ships & unicorns & exotic papers

I haven't posted all of my most recent work. Here is some of what I've been working on.... partially because sending work off to be sold in shops has forced me to look over my inventory and my hoard collection of beautiful and exotic papers. As well as copious amounts of Japanese washi, I have Chinese papers, and everything from wood veneer paper to papyrus.

Preparations

Tomorrow, I'll be selling minouette prints at the Shop Cats Pop-Up store for the Scadding Court Harvest Festival! Along with the harvest festival, there will be a number of pop-ups in repurposed shipping containers at Bathurst & Dundas. Come check it out!

This evening the Toronto Etsy Street Team is having a social media summit & pot-luck, so today, I'm gathering supplies for the show and goodies for this evening. Thinking ahead a little, I thought people will want to be prepared for Ada Lovelace Day (ALD13) this October 15th. So, now you can get my Ada Lovelace linocut on tee shirts (or totes, cell phone and laptop skins as well as art prints)!

ALD13 is the 5th annual international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology, science and math. 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. On October 15, in Ada's name, people around the world are blogging about women in science and technology, whose accomplishments have all too often gone unrecognized or unacknowledged.

Art for Kids

I had a pleasant surprise this morning. I often check the Etsy blog every day, but this last week RJH took a vacation and we've been taking some time to make sure we're prepared for the baby. He's done a huge amount of work building furniture, and we made some purchases. Somehow it seems more real, now that we have a car seat and stroller. Decorating and preparing the nursery is an on-going project, of course. So, this morning I was particularly interested to see the Etsy blog article Art Scouting: Picks for Kids thinking I could gather some more ideas. I love that cover shot and spent some time contemplating how the T.Rex image was made. I scrolled down and was delighted to see my own 'Sailing Ship IV' featured! It and another in the series are already packaged to go to the post office this morning, since they sold yesterday (though I didn't clue in that my print had been mentioned till this morning). I do love the idea that art for kids can serve as a starting point for bedtime stories. RJH has been advocating bold, simple works for babies and that maybe the multimedia work will be better a little later (once the baby's vision is more fully developped.... after all, they can barely focus more than a foot away when they arrive). He might have a point, but I confess, I'm looking forward to the magic of imaginative bedtime story telling - and more complex art too!

There's still several ships in the series, by the way, and reproductions of a couple of the sold one of kind prints in the series are available too. There's some fabulous prints by fellow Printsy members; Cecca's Crocodile Tea Time has been in my favorites for a long time and I love Natalia the Winged Lion's prints as much as her imaginative handcrafted jewellery, as well as some artists who are new to me.

Find minouette in the Supply Room at the Art.Science.Gallery

This is a gallery I'm really excited to be associated with! I only wish they were closer to home. Very soon, you'll be able to find minouette prints in the Supply Room gallery shop for the Art.Science.Gallery, an Austin, Texas "art gallery and science communication space dedicated to art-science fusion of all kinds" and the first US gallery "to feature exclusively science-related artworks!"

You can read more about their philosophy here, and check out their exhibitions here, find them on Facebook or twitter. They are run by fellow artists/scientists and I love that this makes me feel like it's maybe not an eccentric or unheard of career path.

I sent a series of insect related artwork, including my bee series of linocuts, to coincide with an upcoming entomology-themed exhibit. I also included some general science, history of science and scientists prints.

A Kaleidoscope of Butterflies

minouette in the Etsy Showcase at the Fall Home Show!

Schroedinger's (Disappearing) Cat Linocut

 

I'm really pleased to be able be tell you that there will be things from secret minouette places in the Etsy Showcase at Fall Home Show, October 3 to 6, 2013! This is a huge show, held at the Better Living Centre, Exhibition Place. The Etsy Showcase will be in Booth #328; it will contain a carefully curated living space decorated with handmade Canadian Etsy goods, selected by HGTV! The selected Etsy sellers will also be featured on the HGTV website. If you're going to the show, be sure to visit and get special deals in all the shops represented.

I think this is a great opportunity! I've been taking it easy this fall and am not planning to do many shows in the lead-up to the holidays. I was really flattered to be accepted to sell in the Rising Stars section of the One of a Kind, but I had to regretfully decline, since I'm expecting a baby during the show. They were very understanding of course. I love that this is a way to participate in a show on a similar scale, without having to be present, selling all of the time, and without having to have huge amounts of stock prepared, all of which might be a bit too gruelling right now. So this opportunity turned up at just the right time for me!

I'm also pleasantly surprised that the works selected by HGTV are all seriously sciencey (that's a word, right?). I had imagined they would want works which make for pretty home decor or strong graphic design- and not that science-themed prints don't - but I didn't expect that they would particularly select interactive, colour-changing, thermochromic prints about quantum mechanics, or organic chemistry, or genetics.

 

 

Chemistry

Psst... there is also a sale on society6 - if you would like to get any minouette products, follow this link to get FREE Shipping when if you order now through Sunday, September 22, 2013 at Midnight Pacific Time (9 PM Eastern).

g for giraffe

G is for Giraffe of course!

This 'g' monogram linocut features an elegant giraffe. It's standing on the tail and peeking through the loop of the 'g'. This is an open edition print in brown ink on Japanese paper, known as washi. It is available in a variety of colours! Each sheet is 14.8 cm or 5⅞ inches square.

Hearts milestone: 2000

If you read this blog, you know I love getting hearts. It's gratifying, encouraging feedback from the invisible people who actually find and appreciate my work. Today I have 2001 hearts on things from secret minouette places! Etsy now calls them 'admirers' but we all know these as ♥s. So, I'd like to take a moment to thank each and every one, as well as the 791 Etsy followers, 844 twitter followers, 1215 pinterest followers, 591 fans of the things from secret minouette places fanpage, and last but not least, anyone who follows this blog! I love that 2001 people have seen my art, let alone added it to their favorites, so it's really encouraging and appreciated.

I remember reading kozyndan stated that 2000 real fans could support an artist (and they are a two-person team). I don't think that everyone who adds a ♥ to things from secret minouette places would meet their definition of a real fan (which I gathered was more of a close follower, liable to purchase something whenever you come out with something new), but it still feels like maybe it might suggest that interest in what I create is getting to be the right order of magnitude... which is quite amazing to me.