Minouette on designwali

This morning, my prints and minouette etsy shop are featured on a lovely local blog, with a desi flavour, designwali! Sundeep of designwali is keen to display some local talent and is hosting a give-away. Check out this post to learn how you can win one of my 'Fly Agaric' block prints. The contest is open to anyone, worldwide, not just Toronto residents, by the way. :)

There are some great local artists and jewelry makers who you can find in recent posts, and lots of design and decor goodies to be found on designwali. Check it out! Sundeep has an eye, a sense of humour to go with the sense of colour and writes in a conversational tone, which makes her blog lovely to look at and fun to read.

Flora & Fauna & Type

I was thinking how much I like to combine flora and fauna and type. I've been looking at my existing prints, finishing editions and printing second edtions of things, like my mushrooms. The Méfiez-vous de la contrafaçon print has never been editioned. I've only printed monoprints (artist's proofs), but they've proven popular, so perhaps I should print en entire edition. (It's 8.5 x 11 inches, or 21.6 cm by 27.9, whereas the 'Fly Agaric' is a wee little print at about 3.5 inches by 6.25 inches or 9 cm by 16 cm, inked à la poupée, or with multiple colours on a single block).

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!

mmmmmushrooms

The mushrooms are popular! See, people do want poisonous mushrooms as xmas ornaments. :) So I made a new set.



reqbat has mushrooms on the brain too. She's been drawing them on ephemera (mainly older books).
It seems apt that the first set of both fly agaric ornaments is headed her way. ;) The second set is shown here.

I want to carve more mushrooms, but I am lacking in good reference material. I had a mushroom guidebook, but I gave it to my mother when she took up hiking in a big way. This is all I need: another excuse to go to bookstores. I watched a bit of a timely documentary last night, on the French CBC about mushrooms in Québec. The mushroom expert had the most extravagent, backwoods Québecois accent - the sort of thing which stops Frenchmen in the tracks, too dumbfounded even to mock. Though he was clearly quite the mushroom scholar.

High Park

I love etsy seller poodle breath's beautiful ceramic work. I bought myself this pendant, wore it once and broke the ring at the top by which it was suspended - through my own clumsiness. I think I shall epoxy some fitting on the back so I can wear it still. It sucks being clumsy. :(

I made a two-colour proof of the fly agaric block and framed it in a small wooden vintage frame. I leaned it up against the cd's on the bookshelf rather than putting it on the wall. I had intended for the print to be two-colour, but pulling the prints proved problematic. It is important to choose your battles; brown ink consistency was not the battle for me. The print, after all, is more about texture and line. I have gotten a great response to the print in solely red. With printmaking, knowing when to quit is half the battle and usually for me that battle is about line; this time it was about colour.

Yesterday, I asked my father how he could possibly hate Jane Austen. He said that if he googles his name, what he finds are references to one of her novels, wherein his namesake's character is none-too-flattering. This made me laugh.

I am considering doing a series of prints of poisonous things. Perhaps I want to say that all that is natural is not necessarily good for you.

Well, back to the multiplexer data sheets for me.

Fly Agaric

When I lived on Vancouver Island, I was amazed at the incredible variety, size and abundance of mushrooms. I know it is a temperate rainforest, really, but there were mushrooms which I had previously thought only occurred in fairytales, like some peculiar European convention: this is how you illustrate gnome houses. Also, mushrooms are known, of course, for their tendancy of producing neurotoxins... since these fungi were so unfamiliar, I had no idea how dangerous they might be. Was I tracking poisons around on my shoes after walking home from work?



The MSOE challenge for February is mycology, the study of mushrooms. They are quite remarkable life forms. I have chosen to add fly agaric to my cabinet of curiosities. There are great variations in texture in this fungus.

Amanita muscaria is the quintessential toadstool, the large, deep read, white-gilled, white-spotted mushroom we see in popular culture, from illustrations in children's literature to Super Mario. It is commonly known as the fly agaric or fly Amanita. It is a poisonous and psychoactive basidiomycete fungus, native throughout the temperate and boreal regions of the Northern Hemisphere, found in association with various deciduous and coniferous trees. It also plays a role in the religions of Siberia and possibly also in ancient Scandinavian culture. The name Fly Agaric likely comes from its use in Europe as an insecticide, when sprinkled in milk. Alternatively it may be that the term fly- refers not to insects as such but rather the delirium resulting from its consumption. This is based on the medieval belief that flies could enter a person's head and cause mental illness. Seriously! The things you can learn on wikipedia! Actually, I recommend this extry: it has everything from science, to Smurfs, to beserk Vikings, to the ancient Rig Veda texts of India, to Santa Clause and reindeers on shrooms, to ethnomycology. I did not even know one could study ethnomycology.

This is an original lino block print in red with a hint of brown on Japanese kozo paper. The sheets are 5 inches by 7 inches or 12.7 cm by 17.8 cm. Basically, these are life-sized. The edition is limited to 16 prints.


In other news, if the freaky weather gets any warmer, I am going to need a raft to retrieve my laundry from the basement!