#BlackHistoryMonth is a great time to celebrate astronaut Mae Carol Jemison (born October 17, 1956) a physician who became the first Black woman to travel in space when she went into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour for NASA, on September 12, 1992! She also has a B.S. in chemical engineering, served in the Peace Corps, is a dancer and choreographer, 🧵
The internet is filled with so much slop, I'm going to give another go at blogging--even though if i was smart, I'd just unplug everything and read books instead
Sorry for being such a grump today--will be back to my happy self tomorrow!
Often lost in my hobbies and sometimes this thing called life. Wandering through midlife and wondering how I got here. Late diagnosed AuDHD and a Scorpio. Cat and snail admirer. :blobCat_smile: :SNAIL_PNG:
Looking to make friends and prefer to use Mastodon for the things I love.
Bear lino from 2023. Trying to find some levity with art these days because 2026 has been off to such a dark start. Hope you're all doing okay out there. 🩶
Epiphany is time for my #linocut of Perchta, also known as Frau Perchta or Berchta (or Bertha in English), a figure from Alpine folklore, who visits during the 12 days of Christmas. Her name may come from “the bright one” or the German word for the feast of the Epiphany and her history is linked to white robbed goddesses like Holda who oversaw spinning and weaving or the goddess Frigg and she emerged from Germanic and 🧵
My linocut card of Perchta in pale blue on white agains a background of birch trees. She is illustrated like a playing card with two versions: right side up young and beautiful, with crown, fur coat and holding a flame in her hand and upside down a terrifying crone in a hood with a knife. Text at the top reads “Happy Holidays” and at the bottom “Perchta.”
“If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing.” These are words I often live by. My son recently started experimenting with #linocut printing and made me this for Xmas. I framed it and hung it on my shop wall with some other maker art. #maker#printmaking#woodworking#framing
A workshop scene featuring various framed prints with quotes about craftsmanship, a sign reading "Empire of Dust," and a red Maker emblem. There is a wooden structure on the wall, a power tool on a work surface, and a tool named X-Carve
Art projects don't always go as planned--especially PRINTMAKING projects.
I've been making one-minute-long videos--to give you a peek into my studio--and also improve my storytelling/video craftsmanship (still so much to learn!)
A new 2025 print for #artAdventCalendar with a winter solstice story. In the Gaelic mythology of Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, the divine old woman, or hag, created the landscape itself and the storms and weather of winter. Known by many names, she is the Cailleach (literally the old woman or hag) or Cailleach Bhéarra in Ireland, she is Cailleach Bheurra, or The Hag of Beara or Beira, 🧵 #linocut#printmaking#folklore#folktale#Cailleach#winter#Beira#WinterSolstice#mastoArt
My Lino block print on 8” x 10” Japanese paper shows a blue-black frame with Celtic knot in each corner with the words “The Cailleach” at the top and “Beira Queen of Winter” at the bottom in lettering inspired by Gothic Celtic letters. Inside the frame is my illustration of the Old Hag, the Cailleach marching across the rocky, hilly landscape in a winter storm in two shades of blue. She wears a cloak and great plaid and has her staff in her right hand and her hammer in the left. She has blue skin and copper coloured teeth and grimaces in the wind indicated by swirling lines. There is snow falling and the land behind her is inspired by the Hag’s Head geologic feature named for her.
For #ArtAdventCalendar Day 21 our winter solstice: This is a linocut with collaged Japanese washi papers of a procession of Kolędnicy, or Kolęda carollers through the woods to honour the sun at Winter Solstice. The tradition, also known as Koliada or kolędowanie, dates to pre-Christian times but is now become associated with Christmas and usually celebrated Christmas Eve to Epiphany. 🧵
This is my linocut print with collaged Japanese washi papers of a procession of Kolędnicy, or Kolęda carollers through the woods to honour the sun at Winter Solstice. This print is inspired by Polish festivals but there are different versions of this across a wider region. Groups of carollers go singing from house to house with a homemade star on a pole held high and in several traditional costumes. This group in a boy in long coat holding a colourful star lantern on a pole, a devil, a turón, a bear and a crane. In Polish folklore, the Turoń, which is the black, horned and shaggy animal with a flopping jaw is common at folk events including Kolęda, in times of Carnival and before Lent begins. The name comes from the word tur, meaning aurochs, an extinct ancestor of modern cattle. Carolling with the star on a pole was called “gwiazdory." Each print is 9.25" by 12.5" on Japanese washi paper with collaged paper for colours.
Bonus #artAdventCalendar: For the first day of winter, it’s the myth of Persephone. This is a linocut of the Greek myth of Persephone. The ancient Greek goddess Persephone, beloved daughter of Demeter was kidnapped by Hades, god of the underworld, and taken to his home where she was tempted with many delicious items. The pomegranate proved the most irresistible and sealed her fate. 🧵
This is my linocut of the Greek myth of Persephone holding an opened pomegranate. The block was inked 'à la poupée', with different colours applied directly to a single block. Persephone is deep indigo, with red pomegranate, lips and poppy and golden wheat.
Day 18 #artAdventCalendar my #linocut of Marie Meudrac (c. 1610-1680), a woman in science right at the transition between alchemy & chemistry. Born to a land-owning family, she moved to the Château de Grosbois after marrying, where she became good friends with Countess de Guiche. She wrote ‘La Chymie Charitable et Facile, en Faveur des Dames’ [Easy Charitable Chemistry for Ladies]. She had her own lab where she tested all her remedies & 🧵
My linocut portrait of Marie Meurdrac in her laboratory is printed on 11” x 14” white Japanese paper in a gradient of dark blue at the bottom to gold at the top. A 17th century lady in a dress with hair piled on top of her head is leaning on a table with head resting on one hand as she reads a book. She is surrounded by tools of her trade like vessels of various shapes, scales and has shelves of jars with alchemical symbols on them. There is text, carved in reverse with elongated s’s with a quotation, ‘Les Esprits n’ont point de sexe’ (or minds have no sexe… that is, one’s sex is irrelevant to the ability to think and learn). There are medicinal plants (rosemary and tansy) hanging above her. In the furnace are flames, tongs and crucible.
Another 2025 print for #artAdventCalendar, here’s one I made for Folktale Week: My 8” x 10” hand-carved and hand-printed lino block print illustration of the beloved fairytale East of the Sun, West of the Moon shows the bewitched polar bear prince holding the charm, a magic silver bell along with his bride with the aurora in the night sky beyond them. 🧵
My 8” x 10” Lino block print ‘East of the Sun, West of the Moon.’ It shows a standing polar bear facing forward with one arm around a girl with braids in a dress and a bell between his paws. It’s printed in a dark blue-black. The girl has round pink cheeks. There’s a hint of silver for the bell. Behind the bear the aurora glows green.
Day 16 #artAdventCalendar the woman who figured out why lead is particularly stable & 2nd woman to win the Nobel Prize for #physics: German-American theoretical #physicist Maria Goeppert Mayer (1906-1972). As the series of increasingly large atomic nuclei grows with additional nucleons (protons p & neutrons n) from hydrogen to transuranic elements, there are points where the binding energy of the next nucleon is a lot lower than the last. 🧵 #womenInSTEM#sciart#linocut#printmaking#mastoArt
My linocut portrait of Maria Goeppert Mayer on 11” x 14” white Japanese paper shows the nuclear shell model energy states in lime green up the left side. Next to this are the magic numbers rising vertically (sums of available energy states): 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, 126 and associated elements for nuclei with those numbers of protons: He, O, Ca, Ni, Sn, Pb with the final hypothetical element unlabelled, all in dark blue. A 3/4 portrait from the chest up in dark blue is all the right side. Mayer has short hair, and wears a dark blouse with long thin white scarf draped around her neck, untied. Below the magic numbers are increasingly large representations of nuclei with increasing numbers of gold and white nucleons like clumps of balls.
Today is #MonkeyDay so here’s my Sun Wukong the Monkey King, hero of Chinese folklore (and throughout Asia) as well as the 16th century novel by Wu Cheng’en, ‘Journey to the West’.
Before embarking on his humorous epic adventure (and ultimately helping to recover Buddhist sutras) this irrepressible character was born from a stone, becomes a King of monkeys, acquires immortality through 🧵
My linocut print of Sun Wukong or Monkey. In my print Monkey is helping himself to those Peaches of Immortality. The block is printed by hand in dark brown ink onto lovely 8”x 10” pearlescent paper in a golden cream colour, with collages washi (chine-collé) papers for his blue jacket, orange striped tiger skin pants, red striped phoenix feathers and peaches (pale orange fruit with green leaves).
Day 12 #artAdventCalendar is my #linocut of brilliant trailblazing US #geologist & prof Florence Bascom (1862-1945) who championed women’s education, & used polarizing microscopes for detailed petrographic analysis to show that rocks previously identified as sedimentary were in fact metamorphosed volcanic rocks she called aporhyolite (implying a change in rhyolite, a silica rich igneous rock, as in her thin sections 🧵 https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1879958345 #printmaking#womenInSTEM#histsci#sciart
My linocut portrait of geologist Florence Bascom as a young woman from neck up, in blue, looking at the viewer with her curly hair pulled back wearing a blouse with large lace collar on green vinyl. Behind her are two geological cross-sections with layers carved with different patterns to indicate different rock materials in black. Below on either side are two circular diagrams: these are thin sections of rhyolite printed in pale beige, brown, and black.