As we warm the Arctic

As we warm the Arctic, thermochromic linocut, 9.25" x 12.5" by Ele Willoughby, 2022

I was a bit flummoxed by he #printersolstice prompt conceptual art. Then I remembered an idea I had toyed with for some time.

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"This is the Arctic with the range of the polar bear: its habitat. And this is what happens when we heat it.”


This is an interactive lino block print which changes colour! A map of the Arctic looking down on the North pole is handprinted in a delicate cream colour on white Japanese kozo (or mulberry) washi paper. On top of the map, I have printed the range of the polar bear in blue complete with a polar bear and the aurora (or Northern Lights) and the word habitat in fuchsia. I have mixed the blue and fuchsia inks myself: they are made with thermochromic temperature sensitive pigments. If these inks rise about 30 degrees Celsius (70 degrees Fahrenheit) they turn colourless, so if you heat the print, for instance with a hair dryer, the range, polar bear and word habitat all disappear. The print is called “As we warm the Arctic” and is about habitat loss due to climate change.

Wilhelm Röntgen reveals his own skeleton

First layer of my Wilhelm Röntgen linocut portrait

Wilhelm Röntgen, thermochromic linocut by Ele Willoughby

Been working on some more Röntgen prints! Wilhelm Röntgen (or Roentgen, without the umlaut), 1845-1923, the German physicist who discovered x-rays, earned the Nobel Prize for physics in 1901. I've depicted him at work, studying this mysterious, newly discovered, invisible form of light, based on a photograph of him in his lab, using a Crookes tube to produce x-rays. The form of the print mimics the nature of his discovery - much as x-rays reveal the skeleton within, the thermochromic ink in which Wilhelm Röntgen is printed dispears when heated to reveal his skeleton below!

Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays using the Crookes tube in 1895. A Crookes tube is an early experimental electrical discharge tube, invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869-1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were discovered. Despite his efforts to block the light from the tube with cardboard, during his experiments, he noticed that the invisible cathode rays (electrons) caused a fluorescent effect on a small cardboard screen painted with barium platinocyanide when it was placed close to the aluminium window in the tube. Some sort of light was passing through the opaque cardboard and Röntgen speculated that a new kind of ray might be responsible. He called these unknown rays 'x-rays'. We now know that x-rays can be produced when electrons strike a metal target, through a process called Bremsstrahlung (or 'the braking of radiation'). During further tests of the interaction of these rays with metals, he saw the image of his own ghostly skeleton on the barium platinocyanide screen. Within two weeks he had taken the first x-ray photograph: an image of his wife Anna Bertha's hand, inventing the entire field of radiology and medical imaging!

Thermochromic ink changes colour with temperature. If you heat the print above about 30°C ( 86 F) Röntgen will go colourless and disappear, to reveal his skeleton. By using, for instance, a hair dryer, it's possible to see Röntgen's skeleton. It's a metaphor for x-rays!

Sometimes #printmaking makes me feel like a mad #scientist! I printed my portrait of Wilhelm Röntgen (1845-1923) who discovered x-rays in #thermochromic ink! The bench and Crookes tube, his apparatus are in regular ink. So when I heat the #print with a hair dryer #röntgen reveals his #skeleton as the ink turn colourless. He rapidly reappears when I let the print cool. #histsci #histstm #physics #xrays #roentgen #sciart

A post shared by Ele Willoughby (@the.minouette) on Mar 2, 2018 at 6:23am PST

Happy Groundhog Day!

Thermochromic Groundhog Day linocut, with and without shadow

May the weather prognosticating rodents be kind to you!

Love, art and cinnamon hearts

Finding just the right Valentine's gift can be a challenge. I know I'm always trying to invent something new every year.

If you're seeking a one of a kind, hand-printed, colour-changing, thermochromic Valentine, or the chemistry of attraction in linocut form, or art for dog and cat lovers and more, I can help with that.

Apart from cinnamon hearts, I would definitely love a $500 Etsy shopping spree. Check out the #etsymatch question here, answer on twitter with the #etsymatch tag for a chance to win a $500 Etsy gift card.

And remember, I'm not kidding about the cinnamon hearts. You can send all you unwanted cinnamon hearts to me!

Time for some weather prognosticating rodents

Since we're catching the tail end of a blizzard here, it seemed nice to contemplate the end of winter.* We might imagine that the end of winter is in sight, and the celebrity weather-prognosticating rodents may not see their shadows next Monday, hahaha! Anyhow, I printed a new batch of thermochromic Groundhog Day linocuts, with disappearing shadows.

I'll be busy on Groundhog Day, myself. Etsy Canada is hosting another Summit, here in Toronto, for team Captains and Leaders from coast to coast. I ought to get cracking on my presentation.

*Apparently, we'll avoid getting really dumped with snow (unlike our neighbours to the south) because it's too cold and windy here. Um... I guess we're lucky?

p.s. Good luck to those of you who aren't lucky and are expecting almost a metre of snow.

Weather Prognosticating Rodent Day

 

It's that time of year again - the day we harass the celebrity rodents and use their sense of their own shadows, or lack thereof as a cue to weather forecasting. Happy Groundhog Day!

Groundhog votes are in: Shubenacadie Sam: no shadow; Wiarton Willie: shadow; Punxsutawney Phil shadow, minouette's linocut thermochromic groundhog print: shadow. I bet my print is more accurate than some of those celebrity rodents (cough! Shubenacadie Sam). False positives (which would occur if it's above 30C or 86 F on February 2nd in Toronto) are unlikely.  

If you live near me, chances are good (as in most years) that there will be 6 more weeks of winter, beyond the 2nd of February, but I do hope that your weather is not too harsh and may even be enjoyable whereever you are.

A little press for IMPRESSI

I was really gratified to see Art.Science.Gallery share a link to The Austin Chronicle's review of some of the many shows that are part of PrintAustin.

"Next door at Art.Science.Gallery., among a wealth of science-oriented prints, Jenn Schmitt's Periodic Table Printmaking Project draws the most interest. In this collection of 118 prints, 97 artists have used a wide variety of mediums – woodcut, linocut, monotype, etching, lithograph, and more – to depict the periodic table of elements. These tight ranks of small works, filling one wall, are an exhibition in themselves; but don't miss Ele Willoughby's thermochromatic linocuts (in which sections of the ink, when heated, disappear; which makes the Schrödinger's Cat print, in particular, a hoot) and, looming overhead, the life-sized gyotaku print of a full-grown turkey vulture by Adam Cohen and Ben Labay of Inked Animal." - via The Austin Chronicle

Do yourself a favour, and check out the great work being shown, including the full Periodic Table. My little contribution to the Project, is Silicon, below. I think of it as an earth scientist, making up so much of our planet's crust, in quartz, or common in seafloor sediments, including radiolarian skeletons, as well as the crystal form of pure silicon... rather than simply as something which goes into computer chips.

Schrödinger's Cat on the Pet Museum

There's a lovely post about my thermochromic Schrödinger's Cat and me on The Pet Museum this morning.

Coincidentally, I've been thinking about how best to hang and demonstrate the thermochromic history of science prints for an art show I'm planning! More soon...

Everybody's favorite prognosticating rodents

It's mid-January and that can only mean one thing. Yes, it's time to print a second edition of my groundhog linocut with disappearing thermochromic shadow. It's important to celebrate absurd holidays. This linocut, in which the shadow cannot be seen if the ambient temperature is over 30 C (86 F), promises to act as a 6-more-weeks-of-winter-prognotication tool, as accurate as any celebrity rodent, this February 2nd, or Groundhog Day. No shadow, no more winter, the adage goes and I think my print is unlikely to give a false positive. If the ambient temperature is above 30 C, chances are indeed very good that your winter is over you've unwisely decided to hang art in your sauna.

Wilhelm Roentgen's X-rays - A Thermochromic Linocut

This is a colour-changing (!) block printed portrait of Wilhelm Röntgen (or Roentgen, without the umlaut), 1845-1923, the German physicist who discovered x-rays and earned the Nobel Prize for physics in 1901. I've depicted him at work, studying this mysterious, newly discovered, invisible form of light, based on a photograph of him in his lab, using a Crookes tube to produce x-rays. The form of the print mimics the nature of his discovery - much as x-rays reveal the skeleton within, the thermochromic ink in which Wilhelm Röntgen is printed dispears when heated to reveal his skeleton below! The lino block print is an edition of six (some variability in mixed colours) in white, cobalt blue and navy thermochromic ink on 9.25 inch by 12.5 inch (23.5 cm by 31.8 cm) Japanese kozo paper.



Wilhelm Röntgen discovered X-rays using the Crookes tube in 1895. A Crookes tube is an early experimental electrical discharge tube, invented by English physicist William Crookes and others around 1869-1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were discovered. Despite his efforts to block the light from the tube with cardboard, during his experiments, he noticed that the invisible cathode rays (electrons) caused a fluorescent effect on a small cardboard screen painted with barium platinocyanide when it was placed close to the aluminium window in the tube. Some sort of light was passing through the opaque cardboard and Röntgen speculated that a new kind of ray might be responsible. He called these unknown rays 'x-rays'. We now know that x-rays can be produced when electrons strike a metal target, through a process called Bremsstrahlung* (or 'the braking of radiation'). During further tests of the interaction of these rays with metals, he saw the image of his own ghostly skeleton on the barium platinocyanide screen. Within two weeks he had taken the first x-ray photograph: an image of his wife Anna Bertha's hand, inventing the entire field of radiology and medical imaging!



Thermochromic ink changes colour with temperature. If you heat the print above about 30°C ( 86 F) Röntgen go colourless and disappear, to reveal his skeleton. By using, for instance, a hair dryer, it's possible to see Röntgen's skeleton. It's a metaphor for x-rays!



*Physics has the best words. Also, all my knowledge of German comes from physics, chemistry or music, which makes for an odd, and not particularly useful assortment. Bremsstrahlung, Gedankenexperiment, mit Ausdruck, Dur, Moll...

Groundhog

Ah yes, September. When the nights get cooler and thoughts naturally turn to ... Groundhog Day. That's right. This might seem an unseasonable offering (winter is coming), but, you see, I like Groundhog Day because it's perfectly absurd. Here we are in our allegedly modern country, prognosticating weather by harassing celebrity rodents (Wiarton Willie, Shubenacadie Sam,...). Further, this is Canada. Unless you live in Victoria (and possibly Vancouver), if it's February 2, you don't need a groundhog to tell you there will be 6 more weeks of winter.* If you live south of the border, anywhere near the most famous American prognosticating groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, the same is true. Shadow or no shadow, winter ain't over on the 2^nd of February.



Every year, I write something for Groundhog Day. Every year, I think I should make a print for the occasion, but I never do in time. Well, I got the jump on 2012. These are two copies of a block print of a groundhog - and his shadow - on Japanese kozo paper 11" by 12.5" (28 cm by 31.8 cm). The shadow is printed with thermochromic ink, so when heated it disappears! Whether the groundhog can see his shadow is determined by temperature. The cool blue state and hot colourless state are both shown. So the print itself serves as a prognosticating groundhog for Groundhog Day! If the shadow is heated above 30^oC (86 F) then it turns colourless. And let's face it; if it's February 2, and your artwork is > 30^oC (86 F) you either a) live in the tropics north of the equator b) live in the Southern Hemisphere or c) need to turn the thermostat down ASAP. So, there's a pretty good chance that this print can accurately predict that there will not be 6 more weeks of winter (to a degree of accuracy at least comparable to any celebrity rodent).



I bet you thought I would try to sneak in the word 'prognosticating' again.

*Conversely, if you live on the left coast, and there are crocuses coming up in your garden, you do not need a celebrity rodent's shadow to give you leave to laugh at the blizzards to the east of you.

making cameleons

1. Carve block

2. Mix inks with thermochromic and photochromic powder.

3. Ink block and pull prints.

Thermochromic Pasteur

I made a second edition of my Louis Pasteur block print. You may recall I made a portrait of Louis Pasteur for a Mad Scientists of Etsy challenge. Though his work was extensive in a variety of fields, I chose to depict him as I see him; a man who saw bacteria in his environment and developed a means of protecting people from this ambient menace. The image is based on a photograph of Pasteur and the background, of course depicts various morphologies of bacteria. I don't know anything in particular really, about bacteria, but morphologies I can understand. Plus, I like his face. You can see his concern in his eyes. And he sticks his glasses in a button-hole in his coat- a interesting touch. Suggests he is thinking about other things. The lino block print is a 2nd edition of nine (some variability in mixed colours) in dark blue and turquoise thermochromic ink on 9 inch by 12 inch (23 cm by 31 cm) Japanese kozo paper.

Thermochromic ink changes colour with temperature. If you heat the print above about 30 C ( 86 F) the turquoise bacteria go white and disappear. It's like a metaphor for pasteurization. Consider these two side by side prints:



Look what happens if I apply heat to either one (with the help of a hair dryer):




The heat makes the bacteria disappear!

I've been thinking about 'smart' materials and using my scientific background to make more interactive, time-varying art. This is my first venture into this area. I've been doing some research about what is out there. There are a lot of interesting inks and textiles, but often they are only really sold on an industrial scale. To make this print, I purchased a small about of thermochromic powder and - after some experimentation - mixed it with block printing medium, or ink extender.