A wee M is for mermaid and moon print for #mermay (the mermaid 🧜‍♀️ celebration month)!

#linocut #printmaking #mermsid #moon #alphabet #illustration

There are many versions of the story, like most folklore. Sometimes she has two tails, or a fishtail or wings. There are different versions of her name and various stories are found in different regions especially France, Luxembourg and the Low Countries. I first learned of her from Manuel Mujica Láinez’s The Wandering Unicorn, which tells her story through the centuries. Her story also appears in A.S. Byatt’s Possession amongst many other places from operas to video games. 🧵2/2

Mélusine for #MerMay!

This hand-printed Art Deco-inspired lino block print illustrates Mélusine at her bath, spied through a keyhole. Mélusine was the legendary half-fairy ancestor of the House of Lusignan and royals including the Plantagenets, whose lower half became a serpent when she bathed. She married a nobleman but insisted he must never observe her in the bath; of course he did, and she left him. 🧵
#Mélusine #artDeco #linocut #printmaking #folklore #fairytale #fairy #mermaid #mastoart

The mandriltee is found offshore west Africa, in a similar range to the the West African manatee. This explains its elusiveness as it is generally mistaken for a manatee.

Adult males can grow to 3 m (10 feet) in length and females are somewhat smaller at 2.5 m (or 8 feet). They range in colour from slate grey to teal, with pale blue or turquoise cheeks and redish nostrils, noses and mouths.

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https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/238566684

comes from the word siren, another name for the mermaid). They are in fact marine mammals, most closely related to the manatee, sometimes known as the seacow. They have a similar build and fins to the manatee but are shorter in length, have closer spaced eyes, their distinctive facial markings and very different teeth. Unlike the manatee, the mandriltee is omnivorous and uses its sharp incisors to pierce shellfish, which it enjoys along with the sea grasses it grinds with its molars. 🧵2/

My mandriltee for #MerMay! Some believe that the mandriltee is imaginary. Who am I to say?

Though it appears to be rotund, short-armed mermaid with strange facial markings, the mandriltee is neither fish nor primate and certainly not the composite creature of myth. Their name, however, is inspired by their unlikely ressemblance to the mandrill, and they are of the order Sirenia (which 🧵

#linocut #printmaking #washi #mastoArt #mandrill #manatee #mermaid #imaginary #compositeCreature

@deborahh 12! Can you imagine?

My great grandmother had 16 and was widowed at 50, but still managed to live to 102! I think of her when exhausted parenting my one child.

Historically his riotous entourage might have included a Lord and Lady, jesters, clowns, chimney sweeps and musicians. Modern celebrations often feature Morris dancers and green clad revellers. May Day marks the time to celebrate that winter is finally over (in this hemisphere at least) and plants are sprouting!

https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/1455487792

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Happy May Day! This is hand-pulled lino block print of the Jack-in-the-Green (or Jack o’ the Green) an English folk tradition for May Day. Wearing a conical or pyramidal wicker or wooden frame covered in foliage so as to conceal the wearer, the Jack-in-the-Green leads a May Day procession, dancing often with musicians and other figures. 🧵1/2

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#MayDay #printmaking #linocut #washi #JackInTheGreen #JackOTheGreen #springtime #Beltane #folklore #folkTraditions #mastoArt

@Veza85UE perhaps not a mystery how he managed to father a dozen children…

regions of the brain& many discoveries in #neuroanatomy.⁠
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In 1922 he founded the Laboratorio de Investigaciones Biológicas, which has since become Instituto Cajal, or the Cajal Institute, in his honour. He worked until his death at age 82, in Madrid.⁠
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https://minouette.etsy.com/listing/642707290

After moving to Barcelona, he learned Golgi’s method, which employed potassium dichromate & silver nitrate to randomly stain a few #neurons a dark black color, while the other cells remain transparent. He improved upon the method, & used it to investigate the central nervous system, which would otherwise be too densely intertwined for standard microscopic inspection. He made many extensive, detailed & beautiful illustrations of neural material for many species & 🧵4/5

medical officer in the Spanish Army & went on expedition to Cuba in 1874–75. Returning to Spain, he pursued a doctorate in medicine in Madrid, graduating in 1877. ⁠
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2 years later he became director of the Zaragoza Museum, & married & eventually had 12 kids. He worked at the U of Zaragoza until 1883, when he was hired as an anatomy professor at the U of Valencia. He studied pathology of inflammation, the microbiology of cholera, & the structure of epithelial cells and tissues.⁠
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the son of an #anatomy teacher, he was a precocious & rebellious child, imprisoned at 11 for destroying his neighbor’s yard gate with a homemade cannon. He loved art, but his father apprenticed him to a shoemaker & barber in an attempt to teach him some discipline. During the summer of 1868, his father tried to interest him in medicine by touring graveyards & getting him to sketch bones. This was successful & he graduated med school of the U of Zaragoza in 1873. He served as a 🧵2/

Happy birthday to #neurologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852 - 1934), here in front of Purkinje and granule cells from a pigeon, based on one of his own drawings! Cajal &Golgi won the Nobel in 1906, “in recognition of their work on the structure of the nervous system”. He was as much of an artist as he was a scientist & his 100s of drawings are still used for teaching purposes.⁠
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Born in 1852, in Petilla de Aragón, Spain, 🧵1/n
#sciart #linocut #printmaking #histsci #mastoart #neuroscience

@deborahh yes, I have definitely found that to be true!

It’s believed he sold her to the merman. But on the 1st of May you can see her off the coast of the island, her glass in hand, looking longingly at shore as she brushes her hair, each year more and more a fish. The fishermen hear her lonely mournful songs & stay ashore least she drag them out to sea for company.

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too timid to punish her. A merman wanted a land wife but he left her ashore because of his oath to the sardines. Finally the black lobster heard her & remembered his oath. He cunningly offered his help only to trick her & he grasped her with his strong claw & dragged her out to sea.
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those who fished & ate sardines.

On May Day a ship filled with sardine cans was wrecked on the rocks of the Magdalene Islands, its cargo strewn on shore. The daughter of a fish trader found a tin & was delighted, hoping to eat them. But, she was unable to get the can open sang a song of lament.

“I love sardines when they’re boiled with beans
And mixed with the sands of the sea.
I am dying for some.
Will nobody come and open this box for me?”

A disgusted skate heard her but was 🧵3/

Traders could grow rich off the bounty of the sea. Long ago when sardines were first canned they were wildly popular. There was a great slaughter of sardines by greedy traders, who packed them in tiny boxes & shipped them all over the world. The tiny sardines were helpless against the onslaught. They saw their fellow sardines killed and their numbers were dwindling. They cried out for help, calling a meeting of all the fishes. There, they convinced their brethren to stand with them & punish 🧵2/