible fibres, which add to the organic feel of the piece and makes each print rather unique. They also make printmaking by hand more challenging! The edition is limited to 9 prints, each 17.8 cm by 19.7 cm (7 inches by 7.75 inches).

bats, mushrooms & jellyfish - on pillows

As I attempt to convalesce at home (I am a bad sick person), I'm running a little minouette sweatshop. Here are some of my latest pillows (tip o' the hat to Gqueen who suggested a bat pillow):






Block printed bat on cotton with block printed fly agaric mushrooms on silk in a patchwork with wool and cotton fabrics on the front of this pillow. The reverse is a gray printed linen (airplanes, dots, and stripes) with a pin-striped cotton and red tentacle minouette label.





Block printed jellyfish on cotton print, in patchwork with printed and woven (including handwoven Nepalese) fabrics on front of pillow. Reverse is printed city scene and tweed. The pillow is 37 cm by 32 cm (14.6 inches by 12.6 inches).

By the way, I hope everyone is having a fabulous (Canadian) Thanksgiving!

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.

Queen St W

Today, I worked on a large multimedia piece. Then I decided to spend some gift cards. I managed to get 8 books without paying a penny of real money. I got jeans and a shirt for $20 and then a pin at Magic Pony. I continued along Queen W, and stopped for ice cream at the White Squirrel. I wish I had made the sea creatures in the window of the Paper Place, but it gave me an idea. I walked all the way home enjoying the sunshine. See, you can indulge in ice cream if you lug eight novels home 6 km. It was a lovely day.