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.

Go Ahead and Do It

'Florence Nightingale', 2nd ed., 12" x 12" on Japanese kozo paper with chine collé, by Ele Willoughby, 2014

I made a second edition of my portrait of Florence Nightingale. I wanted a simpler, darker colour scheme and to print it on larger sheets to allow more negative space around her. I'm gathering up and framing my female scientists you see, for 'Go Ahead and Do It: Portraits of women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics', a group exhibit at Art.Science.Gallery in Austin, September 13 through October 14! This is the perfect exhibit topic for me and I'm pretty excited about it. I only wish I could be there. If you're in Austin, there's an Opening September 13, and a party on October 14th, which will be Ada Lovelace Day. The show is curated by science writer and photographer Maia Weinstock, who will be hosting a Wikipedia edit-a-thon for images of women in STEM on October 13, as well as gallery owner, scientist and artist Hayley Gillespie. Maia, Hayley and about 10 other artists will also be showing their scientist portraits in all sorts of media. The title of the show is a quotation from computing pioneer Grace Hopper, whom I've yet to portray, but who is on the to do list.

Speaking of going ahead and doing it, I'm also preparing for the Hunt & Gather pop-up market at Huntclub gallery in Little Italy, August 22nd to 24th, and the In the Round show at Graven Feather on Queen West this November. Not to mention the big one: I'll be doing the One of a Kind Show from December 2 to 7th! I have a 5 foot by 10 foot booth, which we have to design and build as well as all the preparations of things to sell. But, before that, there's Etsy:Made in Canada Toronto Edition at MaRS, which I'm organizing with my trusty TESTy & 416Hustler leaders, and where I'll also be selling. Cause nothing says "taking a year off for mat leave" like organizing a show for 120 vendors after a successful 30-vendor show, doing 4 art shows in two countries, 3 pop-ups,  giving a couple of invited public lectures, running a small art business, creating art, writing, blogging, and teaching on-line. Basically, I'm almost as busy as I was previously, but now with less sleep and greater likelihood that I have a baby-related stain somewhere on my person. <sup>1


1</sup> When the baby was first born we watched all of Kingdom on Netflicks, cause other than baby care and attempting to feed ourselves, watching a gentle English TV series was about all we could muster. Basically it's Stephen Fry as tiny market-town solicitor being charming, and assorted English character actors trying to upstage him. Phyllida Law succeeds. Anyhow, there's one season with a baby where I heard the best approach to these issues. Young articling solicitor tells his boss Kingdom (Fry) that he has baby-sick on his suit. Fry's response? "Yes."

Cat woes

I haven't posted much lately, because baby - and now cat. Our beloved, if persnickety cat Minouette is getting to be a certain age for a cat. She is 17.5 years old. She started demanding a lot of water. Then we noticed puddles of clear, odorless liquid in the kitchen, which we did not immediately recognize.  We thought she had spat up, as cats do. It turns out that these are common symptom in older cats: peeing on things, especially cool, flat, surfaces like kitchen tiles, and drinking excessively. The odorlessness confused us. After a couple of trips to the vet, we've discovered she is diabetic. This is serious, but it is a liveable disease, and there is no sign she's in distress. It could have been worse. We were scared we would get a diagnosis of kidney failure, and it was stressful waiting for her test results. Cause, we love that damn cat. So, she's now on a high-protein diet and gets insulin twice a day, subcutaneously. I'm happy to report that I am able to administer the insulin, despite my anxiety about needles. I can't even watch someone get an injection in a movie, but luckily these needles are so small that I can handle it.

On the flip side, she decided to pee directly into the air vent in the kitchen, which is bad news for us. 'Odorless' is a relative term. RJH turned the heat on the other day (it's been that sort of spring) and guess what? Even watered down cat pee sure stinks when heated. We have done all we can to clean the vent, but we may have to tear down the ceiling in the basement and replace the vent altogether. Worst of all, while she is adjusting to the diet, and barely notices the injections, she has kept up the wayward peeing.

Also RJH and I got some terrible cold, from my nephew I think. RJH actually took some time off and he never does that... so that tells you how dreadful it's been. I just hope the baby doesn't get it!

To top it off, our internet was down for the better part of 2 days, which may be a mere 'first world problem' but it is a bother.

That's an older photo of Minouette, above, by RJH, but it's one of my favorites.

cold seep

The New York Times has a really good slide show of a cold seep community in the Gulf of Mexico. I spend a lot of my time thinking about cold seeps. Sometimes it occurs to me that the people in my life are a little vague on 'what it is I do'. One of the things I do is study cold seeps. People don't realize that in many places in the world, gas just seeps up from the seafloor quite naturally, without any instigation. When you get gases at, or near, the seafloor a few things happen. If the pressure and temperature conditions are right (and they are in the GoM), you get gas hydrate. Also, gases, like methane are food to someone, so an entire ecosystem can build up. Actually, the cold seep where I've worked with a submersible (it's strange to me that people now hear terms like ROV on TV, and comedians remark on underwater robots as if these are something new) is sadly, remarkably dull and rather barren. And yet, even in a relatively barren patch of Pacific, the things one sees on the seafloor are so captivating that one literally has to order the scientists to leave the lab now and again to get some sleep. The funny things is, that physical scientists like me have no training to identify much of this flora and fauna. We keep a log of what we observe. We learn certain things - even a geophysicist can be expected to log obvious things like 'octopus', 'sea-pen', 'bacteria mat' (as these are far more common than you ever expected) - but often we are flummoxed and end up writing 'critter' or 'life'. The image is a screencapture I grabbed from a streaming video feed from an ROV when working offshore Canada's west coast. I don't know what it is, but there were a pair of them and they changed colours, and looked for all the world like deep purple mushrooms with multiple stalks. Anyway, go look at the pretty critters.

Reading is sexy XVI

(image is A Yong Girl Reading by Jean Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806) via Guarda chi legge)
Well, I am home sick again today. I hardly ever take a day off sick. In fact, I hardly ever take a day off period - occupational hazard. I have checked my email remotely and the like. I have my laptop and could be working on the paper I should have finished, but I figure my brain is tired and busy fighting what ever bug it is that has taken up residence in my throat.Plus, I feel like death warmed over. The least I can do though is catch up with my record of what I have been reading... because I have. Been reading. If I don't write it down I feel like I will forget.

6. The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman - I bought this book because of the rave review by Zadie Smith and the cover by Marcel Dzama. It is short but moving book. It is a memoir of sorts. She is breathtakingly honest. She grapples with her father's death - the titular Pharmacist's Mate, having been rejected by the Navy because he was in medical school, and doctors were needed, he signed up for the Merchant Marine and ended up in the dispensary - and her and her husband's quest to conceive a child. She intersperses her life, her grief, with excepts of her father's journal while at sea. This is a little gem.

7. The Troll Garden by Willa Cather. This is a book of short stories I bought at the U of T bookstore because a) it was some ridiculously nominal price, like $2 and b) I had not read any of her work, so I thought I might as well. It is one of those University Press editions with erudite introductions. I did not read all of the introduction, because while part of it was helpful, it was bent on systematically spoiling every plotline of everything she ever wrote. The stories themselves are mainly about artists and rustics, civilization and rural existence. They are not vastly different from contemporaries such as, for instance, Henry James.

8. Tortoise by Peter Young. This is a cultural history of the tortoise. A bit Anglo-centric, light on science, heavy on history. I learned some interesting things.

9. The Brie Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. This book is as good as they say. Read it. Oscar, is an overweight, hapless, scifi-obsessed Dominican nerd, living in New Jersey. Sadly for Oscar, he is not one of those nerds who are oblivious to women- no, Oscar loves women. This is an incredible story. It is the story of Oscar, and his family - his mother, and how and why she left the Dominican Republic, his sister, his abuela, interwoven with the history of the island and its fukú (or curses), violence, love and tragedy. And golden-eyed mongoose. The story is told by a narrator who eventually becomes part of the story and relates the story as Oscar himself might think, in scifi, pop culture metaphors and extensive footnotes- in a gripping, high-energy style. Later part of the story is told by his sister. What I know about the Dominican Republic and its former, brutal, dictator, "the failed cattle theif", El Jefe, Trujillo, I learned from Mario Vargas Llosa's The Feast of the Goat, a novel referenced a few times here, and which I will never forget. This novel explains more of what happened to some people in this community after Trujillo, those who immigrated and those who remained, and how the country is still recovering. Mostly, though, it is about individuals. This novel, amazingly, is about love.

10. The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. It took a little while for me to get into this novel, but once I did I was hooked. It weaves together Florence under the Medicis with the Mughal Emperor's court. A tall, yellow-haired man in a magician's coat, decorated with lozenges and filled with hidden pockets, arrives at the Mughal court, to deliver a message, tell a story and claim kinship. The story is about what is real, what is make-believe, east and west, religious tolerance, love, beauty, treachery, family and friends. Not 14 pages in, we have Scottish pirates, with what some on the f-list might call slashy angst, and the rollicking tale goes on from there. An enjoyable read.

11. Cloud Atlad by David Mitchell. I got this book on the suggestion of . She is also a Haruki Murakami fan, so I was intrigued. It is quite an amazing book. I do not want to tell you too much about it. You need to read it for yourselves. Its structure is musical in six parts, life stories in different times and places, subtly woven together. The story takes place in the 1850s in the south Pacific, in the early 1930s in Belgium (near Bruges, fresh in my mind having just watched In Bruges and being in nearby Holland while reading), in 1970s Buenos Yerba, more or less contemporary England, and into the future. The story is about humanity, society, consumerism and freedom. Just read it.

12. Scribbling the cat by Alexandra Fuller (author of Don't let's go to the dogs tonight). Scribbling is African slang for killing, as in curiosity scribbled the cat. The hero of the memoir, Bobo, is home in Zambia, visiting her parents (her husband and children, safe in Montana), where she meets their neighbour K. He is a veteran of the wars of the region. He fought in one of the elite corps for the Rhodesians and also for the Portuguese in Mozambique. Bobo gets it into her head that the two of them could return to where he fought these wars. She wants to understand what could make this violent, estranged, born again man. He, for his part, thinks he is in love with her. The narrative voice is strong and recognizable from her last memoir. I am not sure what this will all tell us.... People are rotten? War changes people irreparably? Yet, in some senses, some people (especially men) thrive on it.