Ele Willoughby, PhD

Artist, printmaker and marine geophysicist.
Settler in Tkaronto (she/her)

Shop: https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/minouette
Blog: http://minouette.blogspot.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.minouette/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/minouette.bsky.social

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Last Notes

2026-04-28 11:46:16 GMT

Happy birthday to British #engineer, #mathematician, #physicist & #inventor Hertha Ayrton (1854-1923). I’ve shown her in my #linocut with a diagram of the dividers from her 1st of 26 (!) patents, one of her diagrams about the origin & growth of ripple marks & one of her diagrams of an electric arc lamp (a subject on which she literally wrote the textbook).⁠
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Born Phoebe Sarah Marks, she was the 3rd 🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/966154261
#printmaking #sciart #WomenInSTEM #histsci #suffragette #mastoArt
https://spore-social.s3.de.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/482/150/070/622/259/original/350fa734cb948805.jpeg

2026-04-26 12:35:09 GMT

Last week of April means it’s time for #InverteFest! This time along with the collections of #invertebrate #sciart, they’ve published an anthology! They paired up authors and illustrators and made a marvellous invertebrate themed online book. Check out our sweet board book introducing the little ones to insect friends, included in the anthology. ‘Meet the Pollinators’ is written by Lisa Jaffe and illustrated by me.
🧵1/2
#pollinators #printmaking
https://spore-social.s3.de.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/470/993/220/914/004/original/49f33602c6f37371.jpeg

2026-04-25 12:05:07 GMT

Happy birthday to Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska (1925-2015) a Polish #paleobiologist, famous for a series of Polish-Mongolian expeditions she lead from 1963-1971 to the Gobi desert! There she discovered dinosaurs including the Deinocheirus, plus she & team found the “Fighting Dinosaurs” fossil specimen in 1971 preserving a Protoceratops & Velociraptor trapped in combat about 74 million years ago. 🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1845165728
#womenInSTEM #sciart #histsci #mastoArt
https://spore-social.s3.de.io.cloud.ovh.net/media_attachments/files/116/465/232/793/595/075/original/6199b04942e85244.jpeg

2026-04-18 14:43:01 GMT

If you need a little microbiology in your fabrics you can find my radiolarians in the minouette Spoonflower shop in a few different colourways. I love their shapes!
Radiolarians (or radiolaria) are a type of tiny creature -amoeboid protozoa which produce mineral skeletons.
They occur as zooplankton throughout the oceans and their tiny skeletal remains can be used as diagnostic fossils to date submarine sediments.
https://www.spoonflower.com/en/collections/851150-ocean-life-by-minouette
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #radiolarian #pattern
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2026-04-17 11:37:48 GMT

A wee bat print for Bat Appreciation Day!
#linocut #printmaking #bat #washi #wildlifeArt #mastoArt
https://spore.social/system/media_attachments/files/116/419/841/828/731/903/original/3cfc54158ac5680a.jpeg

2026-04-16 20:28:39 GMT

Raccoon Greetings for National High Five Day! This is a portrait of a former neighbour who showed up at my back door like this, to enquire as to where I had moved the compost bin. So I took his photo and made a print.
Toronto belongs to the raccoons. They just let us live here because we have good snacks.
#Raccoon 🦝 #linocut #printmaking #HighFive #typography #urbanEcology #wildlife #Toronto 🇨🇦
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2026-04-03 14:16:14 GMT

There’s a tradition in my family that when you turn 13 your grandmother makes you a quilt. My grandmother died when I was 3, so I was very touched when my great-aunt (who I had only met a couple of times) made me a quilt when I turned 13.
My Mom never learned to quilt but I want to continue this tradition. I am honorary auntie to my dear late friend’s son so I made him a quilt when he turned 13, a few years ago, 🧵1/2
#linocut #printmaking #wip #quilting #family
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2026-04-02 11:36:10 GMT

Happy birthday #entomologist & scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717)! Her stepdad Jacob Marrel & students trained her as an artist. She began painting insects & plants by 13. She wrote, “I spent my time investigating insects. [...] I realized that other caterpillars produced beautiful butterflies or moths, and that silkworms did the same. This led me to collect all the caterpillars I could find in order to see how they changed”.⁠
⁠🧵1/
#printmaking #sciart #histsci
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2026-04-01 11:46:25 GMT

Happy birthday to French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Marie-Sophie Germain (1776 – 1831), known as Sophie. She taught herself mathematics using books in her father’s library and by corresponding with leading mathematicians of her day, including Lagrange, Legendre and Gauss, initially using the pseudonym Monsieur LeBlanc. Her work on elasticity theory won her the grand prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #mathematician #womenInSTEM #histsci
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2026-03-23 12:20:58 GMT

Happy birthday to one of greatest mathematicians of all time Emmy Noether (1882-1935), here with her eponymous theorem, the backbone of modern physics. Noether’s theorem links any symmetry of a system with a conservation law. In my portrait, I chose to depict a young Emmy in front of a blackboard with a more simple formulation of her theorem and three specific applications of it, shown schematically, using pictures and 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #physics #mathematics #WomenInSTEM #mastoArt
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2026-03-22 12:11:19 GMT

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She not only showed this was untenable, she found the Pacific Ocean emits more CO2 than it absorbs! This has dire consequences for climate change.
Her work also showed how radioactive contamination spread from US tests at Bikini Atoll & lead to the ban on above ground nuclear tests. 🧵5/5

2026-03-22 12:11:07 GMT

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She enrolled in the PhD program at the renowned U of Tokyo in ‘57, where she was the 1st woman to earn a science doctorate. Her dissertation was on “The Behaviour of Carbonic Matter in Natural Water”. With Miyake, she showed that oxidation of organic material increased CO2 in the ocean; prior to this, oceanic CO2 levels were attributed to dissolved calcium carbonate & that global warming could be mitigated by seawater’s supposed ability to absorb CO2. 🧵4/5

2026-03-22 12:10:47 GMT

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financial independence. After completing her undergrad degree at Women’s College of Science (now Toho U) in ‘43 she worked at the Geochemical Laboratory at the Meteorological Research Institute (now the Japan Meteorological Agency) with her mentor, marine chemist & lab director Miyake Yasuo, who had a strict policy against gender discrimination. She developed the first tool to measure CO2 in the oceans using pH & chlorinity, called Saruhashi’s Table. 🧵3/

2026-03-22 12:10:24 GMT

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Japanese Women researchers for excellence in science & mentoring women scientists.
The story goes that her interest was sparked in science watching raindrops in primary school, wondering about the source of rain. Her parents believed in education, but she had to make a case to leave a secure insurance job at 21 to study #chemistry. Her family witnessed how women struggled to support themselves without husbands or fathers in wartime. So her mother thought science might be a good way to ensure 🧵2

2026-03-22 12:09:27 GMT

March 22 is #WorldWaterDay and an apt birthday for Japanese #geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi (1920-2007) who created tools that allowed her to make 1st measurements of CO2 in seawater, raised the alarm about nuclear fallout, tracing it in oceans & researched peaceful uses of nuclear power. A supporter of women in science, she established the Society of Japanese Women Scientists & the Saruhashi Prize for 🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1842093826
#printmaking #sciart #womenInSTEM #climateChange #linocut #mastoArt
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2026-03-20 11:11:44 GMT

Happy birthday to 🇨🇦Canadian medical researcher & #biochemist Maud Menten (1879-1960). Not only was she an author of Michaelis-Menten equation for #enzyme kinetics, she invented the azo-dye coupling for alkaline phosphatase, 1st example of enzyme #histochemistry, still used in imaging of tissues today & she also performed the first #electrophoretic separation of blood haemoglobin in 1944!⁠
⁠🧵1/
#linocut #printmaking #womenInSTEM #histsci #mastoArt
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2026-03-16 13:12:05 GMT

Happy birthday to botanist & photography trailblazer Anna Atkins (1799-1871), née Children!
Atkins’ mother died when she was still an infant, but she was close with her naturalist father & received a much more scientific education than was common for women in her time. Her 250 detailed engravings of shells were used to illustrate her father’s translation of Lamarck’s ‘Genera of Shells’; 🧵
#sciart #printmaking #linocut #womenInSTEM #histsci #womensHistoryMonth
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1266367063
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2026-03-15 12:50:38 GMT

I feel this is like those test patterns they used to broadcast on TV when they were having technical difficulties (maybe they still do?)…. Anyhow, no progress here, so enjoy this cyanotype of 2 fern leaves on handmade paper with a deckle edge.
Find it and other cyanotypes here:
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4367738484
#cyanotype #fern #botanicalArt #handmadePaper #cyanotypePrint #mastoArt
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2026-03-12 11:41:02 GMT

Happy birthday to chemist William Henry Perkin (1838-1907)! This lino block print ‘William Henry Perkin Discovers Mauve’ is about how the British chemist & entrepreneur made the serendipitous discovery of the 1st synthetic organic dye: mauveine. ⁠
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Perkins entered the Royal College of Chemistry in London in 1853 when he was only 15, studying with August Wilhelm von Hofmann. 🧵1/
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/955324548
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #chemistry #histsci #mastoArt
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2026-03-06 12:53:23 GMT

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They rebuilt after a devastating fire which destroyed their home. He nursed her through smallpox. After his death, she took over the completion & publication of the Prodomus documenting 2 decades of observations with her own preface, a star catalog & maps based on their observations.
You can find a longer bio on my blog
https://minouette.blogspot.com/2026/03/elisabeth-koopmann-hevelius-set-her.html?m=1
🧵5/5
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2026-03-06 12:50:34 GMT

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assisted his observations & pursued her own interests in astronomy. She excelled at & loved observing. Her language skills allowed her to befriend & correspond with astronomers across Europe.
When Johannes published his Machina coelestis in 1673 he included 2 engravings showing Elisabeth using the octant & sextant with him respectively (so they could measure angles between celestial objects). These are the first printed images of a woman astronomer at work. 🧵4/5

2026-03-06 12:50:10 GMT

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about the moon, the first geographical book about a body other than the Earth. By 1650 he already had an international reputation, a complex of 3 houses & the largest observatory in Europe. The young Elisabeth approached him & he promised he would show her the splendour of the night sky when she was older. In 1662, his first wife died. She reminded the elder astronomer of his promise. They fell in love & wed in 1663. She ran his household, had 4 children (3 survived childhood), 🧵3/

2026-03-06 12:49:34 GMT

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because it was named for its sharp eyes, & Johannes & Elisabeth were the last of the great naked-eye astronomical observers (because he fear telescopes would introduce distortions in locations).
One of the earliest recorded women astronomers, born in Danzig, she was fascinated with astronomy from the time she was a child. The year she was born, local politician, brewer & astronomer Johannes Hevelius (1611-1687) published his beautifully & elaborately illustrated Selanographia, 🧵2/

2026-03-06 12:48:54 GMT

For the #PrinterSolstice2526 prompt angle, my #linocut of astronomer Elisabeth Koopmann-Hevelius (1647-1693) using a brass sextant to make astronomical observations & some of the new constellations her husband Johannes Hevelius named based on their observations, & she published in Prodromus Astronomiae ('Elements of Astronomy'), in 1690, after he had died. I am highlighting the Lynx constellation, 🧵1/
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4466641895
#womenInSTEM #histsci #astronomy #mastoArt
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2026-02-16 12:48:00 GMT

Happy birthday to Marjorie Rice (née Jeuck, 1923–2017) who discovered 4 new pentagonal tilings of the Euclidian plane!
The San Diego mother of 5 (6th died in infancy) completed half a correspondence art course after high school & had no training as a #mathematician but was always interested in #math & art. She began to follow SciAm writer/amateur mathematician Martin Gardner’s column, … 🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1413024426
#womenInSTEM #printmaking #mathematics #linocut #mastoArt
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2026-02-15 12:45:36 GMT

#BlackHistoryMonth is a great time to celebrate #biochemist Marie Maynard Daly (1921-2003), 1st Black woman to earn a PhD in #chemistry in the US! She made important research contributions to our understanding of the biochemisty of the cell nucleus & cardiovascular issues & the chemistry of histones & protein synthesis. She established that “no bases other than adenine, guanine, thymine, and cytosine were 🧵
#womenInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #histsci #printmaking #linocut #histmed #mastoArt
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2026-02-09 12:30:48 GMT

#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, 🧵
⁠
#linocut #printmaking #sciArt #astronaut #womenInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #histsci #mastoArt
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2026-02-08 14:42:06 GMT

Today is a good day to remind folks that all owls are superb owls!
We have all local owls in my parliament of owls:
Right to left and top to bottom the owls are: Northern saw-whet, Eastern screech, Barred, long-eared, Barn and Great Horned owl.
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4337673774
🧵
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2026-02-08 12:46:10 GMT

Happy birthday to Russian #chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (1834 – 1907) who published the periodic table. Born in Siberia, the youngest child of a large family, his father was a school principal until he lost his sight & job. His mother then restarted her family’s abandoned glass factory to support them. His father died & factory was destroyed by fire. Despite economic hardship, 13 year old Mendeleev attended the Gynasium in Tobolsk.🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/959167534
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #Mendeleev
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2026-02-05 17:13:39 GMT

For #printerSolstice2526 prompt division here is my #linocut portrait of Agnes Pockels (1862-1935), the self-taught scientist who pioneered surface science.
As a woman she did not get the chance to go to university & study physics like her theoretical physicist brother Friedrich, who discovered the Pockels effect. So at 18 she took her "passionate interest for natural science" to her household chores &
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4451882120
#womenInSTEM #sciart #histsci #printmaking #chemistry #mastoArt
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2026-02-03 12:42:05 GMT

#BlackHistoryMonth is a great time to celebrate mathematician and NASA scientist Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; 1918 – 2020). One of the first Black women employed as a NASA scientist (and its predecessor NACA), she was known for her mastery of complex manual calculations of orbital mechanics and played a pivotal role in the success of the US crewed spaceflights from the beginning.🧵
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #mastoArt #womenInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #histsci #NASA #mathematician #physics #space
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2026-01-24 12:38:07 GMT

I made a full edition of my alfalfa leafcutting bee (Megachile rotundata) cutting a leaf. The alfalfa leafcutting bee is a solitary bee originally from Europe which has been spread to all continents but Antartica for agriculture. In North America it has become feral and widespread. 🧵1/2
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4445575303
#linocut #printmaking #bee #Megachile #solitaryBee #pollinator #washi
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2026-01-18 13:15:44 GMT

My Lino block print shows a fox running across the snowy ground with the aurora borealis lighting up the sky. I have made a series of arctic animal prints with the northern lights. This one also alludes to Finnish mythology of the Northern Lights. They call the aurora “revontulet” which means “fox fire” because their legendary origin with arctic foxes running so fast that their large, 🧵1/2
#arcticFox #folklore #aurora #linocut #printmaking #NorthernLights #mastoArt
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2026-01-17 12:55:32 GMT

The trail of paw prints in the snow this morning reminded me of my ‘Skunk marching through snow’ print.
#linocut #printmaking #wildlife #skunk #winter #snow
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2026-01-16 13:54:46 GMT

The 4th prompt for #PrinterSolstice2526 is “subtraction” so I thought of a scientist & talented writer who brought the world’s attention to what was missing. After publishing the sea trilogy in the 40s & 50s, when marine biologist & conservationist Rachel Carson (1907-1964) published Silent Spring in 1962 she captured the world’s attention to the risks to health & environment posed by pesticides & DDT in particular. 🧵
#printmaking #womenInSTEM #histsci #ecology #marineBiology #mastoArt
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2026-01-13 12:34:44 GMT

Joulupukki is a Finnish Christmas figure whose name translates as Yule or Christmas Goat. Pukki comes from the Teutonic root “bock”, which is a cognate of the English “buck”, and means “billy-goat”. There is an old tradition of men dressing as a goat at Yule in Finland. These nuuttipukki were evil spirits who would go from house to house demanding gifts and leftovers from the Yule feast. But over time the concept of nuutipukki merged with the idea of Santa Claus and became the 🧵
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2026-01-10 13:22:14 GMT

Another unknown birthday: Amongst the earliest recorded woman in #mathematics, Hypatia lived during the 3rd century AD in Alexandria, Egypt, which was part of the Roman Empire. She was born at some time between about 350 and 370 and died in 415 C.E. She taught philosophy, #astronomy and mathematics at a Neoplatonist school. She believed in empiricism and natural law. She was the daughter of a 🧵
#sciart #linocut #printmaking #womeninstem #geometry #histsci #astrolabe #mastoArt
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2025-12-28 18:12:22 GMT

My lino block print portrait for #PrinterSolstice prompt addition shows the amateur pioneering American scientist, inventor & women's rights advocate Eunice Newton Foote (1819-1888) who did the earliest experiments to show the insulating effect of certain gases & correctly concluded that increasing carbon dioxide levels would affect atmospheric temperature and climate, which we now call the Greenhouse Effect. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #womenInSTEM #HistSci #climateScience #mastoArt
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2025-12-26 16:12:08 GMT

Happy Boxing Day!
Hope you had a great Christmas if you’re celebrating and are enjoying your vacation otherwise. This is a little sneak peek of a new print I made recently of an alfalfa leaf cutter in the act of cutting its telltale half-moon cut in a leaf. I made a collection of prints to illustrate a little board book written by Lisa Jaffe about our pollinator friends in the garden. #InverteFest is hosting an anthology! 🧵
#wildBees #linocut #printmaking #invertebrate #pollinator #nativeBee
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2025-12-22 13:37:03 GMT

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We need to foster the insects to keep ecosystems functioning. A large percentage of the food we eat depends directly on pollinators. They serve many plants and play important roles in food webs. Pollination makes plants that we and wildlife use for shelter, fuel and which moderate temperature and of course, produce oxygen we need to breathe. Natural habitats around us could not exist without them. Our fate is tied to that of the insects.
🧵2/

2025-12-22 13:36:39 GMT

Day 22 #artAdventCalendar my bee (and other pollinator) propaganda I made for Manufactured Ecosystems. Thinking about the future of pollination and seeking solutions from technological and nature-based knowledge. This is essentially my conclusion: we can aid our beleaguered pollinators with technology but their continued success is vital. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #typography #insects #entomology #ecology #pollinators #nativeBees #butterflies #moths #manufacturedEcosystems #mastoArt
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2025-12-21 15:01:23 GMT

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Her skin is blue and her teeth coloured like copper. She has one eye. She rules from Samhain (November 5) through Beltane (May 1), when despite her efforts to fight against spring, the goddess Brìghde takes over and rules summer through to the next Samhain.
This print is part of my ongoing series of slightly sinister winter and yuletide folklore.
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4403752447
🧵4/4

2025-12-21 15:00:39 GMT

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the land and then her cloak is washed white as snow. She then lays it down and her white washed snowy great plaid then blankets the landscape with snow.
She is a giant credited with making the mountains and she carries a hammer to shape the landscape. Her staff freezes the ground. She is said to be the mother of all the gods and goddesses. She is the personification of winter, especially of destructive storms. She is associated with prominent, craggy mountains. 🧵3/4

2025-12-21 14:58:14 GMT

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Queen of Winter in Scotland, and the Caillegh in Manx. In Old Irish, Caillech means ‘veiled one’, and her name may be a reference to her woollen cloak.
As well as her cloak, staff and hammer, she is dressed in a great plaid, in accordance with folklore from the west coast of Scotland which tells how she ushers in winter on the solstice by washing her great plaid in the Gulf of Corryvreckan (which means a whirlpool of the plaid). Over three days the roar of the tempest can be heard across 🧵2/

2025-12-21 14:57:19 GMT

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
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2025-12-21 13:37:16 GMT

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Other common costumes include forest creatures like the bear and bird here and devil, and other characters (like Death, Angels, Goats, Foxes, Dziad - an old man, Wise Men and modern ones associated with Christmas).
Happy December Solstice to you!

2025-12-21 13:36:34 GMT

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house with a homemade star on a pole held high and in several traditional costumes.
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.” 🧵

2025-12-21 13:36:14 GMT

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This print is inspired by Polish festivals but there are different versions of this across a wider region. It is known for instance in Ukrainian (“Коляда”, Kolyadá), Belarusian (Каляда, Kalada, Kaliada), Polish (Szczodre Gody kolęda [kɔˈlɛnda]), Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian (Коледа, Коледе, koleda, kolenda), Lithuanian (Kalėdos, Kalėda), Greek (Koleda, Κόλιντα, Κόλιαντα), Russian (kolyadovanye, Колядования) and Czech, Slovak, Slovene (koleda). Groups of carollers go singing from house🧵

2025-12-21 13:35:28 GMT

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. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #WinterSolstice #folklore #koliada #kolęda #kolędnicy #costume #mastoArt #carolling
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2025-12-21 13:04:11 GMT

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. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #persephone #pomegranate #GreekMythology #winter
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2025-12-19 13:24:42 GMT

Day 19 #artAdventCalendar my #linocut of Italian #neurobiologist Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909 – 2012) who won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with for her co-discovery of nerve growth factor (NGF)
Youngest of 4 of a Turin Jewish family, she planned to be a writer but the death of a nanny to cancer inspired her to pursue medicine. Inspired by neurohistologist Levi to study nerves as an undergrad, 🧵
#womenInSTEM #sciart #histsci #histmed #printmaking
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2025-12-17 13:58:55 GMT

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. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #fairytale #illustration #polarBear #EastOfTheSunWestOfTheMoon #aurora #folktale #folktaleWeek #mastoArt
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2025-12-13 13:59:29 GMT

Day 13 #artAdventCalendar This regal (poodle) lady was a recent commission. Sometimes people offer you great photos to work from. I was uncertain about how to carve the curly fur, but my client said, “Oh! the curlz!” so I think I got it ☺️
#linocut #printmaking #dog #petPortrait #poodle #reliefPrint
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2025-12-11 13:42:00 GMT

Day 11 #ArtAdventCalendar: Happy birthday to trailblazing US #astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863 – 1941), here with her stellar classification system which sorted stars based on spectral types, revealing their temperature from hot blue to cool red stars: O,B,A, F, G, K & M. Named the Harvard Classification after the university, her tremendous contribution was less visible. 🧵
#printmaking #womenInSTEM #histsci #DisabledInSTEM #linocut #mastoArt
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2025-12-10 12:44:57 GMT

Happy birthday to Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), who published the first computer program. She worked together with Charles Babbage, the inventor of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine (the first computers), correcting his notes on how to calculate Bernoulli Numbers with the Analytical Engine. 🧵⠀
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#sciart #linocut #printmaking #mathematics #mathart #compsci #programming #histsci #WomenInSTEM #technology #artAdventCalendar #mastoArt
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2025-12-10 12:22:44 GMT

Day 10 #artAdventCalendar A piece for Manufactured Ecosystems about the future of pollination about who decides what gets pollinated if humans and our devices are the only pollinators.
The definition of “weed” is usually pretty arbitrary and usually all sorts of native plants get caught up in our human biases. Milkweed is insanely popular with the pollinators in my garden and 🧵
#linocut #sciart #printmaking #pollination #future #milkweed #ecology #manufacturedEcosystems #mastoArt
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2025-12-07 14:02:18 GMT

Day 7 #artAdventCalendar my #linocut horseshoe crab (Tachypeus gigas) in grey, blue-bronze and dark brown on 8” x 8” cream-coloured Japanese paper with bark inclusions. They get their name from their horseshoe like shape but they are not crabs; they are chelicerates, more closely related to arachnids and they are “living fossils” which have changed very little since they first appeared in the Triassic. The textured sandy 🧵
#printmaking #sciart #invertebrates #horseshoeCrab #washi #mastoArt
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2025-12-05 12:20:19 GMT

Day 5 of #artAdventCalendar - For the Manufactured Ecosystems art show about the future of pollination I looked at what nature-inspired technologies exist or are already proposed or that I could envision to pollinate plants, faced with a precipitous drop in pollinator numbers. But, I am also turned an artist’s eye to larger implications.
There are already researchers working on artificial pollination with tiny 🧵
#sciart #linocut #printmaking #pollination #pollinators #manufacturedEcosystems
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2025-11-28 12:23:16 GMT

Another thing I have been exploring this year is combining other media with cyanotype. This is a unique hand made multimedia print with linocuts and cyanotype on watercolour paper (11” x 14”). On top of the cyanotype print of Canada goldenrod, I made a lino block print of the wildflower along with a monarch butterfly and an endangered Karner blue butterfly.
It and everything else is on sale this week at minouette.Etsy.com
#cyanotype #linocut #printmaking #pollinator #multimedia #mastoArt
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2025-11-27 13:56:08 GMT

I’m going to share prints I completed this year until the end of 2025 and today it’s my Parliament of Owls linocut. Find them all on sale this week at minouette.etsy.com!
I love the whimsical terms of venery for groups of animals and have an ongoing series of #linocut #termsOfVenery prints. 🧵
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/4337673774
#mastoArt #printmaking #sciart #owls #sawwhet #screechOwl #BarredOwl #LongEaredOwl #BarnOwl #GreatHornedOwl #biodiversity
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2025-11-26 14:12:09 GMT

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Like the bees, it’s an important pollinator and friend to flowers and gardeners. The transverse-banded flower fly and purple coneflowers are native to eastern North America. Each print is made by hand on assorted, beautiful Japanese washi papers and collaged to make the final 8” x 10” image, which are hand-embellished with posca pens.
Find it and all my prints 25% off this week at minouette.etsy.com
🧵2/2

2025-11-26 14:11:51 GMT

I was just looking over the new prints I made in 2025. Think about portraying pollinators. This print shows a great little pollinator in the garden: a transverse-banded flower fly (Eristalis transversa) on Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower. Because of its yellow stripes, tendency to hover (it’s a hover fly after all) and love of flowers, this little insect can be mistaken for a bee, but it’s a bee-mimic fly. 🧵1/2
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #insect #flowerFly #echinacea
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2025-11-25 13:45:18 GMT

Some apple blossoms, but bigger. Work in progress, about pollinators again.
#linocut #printmaking #appleBlossom #wip #flower #printmaker #mastoArt
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2025-11-24 12:48:10 GMT

A throwback for World Walrus Day - this limited edition walrus #linocut. Rapid climate change and loss of sea ice in the arctic is a challenge for these extraordinary mammals.
#walrus #WorldWalrusDay #printmaking #sciart #arctic #mammal
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2025-11-23 18:22:03 GMT

Today is Fibonacci Day. November 23 if written in MM/DD format recalls the #mathematician Leonardo Bonaccio of Pisa (c. 1170 - c. 1240 or 50) aka Fibonacci’s sequence (1,1,2,3…) where each number is the sum of the previous two. He used it to describe rabbit populations, but the sequence is commonly observed in nature, including in the spiral of a nautilus shell.🧵
#linocut #printmaking #mathematics #mathart #sciart #nautilus #GoldenRatio #GoldenSpiral #Fibonacci #fibonacciday2025 #FibonacciDay
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2025-11-18 13:54:27 GMT

Apparently it’s #FlyDay or #DrosophilaDay in honour of the day Drosophila melanogaster, the common fruit fly or vinegar fly line w1118 (the first variant with the white eyes) was isolated, so enjoy some drosophila #sciart! This print highlights the model organism with a ring of 5 of the different eye colour genetic mutations.
A species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae, D. melanogaster is used as a model organism 🧵1/2
#linocut #printmaking #washi #fruitFly
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2025-11-14 12:56:50 GMT

Happy birthday to geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) who in his famous ‘Principles of Geology,’ wrote that to avoid some sources of prejudice in understanding #geology would require an Amphibious Being, who could, say, compare processes happening today on land & those happening below water with what we see in the geological record. Likewise the Amphibious Being would be better able to identify fossils being familiar with life on 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #histsci #amphibian #mastoArt #geology
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2025-11-07 13:35:31 GMT

Happy birthday to #physicist Lise Meitner (1878-1968) who explained #nuclear #fission. She worked with chemists Hahn & Straßmann in 30s Berlin, investigating whether there were any stable elements beyond uranium. They discovered bombarding nucleus of U-235 with neutrons actually triggered it to fission, or break, into 2 nuclei of roughly half the size & some free neutrons! 🧵1/5
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #histsci #womenInSTEM ⁠ #MastoArt
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2025-11-07 12:35:48 GMT

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and in 1995 became the 1st woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris. Born Maria Salomea Skłodowska in Warsaw, she studied secretly at the Floating University there before moving to Paris where she earned higher scientific degrees, met her PhD supervisor & future husband Pierre.
She was one of the pioneers who helped explain radioactivity, a term she coined. She was 1 of the 1st to developed a means of isolating radioactive isotopes & discovered not 1, but 2 new elements:🧵

2025-11-07 12:35:18 GMT

Happy birthday to Marie Skłodowska-Curie (1867 – 1934, Polish-born, naturalized-French #physicist & #chemist at work in her lab. The contents of her lab glassware appropriately glow-in-the-dark!
Marie Curie was the 1st woman to win a Nobel prize, the only woman to ever win TWO Nobel prizes, and the only person ever to win in two different sciences: #physics & #chemistry! She was also the 1st woman prof at the U of Paris, 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #WomenInSTEM #histstm
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2025-11-05 13:55:31 GMT

Yama orabi- the mountain shouter is a terrifying Japanese echo yōkai. It mimics people’s yells in the mountain. It looks like a little bird with an exceptionally large head and sharp pointy teeth!
Work in progress for #folktaleweek2025 #folktaleWeekEcho
#wip #linocut #printmaking #folklore
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2025-10-23 11:09:17 GMT

For the #Spacetober_challenge day 23 prompt space station I made a tiny linocut print of the track of the ISS across the night sky.
#linocut #printmaking #miniprint #night #forest #spaceArt #sciArt #mastoArt
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2025-10-21 11:24:57 GMT

For Day 21 of @spacetober_challenge #spacetober_challenge prompt star: trailblazing US #astronomer Annie Jump Cannon (1863 – 1941), here with her stellar classification system which sorted stars based on spectral types, revealing their temperature from hot blue to cool red stars: O,B,A, F, G, K & M. Named the Harvard Classification after the university, her tremendous contribution was less visible. 🧵1/
#printmaking #womenInSTEM #histsci #DisabledInSTEM #linocut #mastoArt
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2025-10-17 11:31:59 GMT

Happy birthday to 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, formed and runs her own company researching the application of technology to daily life, and even 🧵
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#linocut #printmaking #sciArt #astronaut #womenInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #histsci
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2025-10-15 11:38:07 GMT

For International Mushroom Day: my hand-carved lino block reduction print of a clump of poisonous, Eastern jack-o-lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus illudens) on a hardwood tree stump. The gills of these North American mushrooms are bioluminescent and glow green. My print has a layer of glow-in-the-dark ink so it too glows! The glow is believed to attract nocturnal insects which can then spread spores. 🧵1/2
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #mushroom #InternationalMushroomDay #glowInTheDark #MastoArt
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2025-10-12 12:12:53 GMT

For day 12 of @spacetober_challenge #spacetober_challenge prompt eclipse: #mathematician & #astronomer Nicole-Reine Lepaute (1723-1788) and her calculated path of the solar eclipse of 1764. She also worked with Alexis Clairaut & Jérôme Lalande to precisely calculate the date of return of Halley’s Comet, solving the notorious 3-body by hand (including the gravitational pull of Jupiter & Saturn on orbit). They worked in parallel, calculating for 🧵1/
#printmaking #womeninSTEM #histsci #sciart
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2025-10-08 11:35:23 GMT

For #spacetober_challenge day 8 prompt propulsion, my portrait of #mathematician, aeronautical #engineer, philanthropist & Cherokee ‘hidden figure’ of the space race: Mary Golda Ross (1908-2008).⁠
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Great-great-granddaughter of Chief John Ross, who was forced to lead his people on the Trail of Tears, Ross attributed her success in math to the Cherokee tradition of encouraging equal education for boys and girls.🧵
#printmaking #sciart #womenInSTEM #Indigineer #planetaryScience #linocut #mastoArt
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2025-10-01 11:42:40 GMT

For #InternationalCoffeeDay: Once I’ve had a coffee, I can face the day, and contemplate doing things which require higher brain functions, like carving letters in reverse, or the molecular structure of caffeine. This is a linoleum block print, in a rich, dark, coffee-brown on beige (like creamy coffee) coloured Japanese kozo paper, 8” by 10” paper (20.3 cm by 25.4 cm). The print is my illustration of a coffee mug 🧵
#coffee #linocut #printmaking #chemistry #sciArt #molecule #caffeine #washi
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2025-09-30 11:47:04 GMT

Day 30 of #SciArtSeptember prompt dream: Kepler’s Somnium. This hand-printed linocut illustrates astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler’s science fiction story Somnium, or “The Dream”. Kepler (1571-1630) wrote the strange manuscript in Latin, and circulated it amongst friends, with the intention of eventually publishing it but he died before that could could happen. (It also escaped his control and contributed to 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #histsci #sciart #Kepler #mastoArt #astronomy
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2025-09-29 12:57:18 GMT

Though kyanite is used in the arts, hematite is the most important pigment left standing, & vital to millennia of art history so easily wins the art vote. Red ochre, earth, Venetian red, mars red & English red. A stable, rich, vibrant red in cave paintings through contemporary paintings! #MinCup25
#TeamHematite
Vote for hematite here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r4m01
#EarhSci #artHist #SciComm #minerals
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2025-09-24 13:20:29 GMT

Happy 100th anniversary to the extraordinary thesis of astrophysicist Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (1900-1979), a trailblazer for women in #astronomy who discovered that hydrogen & helium are the most common elements in the universe!
Currently sold out of her portrait but check out this great explanation of her achievement:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin-stars
#womenInSTEM #sciart #histSTEM
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2025-09-22 12:51:28 GMT

While molybdenite gets some physics points (source of Re for geochronology, Mo used as a catalyst, battery electrodes, alloys of iron & semiconductors),
Dioptase can be made into jewelry & (though a rare pigment) has been on artwork used since Neolithic times so it wins my art vote!
 #MinCup25
Vote here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r2m06
#scicomm #minerals #EarthSci #artHist
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2025-09-22 11:28:59 GMT

For day 22 of #sciArtSeptember prompt fellowship, I am sharing my portrait of #astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who took her $3 million Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for her discovery of #pulsars & leadership in science and donated money to the Institute of Physics for PhD scholarships for underrepresented people including women, ethnic minorities & refugee students in physics! #linocut #printmaking #histsci
As a grad student in ‘67 she discovered the 1st radio pulsar, a 🧵
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2025-09-16 11:54:10 GMT

Happy birthday Canadian scientist/writer Ursula Franklin (1921 – 2016), thinker on role of tech in society, advocate for women in STEM, peace & social justice. Her research interests were guided by her principles, including gathering evidence of the harmful health effects of radiation from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons or her work on political & societal impacts of support of tech & its use.⁠
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Born in Munich, she survived Nazi 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #WomenInSTEM #histsci #mastoArt
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2025-09-16 11:41:26 GMT

For Day 16 #sciArtSeptember prompt rift: my portrait of #geologist & oceanographic #cartographer Marie Tharp (1920-2006), whose pioneering, thorough & complete ocean floor maps with Bruce Heezen, made using realms of echo sounder data, revealed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.⁠
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After studying #geology & math, Maurice ‘Doc’ Ewing at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia hired her to draft 1000s of echo sounder profiles.
🧵1/n
#sciart #printmaking #womenInSTEM #histstem #linocut #mastoArt
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2025-09-13 11:51:16 GMT

Day 13 #SciArtSeptember prompt bottleneck, I’m interpreting literally with Japanese #geochemist Katsuko Saruhashi (1920-2007) who created tools that allowed her to make 1st measurements of CO2 in seawater, raised the alarm about nuclear fallout, tracing it in oceans & researched peaceful uses of nuclear power. A supporter of women in science, she established the Society of Japanese Women Scientists & the Saruhashi 🧵1/n
#printmaking #sciart #womenInSTEM #climateChange #oceanography #linocut
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2025-09-11 11:51:02 GMT

Day 11 #SciArtSeptember prompt venomous: my linocut of a Portuguese Man o’ War floating at the surface of the sea on white 9.25” by 12.5” Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper.
These are beautiful but deadly creatures, also known as bluebottles, resemble jellyfish but are actually colonial organisms called siphonophores. They are made up of many genetically identical zooids which each perform different roles. 🧵
#linocut #printmaking #PortugueseManOWar #invertebrates #siphonophore #sciart #mastoArt
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2025-09-07 12:18:55 GMT

Sanidine is high in potassium so useful for K-Ar dating in geochronology.
Electrically conductive iron ore hematite is a pigment with a storied history in red ochre and chalk used for 164,000 years of art history (used as a pigment in the Pinacle Point Cave, South Africa)! So my arts vote goes to hematite! It also has interesting magnetic properties, is found on Mars, used in gems! #MinCup25 #scicomm
Vote hematite here: https://www.mineralcup.org/2025/vote/r1m07
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2025-09-06 12:13:18 GMT

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because they are part of the arc of immense lakes extending from the Great Lakes which are cut into the fabric of this country.
My mother grew up in Manitoba and I have family in the prairies. I still have my own illustrated travel diary from a trip my family made to and across the province when I was a very young.
https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/111397016
🧵3/3

2025-09-06 12:12:28 GMT

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could symbolize this prairie province. Manitoba is one of the few places where one can still find free-ranging herds of woods and plains bison. The early spring flower, Anemone patens, known as the “Prairie Crocus” was chosen by the school children as the floral emblem of the province in 1906. I imagined a bison roaming a field replete with prairie crocuses. I was sure to include Lake Winnepeg, Lake Manitoba through Lake Winnipegosis to Cedar Lake and even Reindeer Lake, 🧵2/3

2025-09-06 12:09:46 GMT

Day 6 #SciArtSeptember prompt is prairie. I thought I would share a throwback: My print of Manitoba with its provincial animal the bison and flower the prairie crocus (Anemone patens) in this linocut. The block was inked ‘à la poupée’ (with different colours, pale violet, umber and brown, in different areas) and printed by hand on lovely Japanese kozo (or mulberry) paper.
It’s no mystery how the bison 🧵1/
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #Manitoba #prarie #bison #prairieCrocus #Canada #mapArt
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2025-08-31 11:58:07 GMT

Another #invertebrate repeat pattern for #invertefest! This one is made with might linocut #Beetles. My print shows, from left to right, top to bottom: Goliath beetle, Calligrapha verrucosa, blowout tiger beetle, Fruhstorferia sexmaculata, Phaedon oviformis, Reindeer beetle, Ceratophyus martinez, Erythrus ardens.
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #insect #repeatPattern #surfaceDesign
Find it in my #Spoonflower
https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/20005184-beetle-collection-block-print-by-minouette
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2025-08-26 13:41:33 GMT

Happy birthday to mathematician and NASA scientist Katherine Johnson (née Coleman; 1918 – 2020). One of the first Black women employed as a NASA scientist (and its predecessor NACA), she was known for her mastery of complex manual calculations of orbital mechanics and played a pivotal role in the success of the US crewed spaceflights from the beginning. Her work included calculating the trajectories, 🧵1/
#linocut #printmaking #sciart #womenInSTEM #BlackInSTEM #histsci #mathematics #physics
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2025-08-26 11:55:25 GMT

Happy birthday to Antoine Lavoisier (26 August 1743 – 8 May 1794), a progenitor of the study of #chemistry, shown here with his wife Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier (1758 – 1836).⁠
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The couple, working closely together, modernized and quantified chemistry and the scientific method, named oxygen and hydrogen, explained the role that oxygen plays in combustion, helped modernize chemical nomenclature and discovered that mass is conserved in chemical reactions. 🧵#linocut #sciart #histsci #mastoArt
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2025-08-24 12:53:08 GMT

Happy birthday to Sophie Brahe (born either Aug 24, 1559 or Sept 22, 1556 -1643) horticulturalist, astronomer, genealogist, & alchemist with the gardens at her brother #astronomer Tycho Brahe’s Uraniborg estate, where she often assisted his research, alchemical tools & illustrations of the supernova she observed as Tycho’s assistant. 🧵1/n
Tycho trained her in horticulture & chemistry but initially discouraged astronomy. #womenInSTEM #histsci #printerSolstice #sciart #mastoArt
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2025-08-06 12:17:42 GMT

This print shows a great little pollinator in the garden: a transverse-banded flower fly (Eristalis transversa) on Echinacea purpurea or purple coneflower. Because of its yellow stripes, tendency to hover (it’s a hover fly after all) and love of flowers, this little insect can be mistaken for a bee, but it’s a bee-mimic fly. Like the bees, it’s an important pollinator and friend to flowers and gardeners. 🧵1/2
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2025-08-04 11:26:47 GMT

Happy birthday to trailblazing American computer scientist Frances Elizabeth Allen (1932 – 2020) who made foundational contributions to optimizing compilers, optimizing programs and parallel computing. She was the first woman to become an IBM Fellow, where she worked from 1957 to 2002 and as an emeritus fellow afterwards. She was the first woman to win the Turing Prize.
IBM Research was recruiting teachers 🧵1/n
#printmaking #womenInSTEM #histSci #mathematician #sciart #compsci #mastoArt
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2025-07-30 11:28:56 GMT

Happy birthday to #geologist & oceanographic #cartographer Marie Tharp (1920-2006), whose pioneering, thorough & complete ocean floor maps with Bruce Heezen, made using realms of echo sounder data, revealed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.⁠
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After studying #geology & math, Maurice ‘Doc’ Ewing at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia hired her to draft 1000s of echo sounder profiles. Women were still not allowed to participate in 🧵
#sciart #printmaking #womenInSTEM #histsci #linocut #mastoArt
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2025-07-28 11:56:41 GMT

This is a repeat pattern I made with my linocut print, on beautiful Japanese papers, about the milkweed plant, beloved of the native pollinators. Well-known for its appeal to monarch butterflies, it is also a favourite of the many different native bumblebees and insects like this small milkweed bug.
Find it in the minouette spoonflower! https://www.spoonflower.com/en/fabric/19895055-milkweed-brings-all-bugs-yard-by-minouette?sku=fbty-pf-yd-f130-d19895055
#milkweed #bumblebee #bug #milkweedBug #insects #sciart #linocut #printmaking #pattern #surfaceDesign
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2025-07-25 11:54:16 GMT

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Nobels, Franklin was not nominated. ⁠
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She also made invaluable contributions across physics, chemistry & biology, working to determining the structure of #RNA, viruses, coal & graphite. Even aside from her role in determining the structure of DNA, her research was a great benefit to society. I wanted to make sure my portrait represented all of this. The pattern on her jacket is based on her publication of structure of non-graphitizing carbon. She showed these 2 structures 🧵