Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

A photo of a piece of art. It is made of concentric layers of brightly colored plastics that have been cut into a sort of starburst shape and stitched together.

Middletown, CT: Join GNSI member Kalliopi Monoyios @eyeforscience.bsky.social on Sat August 9 at 4pm for "Hope in the Plasticine", a discussion of her #SciArt with salvaged plastics as a way to visualize waste and consider the role plastic plays in our lives.

www.wesleyanpotters.com/events/2025/...

A banner image promoting the month-long art challenge, Sci Art September 2025. The banner features an animal illustration plus text describing a monthly theme, weekly themes, and daily prompt words. The month-long theme is conservation. In order, the weekly themes are: Lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Finally, the list of daily words is as follows. Week one: Islet, canopy, jewel, riverbank, corridor, prairie, boreal. Week two: Niche, vanishing, tawny, venomous, wandering, bottleneck, mimic. Week 3: Spawning, rift, trawl, cenote, depths, glacial, reef. Week 4: Fellowship, scouting, numbered, tireless, forage, bounded, harvest. Week 5: Foresight, dream. The event is hosted by LizLagomorph and LucyGemArt.

It’s that time again. 🌟
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#sciartseptember #sciart #scienceart #scicomm

Artists worldwide are invited to enter.

Both prints & originals are welcome, and they will print digital entries so that artists who work digitally or live internationally don't have to worry about printing and shipping their works.

10% of sales proceeds will be donated to conservation causes.

Last call! Tonight is the deadline to enter the inaugural American Wildlife Art Competition & Exhibition, highlighting wildlife from anywhere in the Americas from Alaska to Argentina. More info in thread. #SciArt

artist.callforentry.org/festivals_un...

Many thanks to our outgoing volunteers, Gloria Fuentes (Education Director) and Wendy Jackelow (Membership Director), for their years of service! 💐

GNSI members, remember to log into your accounts and submit your ballots for the 2025 - 2027 Education Director and Membership Director positions! Ballots are due on August 19.

secure.gnsi.org/np/clients/n...

The cover of The Insect Epiphany: How Our Six-Legged Allies Shape Human Culture, by Barrett Klein. The cover has a tanned background and is full of illustrations of various insects like mantises and cicadas.

Oh, one more thing! Predictably, our nerds bought out all of Dr. Barrett Klein's @pupating.bsky.social books that he had brought for the whole week...in 15 minutes. But we can order signed copies from his local bookstore, Pearl Street Books in La Crosse, WI! Call them: www.pearlstbooks.com/contact

About Our Sponsors and Team | Conference 2025 Our conference would not have be successful without the help of our generous sponsors and hard-working team! We appreciate all volunteers, participants, organisers, advisors and sponsors in making…

View the full volunteer list: www.gnsi.org/Visual-SciCo...

If this conference whet your palate (wet your palette?), join us virtually in 2026 and in person (location TBA) in 2027. The learning, connections, insights, and silly nonsense will continue!

Photo credit: Emerson Harman, Jenn Deutscher

And ♾️ thanks to the others who organized events, handled downstream tasks, and solved problems on the spot. You made everything run & kept it running! If the chairs are our backbone, you are the ribs, the femurs, the phalanxes—the things that make us robust, responsive, & well-supported. 🦴

And with that, our 2025 Visual SciComm Conference posting wraps up. We have enormous gratitude for our 3 co-chairs—Virge Kask, Wendy Chadbourne, & Stephen DiCerbo. This would not have been possible without you & we are so grateful for the many (MANY) hours you put into this conference for us all. 🧵

- Stacy Ann Seale (pen & ink)
- Stephen Mutsugoroh DiCerbo (gyotaku fish printing)

And many thanks to Emerson Harman for all the photography!

- Mary Jameson (marine botanicals & seaweed)
- Scott Rawlins (tradigital techniques)

- Dorie Petrochko (mixed media for scientific illustration)
- Frances Topping ("on the go" sketching)
- Kristin Gjerdset (nature journaling in mixed media) @kgjerdset.bsky.social

- Carol Schwartz (gouache)
- Carrie Carlson (linoleum block printing)

- The GNSI Journal team (Fiona Martin, Jenn Lucas, Julianne Snider, Britt Griswold)
- Allisa O'Brien (pyrography)
- Betsy Barry (colored pencil)

Another highlight of the Visual SciComm Conference is our Open Studio demos, and this year was a hit! We loved learning about such a wide range of techniques. It was great to be able to try our hand at a few of them, too! (Who knew certain lino blocks were so tough?!) Many thanks to...

A very densely illustrated paper full of different flowering plants and green leaves. There are numerous species and it is intricately detailed.

In the Storytelling category, Carol Schwartz's "Beach Strand Habitat Plants" (gouache)

View these pieces and more at the Lakeville Public Library in Bridgewater, MA until August 1, or at the online gallery any time: www.gnsi.org/2025-gnsi-ju...

An illustrated diagram of three different shorebirds exhibiting different types of movement within their beaks for the purposes of eating prey. The text is too small to read at this size, but it is filled with explanations.

Two people standing and smiling in a corner stairwell. The wall of the stairwell is covered in a colorful mural that weaves around the wall and shows different species of prehistoric lifeforms.

In the Everyone Loves a Mystery category, Brittany Cheung's "Kinetic Beaks: Exploring Rhynchokinesis in Shorebirds" (digital)

In the Go Down In History category, Stacy Turpin Cheavens' "Life Through Geologic History" (painted mural)

A quilt-patterned cottontail rabbit made up of several garden plants, surrounded by a circle of carrots. The background is a rich purple with further quilting details.

A trompe l'oeil of an archaic-looking dental tool sitting atop a diagram of a tooth. Below it, a sign says "Painless Dentistry, Sandra B. Hunter DDS". The tonal implication is that this is definitely not painless dentistry.

In the Broader Visual SciComm category, Kathy DeVries' "The Rabbit That Ate My Garden" (quilt)

In the Engaging the Young Mind category, Sandra Hunter's "Painless Dentistry" (colored pencil)

Congrats to the Awardees of the 2025 Visual SciComm Conference Juried Members Exhibition! These pieces were selected by attendee vote during the reception opening. Among many dazzling pieces of modern visual science communication and scientific illustration, these stood out as highlights. Read on...

A screenshot of a YouTube video. It reads Bird Comics and more with Bird and Moon, Wednesday, July 16th. There is a photo of Rosemary accompanied by a background of her presenting a slide with a little cartoon bird on it.

What a wonderful whirlwind of a week! We still have a few posts to share from the conference but if you haven't yet watched @rosemarymosco.com 's absolutely delightful presentation you have ONE DAY LEFT to do so! It will fly away after July 23. #SciArt #SciComm

www.youtube.com/@GNSIVideo/s...

COVID notification: We have had two attendees test positive for COVID upon returning home. We recommend that all attendees test ASAP and again in a few days. Stay safe and take care of your community! Thank you.

@gnsiart.bsky.social #sciart, GNSI SciComm Conference a smashing success!

A photo of three women, with one standing at a podium and looking at a slide behind her showing the horseshoe crab exhibition, and the other two women sitting at her left and right at tables covered with a bright red tablecloths

A photo showing a table with a display of horseshoe crab shells and various informational brochures from the Southeastern Massachusetts Pine Barrens Alliance.

Thank you to Sharl Heller, Brenda Boleyn and Joan Pierce for speaking to us about their work on organising an amazing horseshoe crab art exhibition! It was definitely exciting to hear how art brought together a community to inspire and support activism 🐎👟🦀

A photo of a man wearing a tricorn hat holding a microphone and pointing at the audience accompanied by a woman dressed in a period costume holding a handmade print by Carrie Carlson above her head

Kudos to our special time travelling auctioneers Sara Taliaferro and Jonathan Cook for their incredible work adding extra fun to the evening!

Sara is holding a handmade print by Carrie Carlson, which was one of the items available in the Live Auction. 🌻

A photo showing members of the GNSI mingling and chatting around multiple white tables displaying various items from the 2025 silent auction

A photo showing multiple auction items ranging from T-shirts to art books on a long white table, each with a form for bidding laid out beside it.

A photo of a novelty hat in the shape of an anglerfish rests on a spotted beige chair. Below the hat are two forms indicating its origins, and is marked for the live auction. The blue bulb at the tip of the anglerfish lights up.

A photo of a man wearing a novelty hat in the shape of an anglerfish

Thank you to everyone who took part in the 2025 GNSI Live Auction! We had a wonderful time and have raised nearly $5000 to support the guild's education and general funds.

Outside, night: a group of people cluster around a man with a stag beetle on each hand, male and female. They're illuminated with phone lights, and people are taking pictures of them.

The beetles, now mating. They're Reddish-brown Stag Beetles, and are a shiny reddish brown in color. The male's femurs and phallus are golden yellow. His mandibles are much larger than hers, and he's reaching down, not quite grasping her head with them. At times, he did actually grab her.

Exciting times at #GNSIconf: male and female stag beetles were found, introduced, and enthusiastically observed as they mated while we were treated to a bug sex lecture by our keynote speaker, entomologist and artist Barrett Klein 🐡🌿

I had an amazing time at the @gnsiart.bsky.social (GNSI) conference at Bridgewater State University! On Tuesday July 15, 2025 I gave a presentation titled “500 Years of Printed Natural History Illustrations,” where I explored the history of scientific illustrations in books.

#GNSI #naturalhistory

Thank you for joining us and sharing your wealth of knowledge! 📖

It really is! They’re famous now 🪲