Exciting news!

This linocut shows how I imagine the great white stork of European folklore, who carries babies to new parents. The stork is printed in teal ink on Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper, 32 cm by 17.5 cm or 12.5" by 7". There are 4 prints in the edition.

The ancient stork-the-baby-bringer legend was made popular by Hans Christian Anderson's story called 'The Storks'. The stork is quite stylized, inspired by ancient Chinese art, and not an attempt to accurately portray Ciconia ciconia, the white stork, because - spoiler alert! - storks are not actually where babies come from. (The baby is a little more naturalistic and has very cute toes, if I do say so myself). This print definitely goes in the 'UnNatural History' category, with other mythical creatures.

As some of you know and some may have deduced, I'm printing the baby-carrying stork because I'm thinking about how to decorate a nursery. RJH and I are expecting a baby this winter!* I've been debating when to tell people, but I think it should be clear now, should you happen to see me, that something is afoot**, and am far enough along that risk has decreased a fair bit, so it seems like the right time. I'm doing pretty well. I haven't had morning sickness. My doctor is wonderfully relaxed and says the right things to put people at ease. (She told me half her patients are my age or older. She lets me have one large coffee a day, saying there's been no rigorous study showing any harm. She blamed my swollen feet on the weather, rather than my suspicion it was from eating salty Triskets and sun-dried tomatoes, saying, "The truth is, in this heat and humidity all pregnant women have swollen feet." So, I think she's great.) I confuse sonographers with my technical imaging questions, cause it's fascinating and the physics of ultrasounds is basically the physics of seismology, so I get it. I've had some discomfort from other symptoms. Why does no one every warn you about the leg cramps? It's always "weird food cravings" and never "violently awoken by Charley horse at 4 am". Also, I am thirsty all of the time  which is weird for a girl whose mother called her 'the camel' who was rarely thirsty (or needed to pee). I was keeping a glass of water by my bedside until I realized Minouette thought this was a new, convenient bedtime cat watering station, so now I have a cat-proof bedside water bottle. Sleeping is a bit of a challenge and I'm finding the 'extreme heat alert' weather unpleasant. Me and the cat are hiding in the cool basement right now. Mainly, I feel like I've swallowed a large and unruly water balloon, which is flattening all the things I normally keep in my belly.



As you might imagine, I've responded by making things! So far, I've made 7 reversible fabric bibs (whales, mermaids, fortune cats, psychedelic blue squirrels, an urban scene, mushrooms, vintage cameras, constellations, flowers, numbers, cupcakes and elephants) and a block printed camera toy (because baby will want to be like Daddy I figure). I'm planning some fabric, block printed alphabet blocks too. I'll make duplicates for my shop, should you want any for your favorite wee one. I have other plans too, of course, but this is a good start.




* I'm pretty sure if he reads this he'll tell me I've buried the lede, but I'm not a newspaper man and like a little suspense. 

**Though, luckily for me, all the summer clothing is light, and airy and not fitted, so it seems not everyone figures it out on sight.

Making The List

I was just reading the Etsy Finds newsletter. Today they've gathered the 'Tastemakers' - a collection of Etsians with curated collections of favorites who you might like to follow. I was actually wondering to myself what makes a tastemaker? Is it a large number of followers? A particularly huge collection of favorites? I started looking at the collections which caught my eye, when I spied my own name! See, I was pretty pleased to learn that they've added new tools to organize your favorites. I know I add items to my favorites for different reasons: to collect gift ideas, to gather suggestions for when my loved ones demand to know what I want for my birthday, to bookmark things which inspire me and more. So, when I read that Etsy users can now make their own lists to organize their favorites, I took the time to organize the literally thousands of favorites I've collected over the years. I know I'm more likely to buy something which is already in my favorites, and this makes finding the right thing much easier. Also, anyone who does follow me and wants to check out a certain category of my favorites, if they are looking for something in particular can now search my favorites by collection. I guess all this obsessive organizing - or as they say curating - caught Etsy's attention too.

You can check out Etsy's collection of users with carefully curated favorites here and follow my own favorites or get ideas for how you might organize your own here. But, if you are one of my personal friends or part of my family you aren't supposed to look at the gift ideas board. Don't say I didn't warn you!

Canada: 10 provinces, 3 territories and their symbols

 
A couple of people asked whether I could print my series of province and territory linocuts on one giant pieace of paper. I was thinking that a book might be a better format. You see, the provinces are not at all printed to scale (and may even have some variations in projection). I made this decision consciously. You see, the smallest province PEI is 5,660 km² whereas Nunavut, the largest of either province or territory is  2,038,722 km²- that is a bit more than 360 times as large. So, unless I was making art for a very very large space indeed, and could make prints in tens of square metres, I would never be able to acheive enough detail in the smaller provinces. However, it is possible to digitally place all the images side by side, and with a little Photoshop magic, you can see all of Canada. The pieces don't match perfectly; but, between inprecision in my carving, and variations from map to map (of scale, resolutions and maybe even projection) it's a pretty good fit.

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.

More Hot Air Balloons

Carved in linoleum, and printed on variety of Japanese washi paper (kozo, or mulberry and chiyogami and katazome-shi patterned paper), Thai paper, screenprinted faux-bois and actual thin wood paper is a collection of hot air balloons in a cloudy sky in the afternoon. This piece employs the techniques of printmaking and collage. I am making a series of these multimedia; each one is unique. This is the third in the series. Dimensions are approximately 12.5 inches by 15.5 inches (32 cm by 39 cm).

The balloons are inspired by some of the wonderfully elaborate balloons by pioneers of flight (or, floating, at least) like the Montgolfier brothers in the late 18th and early 19th century. These beautiful and romantic vehicles were carefully decorated and often included baskets like sea-going ships, to sail the skies.

More Unicorns Amongst Umbrellas

Continuing on the theme of multimedia artwork printed on washi or ephemera, I extended the 'Unicorn Amongst Umbrellas' series.






Carved in linoleum, and printed on variety of Japanese washi paper (kozo, or mulberry and chiyogami and katazome-shi patterned paper) and Thai paper is a unicorn, strangely amongst a welter of lovely umbrellas. This piece employs the techniques of printmaking and collage. I am making a series of these multimedia; each one is unique. This is fifteenth in the series.
Dimensions are approximately 12.5 inches by 18.5 inches (32 cm by 47 cm).

Next up: Balloons.

Happy Canada Day!