thanate
LightNews LightNews
thanate.bsky.social
thanate
@thanate.bsky.social
500 followers 160 following 1.8K posts
writer(Ann Chatham)/crafter/naturalist, not always in that order. secondary world fantasy, tiny ruins, ancient clay, habitat gardening, sticks & string. Parent of chaos preteen. She/her
Posts Replies Media Videos
thanate.bsky.social
Contains gems like:
tiny marginalia detail from the Sherborne Missal, a pale plump-bodied moth corner detail from the Sherborne Missal, a butterfly with a long blue stripey body, small fan-shaped wings with red & blue patterns, and a a human-style eye sits on some swirly disembodied plant bits. tiny marginalia detail from the Sherborne Missal, it's a firefly! Pale blue/gray body & wings shading to white, w/ white ink outlines and gold leaf for the glowing tail. (this one has a mammal-like face, too) There's also a bunch of the omnipresent weird swirly plant stuff going on here. tiny marginalia detail from the Sherborne Missal, this one's a snail; pointy red shell with white dots, & a blue & white striped head that sticks up with 4 antennae & a round eye.
November 6, 2025 at 3:18 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Fall leaf gradients:
a selection of maple and white oak leaves in a variety of yellows, oranges, reds & browns (ok & one green one!), spread out on a dark blue canvas. A box of crayola markers is open at the center with the marker caps showing for a color test bar. a selection of fallen leaves from silver maple trees, spread out on a dark blue canvas in a loose color spectrum from brown at top left, through yellow, to green at top right. A box of crayola markers is open at the center with the marker caps showing for a color test bar. a selection of fallen leaves from a maple tree on my street, spread out on a dark blue canvas in a loose color spectrum from red at top left, through orange, brown, & yellow, to green at top right. A box of crayola markers is open at the center with the marker caps showing for a color test bar. a stack of various oak & maple leaves in a full range of bright fall colors sits on a piece of blue canvas.
October 17, 2025 at 3:10 PM
thanate.bsky.social
An axe, you say?
😁
(in progress) clay plaque with a sculpted figure of a midevalesque long-tailed bipedal monster whose neck ends in a hand gripping an axe.
July 16, 2025 at 12:26 AM
thanate.bsky.social
Cicada-thumbs-up from brood X & my kid!
mid-sized blondish child in a pink sweatshirt holds a thumbs-up to the camera with a periodic cicada perched on her thumb.
June 30, 2025 at 2:15 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Finally finished the frame for the @markwitton.bsky.social print I won 6 months ago... Now I just need to find a wall space for it.
a picture of a lovely open woodland where one of the tall things sticking up is a sauropod instead of a tree. It's framed with several mis-matched pieces of slightly rustic wood with bits of bark still attached on the outer edges, and with a pair of Jurassic coast amonite fossils embedded in opposite corners. The frame sits on a cardboard box propped up against a shelf of guidebooks & stuff, so not exactly a final placement.
June 13, 2025 at 11:10 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Miss Mermay 1350
a palm-sized clay plaque with a medieval mermaid sculpted onto it; she has a red shirt, a green tail, & her hair has got some kind of fancy net thing going on. (the clay is still wet, & sits on a somewhat grubby piece of canvas.)
May 22, 2025 at 1:05 AM
thanate.bsky.social
Right, so any news is still too much news for comfort, so it's back to letting Rainy help me sort things for the @balticon art show this weekend:
#ProofOfCat
center of photo: a black fabric cube bin with a fluffy tabby cat in it. Surrounding this are a mess of teacups and other ceramic bits spread out across the quilt on my bed, plus a basket of clean laundry in the background. The cat has a speech bubble that says, "no, pay attention to meeeee!"
May 19, 2025 at 6:56 PM
thanate.bsky.social
my sketchbook, last night:

(occasionally I remember I can trace stuff off my monitor into my swank watercolor journal & paint on it...)
bit of a sketchbook page with a couple stacks of books, inked from a tracing of stuff from the above thread & watercolored in browns & greens. note in the corner says "original lines by Fernando Salvaterra."
May 17, 2025 at 5:24 PM
thanate.bsky.social
*Range* you say.... 👀 although this is still missing a bunch of broad categories.

anybody wanna play? @skulleigh.com? @myrdraws.bsky.social? @thevagabondtabby.bsky.social?
Tapestry pieced from old clothing which says "Sticks and Stones my break my Bones but Sticks and String can clothe me." Each of the nouns is spelled out in the material it describes. Disney princess dolls holding protest signs: Belle: Don't take our libraries! Aurora: Princesses for Responsible Government. Anna: Do the Next Right Thing. And the one after that. Rapunzel: Healthcare is better than magic hair. (and remember to take your prenatal vitamins) Cinderella: Fair Pay for Domestic Workers Snow White: Princesses for FOOD SAFETY. (no poison apples!) Jasmine: Girls just wanna have Fundamental Human Rights. Clay studio snapshot from the first "Build Bigger" class I took. On the table in the foreground is a swirly buttressed tower that became the base of a giant mushroom; behind it to the left is the partially completed structure of my Fire Owl (owl-shaped firepit cover.) The shelves in the background contain a bunch of things including a different weird organic towery structure & a couple cursed teacups that are also mine. Two hand-carved wooden spoons sit on top of a cardboard box; one is tiny with a very round bowl & a rounded end, and the other is more normal spoon-sized with the handle carved in sort of smooth wobbles like crumpled fabric.
May 17, 2025 at 12:31 AM
thanate.bsky.social
Springtail, or ancient hedgehog rattle? 😆
my hand holding a small clay rattle crudely shaped like a hedgehog in dark clay with red glints. It looks surprisingly like the photo of the "plump" springtail in the quoted post.
May 15, 2025 at 1:25 PM
thanate.bsky.social
ooh, I can do this one! (If you see this, quote-post your goose art!)
WIP, violent Pictish goose:
a round slab of clay on a board, still wet-- Onto it is sculpted the silhouette of a goose, head turned to look over its back, holding a dagger in its beak. There are some visible tool marks, and a couple small carvings inspired by Pictish stones. There's a hole at the top for hanging.
May 7, 2025 at 12:48 AM
thanate.bsky.social
Well, the tea pet fundraiser sold out already, so I guess I'll post these worms for #invertFest
five reddish clay worms coiled up in untidy little balls on a gray cement step.
April 30, 2025 at 1:19 AM
thanate.bsky.social
Haven't you always wanted a monkey?
There are 3 lute-playing monkeys in the tea4t.bigcartel.com fundraiser pool!
(opens at 3pm Pacific time)
my hand, holding 3 small clay monkeys with crossed legs, playing vaguely lute-shaped stringed instruments. Iron-rich clay high-fired to a shiny finish, designs modeled after ~3rd century artifacts from the silk road Kingdom of Khotan.
April 29, 2025 at 4:24 PM
thanate.bsky.social
tea4T fundraiser goes live at noon, pacific time! (tea4t.bigcartel.com)
Here are a few more of my inspired-by-Silk-Road contributions:
Little stylized birds on little cone-shaped pedestals, made from iron-rich clay that high-fired to a shiny metallic finish. They're patterned after little clay animals from the Kingdom of Khotan which was an oasis town on the Silk Road around 1800 years ago. A caravan of little clay camels is approaching! (ok, 4) They are slightly silly looking bactrian (2-hump) camels in reddish clay that high-fired to a metallic sheen, and patterned after little clay animals from the Kingdom of Khotan which was an oasis town on the Silk Road around 1800 years ago.
April 29, 2025 at 2:22 PM
thanate.bsky.social
In mucking about with clay & #inverteFest news, I made a Minoan votive dung beetle, only possibly a little smaller & I closed in the bottom so it could be a rattle, too:
background: print-out of a bunch of museum photos of ancient clay creatures, particularly a dung beetle with a tiny beetle riding on top of it. Foreground: my hand holding a smaller version of the sculpture in the photo, made from reddish clay.
April 28, 2025 at 1:45 PM
thanate.bsky.social
This one's inspired by that lovely thread of resources @celestepewter.bsky.social did a while back:
#DollProtest
Two dolls hold a protest sign in front of a colorful stripey background: on our left is a brown-skinned Barbie with ancient Egyptian-style makeup in a little red satin dress & to our right is a blonde-ish Ever After High doll in a molded pink top & a pink & light blue floral skirt. The sign is written in a ridiculous variety of fonts & colors, and reads: "DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION ARE GOOD THINGS."
April 25, 2025 at 6:15 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Met a tiny mantid on my porch yesterday:
(iNat observation here, if you recognize it... www.inaturalist.org/observations...)
#invertefest
extreme close-up of the side of my hand, with a very small mostly-brown preying mantis of some type standing on it.
April 25, 2025 at 4:57 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Wait, the jobs protest needed Cinderella, too. #DollProtest
4 barbie dolls of various ethnicities & a 1980s Disney Cinderella set up in front of a stripey background holding protest signs: TARIFFS CAUSE LAY OFFS, ACADEMIC JOBS ARE U.S. JOBS, WIND JOBS ARE U.S. JOBS, FAIR PAY FOR DOMESTIC WORKERS, GOVERNMENT JOBS ARE U.S. JOBS.
April 25, 2025 at 4:39 PM
thanate.bsky.social
no jobs, no money to buy dolls... #dollprotest
4 barbie dolls (3 of them dark-skinned) stand on a rug in front of a cedar chest holding protest signs: TARIFFS CAUSE LAY OFFS. WIND JOBS ARE U.S. JOBS. ACADEMIC JOBS ARE U.S. JOBS. GOVERNMENT JOBS ARE U.S. JOBS.
April 23, 2025 at 7:56 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Yeah, I just got to have that check-in conversation with the doctor about "well, I think my antidepressants are still working, but it's kind of hard to tell at the moment..." 🤦‍♀️
little section out of a larger artwork of stretched fabric covered in handwritten things in various markers & colors; the completely visible text says "How do you define which things are a problem? Whose problems are they? WHAT IS MY BRAIN MALFUNCTIONING + WHAT IS A REASONABLE RESPONSE TO MY ENVIRONMENT?"
April 23, 2025 at 1:55 PM
thanate.bsky.social
So many excellent creatures!
Here are a few of the ones I sent:
Small clay birds with exciting crests! They went mostly a shiny purple/brown in the kiln though there are still traces of the red clay showing in a few protected spots. (This means there was a lot of iron in the clay-- which I knew from the red color-- and the kiln got to the right temperature and conditions to oxidize the surface bits into this sheen. The last time I fired this clay, it stayed red, so... surprise! Pretty, but not historical as nobody in the 3rd century could manage this firing temperature.) Modeled after bird figures from 2nd-3rd c Khotan, an oasis city on the silk road. a row of press-molded clay turtles, their shells painted with a variety of brightly-colored slips. The turtles were modeled after ancient Greek votive offerings, the colors are fun things from the cabinet at the clay studio.
April 17, 2025 at 9:29 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Leia would prefer not to get all the way to an evil empire again, really. #DollProtest
Three Princess Leia dolls holding protest signs. Two are vintage 1970s Leias, one with her original costume, one in a teal sundress with pigtails, and the shorter one in the middle is from the mid-2010s comics tie-in dolls, wearing her Endor speeder pants under her Ewok dress. White dress Leia: They blew up my planet. What's *your* excuse? There is no "Planet B." Endor Leia: OVERTHROW THE EVIL EMPIRE. sundress Leia: RESIST (with a Rebel Alliance symbol.)
April 16, 2025 at 7:51 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Perky Anna would like you to take a moment to consider your relationship choices. #DollProtest
A very happy-looking Anna doll holds a sign with hearts around the edges that says "Ladies! Get yourself a man who doesn't mind when you're the hero." In pink & red, with hearts around the edges.
April 15, 2025 at 9:12 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Merida is confused about why nobody has taken a sword to this problem yet. Or a bow, or their fists, or turned someone into a bear...
(she is probably fortunate to come from a pre-firearms culture)
3 Merida (the princess from Brave) dolls. Two teens, one in jeans & a plaid shirt, the other in the half-hearted attempt at a blue medievalesque dress that she came with, and a small kid version, all with protest signs. Plaid Merida: KEEP YER WILD LANDS WILD! princess-dress Merida: MAKE BETTER TRADITIONS; CHANGE YOUR FATE. small Merida: Awa' wi' the lyin' scumbags.
April 15, 2025 at 3:13 PM
thanate.bsky.social
Aurora is hard, since she has so very little personality in the movie. But I think someone who grew up in the forest with animal friends would definitely want to keep wild lands wild & functioning. And I'd like to think she grew up to be a good queen.
Two Disney Aurora dolls (one in pink, one in blue) & a barbie in a (pink) Sleeping Beauty dress hold protest signs: Pink Aurora: MORE PARKS & WILE LANDS for our animal friends. Blue Aurora: PRINCESSES FOR RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT. Barbie Aurora: TAKE THE CLIMATE BACK TO THE MIDDLE AGES.
April 15, 2025 at 2:42 PM