Ele Willoughby

The 12yo wants me to announce pre-existing animal awareness days and let people know they aren’t his.

He didn’t declare World Rat Day, but they do make good pets, if you live outside Alberta. (They take their rat ban seriously.)

My small linocut print “Da shu: The Rat: The Big Mouse” shows a side view of a rat with some chatter (uncarved bits) and the Chinese character for rat, in black on white.

A throwback for World Rat Day from my collection of Chinese Zodiac prints.

minouette.etsy.com/listing/1260...

#Rat #WorldRatDay #ChineseZodiac #linocut #printmaking

Tardi G is a perfect name!

Anolis proboscis - Wikipedia

Today the 12yo has decided it’s Pinocchio Anole Awareness Day!

He says he imagines the lady anole sitting there, being normal, surrounded by males with increasingly improbably long noses shouting, “No, my nose is perfect!”

It’s World Wildlife Day but he says that’s too vague & so he’s claiming it.

@vexedmuddler.bsky.social

in “stink fights” by wafting their pheromone-soaked tails at opponents so you wouldn’t want them to plot against you.

I love the weird and wonderful terms of venery - the collective nouns for groups of animals (and other things). Some are evocative, some strange and obscure.

#linocut #printmaking

The ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) is a wet-nosed primate, endemic to Madagascar. It lives from the forest gallery to the scrub and is omnivorous but it is sadly endangered.

They live in large groups and are very social. They huddle for warmth not to conspire… but this is an animal which engages

My linocut print of a huddled group of ring-tailed lemurs looking suspiciously at the viewer. They are grey with black and white striped tails, black face and brown eyes. In black letters above it reads “A conspiracy” and in black and white striped letters below it reads “Lemurs.”

This linocut shows a conspiracy of lemurs in all senses of the words. 🧪🐡 The collective noun for a group of lemurs is a “conspiracy”. Isn’t that marvelous? These ring-tailed lemurs definitely appear to be up to something. Caught in the act of scheming. The word “lemurs” mimics their tails of course!

Xipholeptos notoides <p>A tiny squid species found in sheltered seagrass and rocky reef. It has small, rounded 'wings' at the top of the mantle and a more elongated body than the more charasmatic southern dumpling squid, ...

The 12yo has declared it Southern Pygmy Squid Awareness Day!

These smallest of cephalopods (with mantles only 2.5 cm or less) are found off Australia’s southern and eastern coast and are ridiculously cute.

I love public art!

It was legitimately really weird how quickly she went from saying how she knew nothing about bees, to ‘how dare you suggest anything other than honeybees are the solution.’

People want to help but have misconceptions which occasions they are really attached to.

I had a group art show about native bees and the museum invited an unrelated artist and we delicately explained that we didn’t want works about honeybees to confuse the issue.

The curator’s response? “So you want to KILL ALL THE Honeybees?!” (We said nothing of the sort.) So that was awkward.

Did you know that the bees that need saving are NOT honeybees?

Honeybees are the dairy cows of bees. People brought them over from Europe to make us honey.

The problem with honeybees, esp in resource-limited ecosystems (like hey! cities!) is that they compete with our native bees for food.

Spellcheck just tried to replace “grid of convex mirrors” with “frog of convex mirrors” and I am going to be thinking about that for a long time.

My spelling and proofreading for spelling skills are lacklustre at best and this is the kind of help I could really do without.

Detail of Chimera, Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach showing grid of convex mirrors in red plastic holders reflecting the beach

The simple structure had 12 round convex mirrors in a 3 x 4 grid on each of the 4 sides, with slight differences in mounting angle. So views were slightly distorted & combined a little unexpected & changed greatly with position. Very simple but intriguing.

#WinterStations #publicArt #Toronto

Chimera, Winter Stations, Woodbine Beach showing grid of convex mirrors

consequence of winter on the beach). The transparency or translucency is intended to vary with the freeze-thaw cycle of the water/ice. This one was definitely crafted with the knowledge that kids would climb the lifeguard chair to look out over it.

Lastly, Chimera by Denys Horodnyak & Enzo Zak Lux

A detail of Glaciate, part of Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach showing a corner, wood framing and translucent walls. You can see the walls are actually filled with tubes filled to varying amounts with ice, water and a little sand.

Glaciate, part of Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach looks like a low rectangular building open to the sky framed in wood with translucent walls. From a distance it made me think of a shower stall. It’s surrounded with sand and sky.

collaboration with Ming Chuan University School of Design did not look especially interesting from a distance but it was very pleasing to walk through. It felt like a maze, walking through translucent walls filled with thin pipes with some water (and now some sand, which I think was an unplanned

This is one end of Specularia, part of Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach with burgundy wood frame, blue plywood rectangular tunnel and blue sheer curtains flapping in the wind

One of the small windows in Specularia with blue plywood wall, raw plywood square frame and view of lake and sky

One of the small windows in Specularia with blue plywood wall, raw plywood rectangular frame and view of sand. This window was horizontal but mirrors gave a view downwards

framing windows. I think I have seen other installations about framing views of the beach, but I liked the movement of the curtains in the wind and how the hidden mirrors meant the views in the sequence of windows were not predictable.

Glaciate by TMU Department of Architectural Science in

detail of Crest showing the shapes made with the curved grid of orthogonal parabolas of wood.

Two children seated on top of Crest, as part of Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach, surrounded by sand, sky and Lake Ontario

The colours of the wood and play of light and shadows were very nice. I don’t think they intended viewers to climb it, but everything is a jungle gym if you try hard enough.

Specularia by Tornado Soup (Andrew Clark) was simple but effective: it made a sort of tunnel with several interior boxes

This is the Crest installation, part of Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach. A structure made of a curved grid of parabolic wood planks mimics a wave. There’s a seat where shelter from the wind

They looked a little surreal in person. As you circle around them they dissolve into simple stripes and reform into hands.

Crest, by the University of Waterloo School of Architecture and Department of Architectural Engineering was lovely and topical, creating a sort of wave-shaped shelter.

As described this is one of the two giant hands made of round planar rainbow striped planes, emerging from Woodbine beach as part of the Winter Stations public art exhibition. This image is cropped so you mainly see fingers and sky.

As described this is one of the two giant hands made of round planar rainbow striped planes, emerging from Woodbine beach as part of the Winter Stations public art exhibition.

We finally got at chance to go see the Winter Stations on Woodbine Beach. There were only four this year. First up is ‘Embrace’ by Will Cuthbert. The two giant rainbow stripes hands made of irregular round planar shapes, emerging from the beach and cupping the lifeguard station were very effective.🧵

I will. Thanks!

The “burquoise” is uncommon on ceramics and I had seen that specific photo . 😆

Suzanne is your cousin? Small world!

I’m an “A.i.” abolitionist - gregpak.net I’m an “A.i.” abolitionist. No consumer-facing LLMs or generative “A.i.” in anything. Sure, machine learning in science and a f...

Thrilled to see folks saying they've canceled their ChatGPT subs because of this.

If I've got you this far, please consider my pitch for ditching ALL generative "A.i." ❤️

gregpak.net/2025/12/19/i...

Trading bones for money with supernatural creatures. Perfectly normal stuff.

My linocut tooth fairy is shaped like a tooth with two roots instead of legs and little bird-like wings and a small grinning face, printed in gold ink on white Japanese paper. It appears to have one gold filling int its own teeth. There’s a purple heart below its face with “TOOTH FAIRY” carved into it.

Apparently it’s National Tooth Fairy Day🧚‍♀️🦷

I made this linocut when my son lost his first tooth. I made him (& several other small children) little tooth fairy shaped pockets in which to hide their teeth to exchange them for cash.

#linocut #printmaking #NationalToothFairyDay #folklore

Pseudocreobotra wahlbergi - Wikipedia

Today the 12yo has declared it Spiny Flower Mantis Awareness Day!

Look at these guys! Besides the big eye spots they are variable in colour. Maybe light green, but they can equally be tinted yellow, pink, or red, and sit there pretending to be a flower until hapless prey try to pollinate them.

Yes, the book I read about her made it sound like she just didn’t sleep much. If she travelled for a conference or talk, she would cook her husband’s meals in advance so he could heat them up in her absence.

Four views of a ceramic box with sculpted beetle on the lid

Four views of a ceramic box with sculpted cicada on the lid

Four views of a ceramic box with sculpted beetle on the lid

Attn: people who like bugs
Re: bugs
There are two beetles and a cicada left in the shop. Leslielevings.bigcartel.com