Curio Folio: Minimmunologist

Who thought they would ever need a mini immunologist? If you ever saw the movies 'Fantastic Voyage' or 'Innerspace' then you know the concept of shrinking a person down and injecting them into a real-sized person's veins. I mean, its nuts. But the difference is that those were make-believe movies, while my Curio Folio is exclusively made up of real things, that actually happen in real life. Such is the mini-immunologist. It was another idea I had for a grant application, and to provide 'preliminary data' I made a protoype of the mini-immunologist, or minimmulogist for short. Upon injection into the veins of a participant, the minimmunologist located into the lymph nodes where it observed the immune response. Who better to do it than an immunologist? They even wore little blue latex gloves for sterility, as you see in this watercolour painting I made from my view into a microscope showing a lymphnode. The possibilities are endless!

Curio Folio: Minimmunologist, watercolor 6 x 7.5 cold press, 2026

Curio Folio: Potateor

You may have heard about today's partial eclipse, star alignment, and meteor shower, but what about the falling potateor? It was only visible from a narrow part of the sky directly above my apartment, and I could see it clearly with my telescope. Since the telescope does not have a camera, I made a painting of the scene from direct observation. It was an odd shape for a meteor, very potato like as it crashed through the upper atmosphere down towards earth. It took on a charred appearance then broke into pieces and landed in our back yard. Slices of the meteor were a crispy golden-brown with the aroma of french fries. Piles of debris were rather like mashed potato. I dared to taste a bit and sure enough... potato! How a giant potato-meteor (potateor) ever came to be in space we may never know, perhaps a tech-billionaire launched it into space for reasons unknown, or there are aliens that fly via potato ships. At any rate, it makes a wonderful addition to my curio folio of things you have never heard about, but absolutely really exist in real life. 

Curio Folio Potateor, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2026

Curio Folio: Side toaster

 I tested out my first product the other day, as a member of the Association of Retail Sales Evaluation club. I just received a new test product.... since they wont allow photos of the products, which are not on the market yet, I made a painting instead. The latest test-product was the side toaster. Its just like a regular toaster with two slots and a switch, but the openings are engineered on the side of the device. In this manner, the toast will jump out directly on your plate without the need for you to touch hot toast. Because of gravity, its less likely to get stuck too. I found the product to work well, and after some practice and fine-tuning, I managed to get the toast to land on the plate and not slide off onto the floor. Another neat feature they added, is a 'paper shredder' mode, where you can feed documents into it for destruction, which are then turned to ash. Brilliant. 

Curio Folio: Side toaster, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2026

Curio Folio: 3-sided toilette paper

As my regular readers know, I have a "Curio Folio", its a collection of artwork based on real-life, very true and accurate objects and ideas that have rarely been seen of heard of before. Its taken after the curio cabinet, a 19th century popularity where people put cool unusual items in a cabinet. Today's entry is something very new and different. Recently I signed up for a product-testing club* where I get coupons in return for testing out new products. I am not allowed to take photos of the products, but I am still free to write my thoughts on the blog, and show an artist's depiction in watercolour. Its 3-sided toilette paper! Not 3 ply.... it literally has 3 sides to it, as you see in the painting. Rolled with a unique triangular cardboard tube, the paper guarentees you get 33% more use out of each sheet, and the wedge shape of the triangle helps too. I mean, I can't really tell you what it was like, because this blog has some modicum of decency, but you can well imagine. To be honest, its probably not going to take off. My main feedback to the company was it should probably be hexagon-shaped to get up to 6 times more value.  

Curio Folio: 3-sided toilette paper, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2026

*the Association of Retail Sales Evaluation club,  

Curio Folio: Venus Pie Trap

Last fall the condo board asked me to trim the grass and tidy up the area around the composter that I use to dispose of fruit and vegetable peelings. To my surprise, there was a group of large Venus fly traps growing behind the composter on the shady side. Venus fly traps are carnivorous plants that lure flies in using a sweet substance, then clamp down and digest them. But looking closer and I saw that these plants had slices of pie in their mouths. I smelled apple pie, my favorite! Reaching out to grab the pie, and the plant clapped down its mouth nearly taking my finger off before I retracted. It was a close call. Then I realized that it was not really apple pie, but a kind of plant-mimic of apple pie, that it must have acquired from the old apple seeds I throw in the composter. The other plants had blueberry pie, strawberry pie, and coconut cream pie... all fake, all deadly. Clearly these plants had evolved to trap humans in their poisonous maw, and I had nearly fallen victim. I actually took a photo of the plants and was about to post that on my blog, but then I recalled a pair of old shoes with the socks still in them back near the compost... and wondered what might have happened. So I erased the pictures off my phone and just posted this painting instead. That way, if needed, I can deny the very existence of these... Venus Pie Traps, as merely a figment of my imagination. So goes another entry of my Curio Folio of amazing new things taking over the world! 

Curio Folio: Venus Pie Trap, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 (No. 5077)

Curio Folio: Oui Non Device

 

As you may have seen in my latest blog, Montreal has a serious problem with confusing signs. If you need any more convincing check out this painting, or this painting. A start-up company has a new demo product called the Oui Non Device, its completely bilingual although the Yes No font is significantly smaller to comply with our Quebec language laws. The way it works, as you see in the painting, its a light box installed on the dashboard that flashes 'Oui' or 'Non' with a green or red light, depending on the driving circumstances. Lets say you try to turn left, and its okay to do so, then it flashes 'Oui'. Or, you try to park somewhere and its not allowed, it flashes 'Non'. It registers the time of year, bike paths, and construction zones with up-to date information. As an added bonus, if Quebec holds another referendum, you can use it to register your vote since its hyper-linked to the internet. If there is one glitch on the system, is that it will register 'Non' 51% of the time, just to be on the safe side. I saw a version of this being tested in a taxi cab on the way back from the airport, but no photos were allowed so I made this painting from accurate memory to add to my Curio Folio of things you have never seen or wanted to see. 

Curio Folio: Oui Non Device, watercolour 4 x 7.5" cold press, March 2026 (No. 5076)

Curio Folio: Inflationator

Normally I would never do this, but I was reviewing federal grants recently for a new program called Canadian Uninflation Research Devices (CRUD) grants, and came across one that was really interesting. I could get in a lot of trouble for sharing the contents of a grant proposal, so I did a watercolour painting to capture the idea. The device was called the Inflationator... the way it works is to walk into an area of high inflation, inhale all of the excess money, then expel the money out of its rear end in the form of hot air. In the example, the Inflationator could walk into a grocery store, bank, or any place of business, inhale excess money, make heat, and inflation would be reduced. It was a smart and simple idea when you think about it, very feasible. Since this professor will likely get full funding, I believe its okay to share with you, I ranked the grant #1 in the pile. Besides, you will probably start seeing Inflationators at local shops and banks near you soon.

Of course, the production of hot air is bad for global warming, and the Government is familiar with that (both the hot air, and the inflation), which was a drawback to the device. A secondary device, which looks like a small robotic dog, is being planned which can inhale the hot air and poop out money, which may defeat the whole purpose but would surely make for a popular household pet. If that ever comes out, it would make another good addition to the Curio Folio of things you have never seen, heard of, or even imagined. 

Curio Folio: Inflationator, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, January 2026 (No. 5000)

Curio Folio: Grant Press

If you are new to the blog, I've been posting paintings of things you have never seen before, its called the Curio Folio, which began with the interesting case of a petrified pop-tart. In this installment, I made a painting of a 19^th century device used by scientists to assist them in writing research grant proposals. You might think that artificial intelligence was only a modern invention, but print makers had figured out a way to put words on hand-held rollers which could be covered in ink and applied to sheets of paper. The contents of the roller was based on words that appear most commonly in successful research grants, with special attention to contemporary topics most likely to be funded. Famous scientist Dr. Thinkfast used this device to get a grant to invent the world's first fork-knife, and luckily the grant was successfully funded. The grant press was in a Plexiglas display cabinet at the downtown MARMALADE museum where photography is not allowed, but they allow paintings for personal study. Since I am a scientist, I asked them if I could visit after hours and test out the device, but they said I would have to write a research grant proposal first, before gaining access to the grant press. Ironic. 

Curio Folio: Grant Press, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, January 2026 (No. 4999)

Curio Folio: Copy Paste

Before computers were invented there was a short-lived office product called copy paste. I never heard of this until I visited the MARMALADE* down town Montreal last week. It was on a special display of old office equipment that included things like the "bubble chair", and the "stapler-tooth brush" which I will have to blog about one day. What made copy paste special was that you could squeeze it out onto a document, smooth it out using a fork-knife, and once it dried into a gelatinous resin, it peeled off leaving the original text intact. By applying the resinous mold onto a blank piece of paper it recreated the image. This of course pre-dated the xerox machine which ultimately made copy paste obsolete. The other problem was that copy paste fumes made office workers giddy, to the point of wanting to play musical chairs and dance the rumba on top of desks, and it had a small risk of causing the hiccups. It was also excellent for copying currency, movie tickets, postage stamps, and just about any other valuable item, making it a tool for criminal forgers. At least I got to see it at the MARMALADE, and the staff allowed me make a painting of it. Actually, the original painting is still at the museum, they let me copy my painting using the copy paste, which is what you see on the blog. I felt giddy. 

Curio Folio: Copy Paste, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, November 2025 (No. 4905a)

*MARMALADE stands for the Museum of Art Relics Mementos Absurd and Legendary Artifacts Definitely Excellent  

Curio Folio: Vend-a-Pylon

Lately, I have been doing a lot of construction zone paintings and noticed a growing trend in Montreal, the Vend-a-Pylon. Just when you think the depravity of Montreal construction can not get any worse, they come up with a vending machine built into a construction pylon. So now, not only does the construction company get a flat-rate $2 a day to rent the pylon to the city, they also get to collect money for selling snacks and beverages to a captive audience, that is, people stuck in traffic. It should be a real outrage, like there is enough construction going on without profiting from traffic jams. For posterity, I made a painting of one of the monstrosities... it had a card swipe panel, selection buttons, and a mechanical hand that would reach out and give the product to the customer through their car window. There was also an option to connect your smart phone to the pylon to order directly on the Vend-a-Pylon app. Controversially, some of the pylons were selling Provincially sponsored alcohol, cigarettes, and cannabis, and a few I could see had slot machines built in for gambling purposes. Its so Montreal, and a great addition to my Curio Folio of things you have never seen and don't really need in your life. 

Curio Folio: Vend-a-Pylon, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, October 2025 (No. 4815b)

Curio Folio: Thought Bubbles

While at the trade show where I saw the ingenious Pizza Tomato, there was a promotional product called the Thought Bubble, as seen in the painting above. The Thought Bubble was a very small microchip encased in a bubble, like the kind of bubbles that children make by blowing soap through a loop. The product representative was blowing bubbles at people as they walked by, which I tried as much as possible to avoid. Once a bubble contacted your body it would pop, leaving the microchip attached, which would then make a neural networking-artificially intelligent connection with your central nervous system. At that point, a thought would transmit into your cerebral cortex, like 'Eat at Joe's!', or 'Eat more Pizza Tomato!'. So it was being used as an advertising tool. Unfortunately, I could not avoid the bubbles and one got me... suddenly I craved pizza tomato and went and had another slice. It worked, although ethically speaking, these Thought Bubbles seem a little dubious. Lets hope the only place you have to ever encounter them is in my Curio Folio of things you have never seen, or wanted to see. 

Curio Folio: Thought Bubbles, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2025

Curio Folio: Pizza-Tomato

I was at an experimental foods trade show recently and dropped by the genetically-modified tomato booth to see what was new. As you may have heard, awhile ago they developed a genetically-modified tomato that is shaped in a cube, to make for easier stacking at the grocery store, and they added a frost-resist gene so that tomatoes can grow all winter. It creeps some people out, understandably so, the anti-freeze gene actually came from a fish. But that is yesterday's news. At the trade show, they had a new type of genetically-modified tomato called a pizza-tomato. Since photography was not allowed, to protect trade secrets of course, I had to settle for making this watercolour painting later on from memory. The painting doesn't quite do justice to the real thing... it was flat and triangular like a slice of pizza, with a protruding crust-like shape near the stem. Since they had samples I got to eat one, in fact, they introduced genes from pepperoni, cheese, green peppers and mushrooms such that the tomato actually tasted like pizza. There was another variety...meat lovers, which included genes from sausage, beef, and chorizo ham. It may take awhile to hit the market, so you saw it here first in my curio folio. 

Curio Folio: Pizza-Tomato, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2025 (No. 4800)

Curio Folio: Fork-Knife

Another thing I saw at MARMALADE, which stands for Museum of Art Relics Mementos Absurd and Legendary Artifacts Definitely Excellent, was this interesting utensil called a fork-knife (pronounced forknife). Since photography is not allowed in the Museum I made a watercolour painting of the stainless steel implement which was applauded by the staff and other visitors who saw me paint it on location. The device, discovered by the famous Dr. Thinkfast, is meant to accelerate eating by making a cut and thrust action all on one motion. With practice one can eat a T bone in significantly less time. It also frees up the left hand to do other things like hold the meat down on the plate so it doesn't slide off, and for putting food in the mouth. The fork-knife was in the famous invention section of the museum along with other neat inventions that I did  not have time to paint such as the hole-spoon... it was a spoon with a large hole in the center to allow soup to pour directly in your mouth, and to see enemies coming at you while eating. And the cup-plate that allowed you to combine beverages with your meal all in one go- it was called the gulp-and-chew. I told the staff about Da Vinci's toaster, its approximate location and they said they would go look for it. You can see an image of it in the link to my curio folio. 

Curio Folio: Fork-Knife, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2025 (No. 4843)

Curio Folio: Bubble Chair

While visiting the famous Museum of Art Relics Mementos Absurd and Legendary Artifacts Definitely Excellent (MARMALADE), I saw some cool items on display. Of course, you are not allowed to take pictures in the Museum so I made some watercolour paintings instead which was permissible and in fact, encouraged by the staff. This item was part of the 'bubble craze' of the 1960's, when the space program was inspiring creators to make things with bubble shapes like cars, umbrellas and even clothing. The bubble chair had a Plexiglas dome fixed to it, however, the design did not sit well with customers. You may have heard of bubble-butt before but this is ridiculous. Some advantages to the design were that you could easily see if the floor was dirty underneath, and maintaining good posture would develop the abdominal muscle strength while sitting. They sold replicas at the MARMALADE gift shop and I picked one up, I am sitting on it right now. Might take some getting used to though. Anyways, it makes for a good addition to my curio folio of things you have never heard of, and never knew you needed. 

Curio Folio: Bubble Chair, watercolour 5 x 7" cold press, September 2025 (No. 4844a)

Curio Folio: Crab Phone

Some of the Curio Folio paintings may have contained embellishments, I admit that, so for this one it had to be 100% true. When I was in Barbados in 2002, I saw a hermit crab walking on the beach, inside of a Samsung smart phone instead of its usual shell. You can see in the painting, which I did from memory, the crab had entered the charging slot as a baby, then grew to be a full-sized hermit crab using the smart phone for protection. The interesting thing was how the crab had selected a screen-saver of a snail shell, which is one of its natural source of shell. It seemed that the image of the shell was the preferred choice of the crab. I also saw it send text messages, although in a language that I could not recognize, perhaps it was crabbish, that is the name of the language that hermit crabs use to communicate with each other. They normally do it with clicks of their claws, and a low frequency 'clucking sound' like that of a giraffe. The crab scurried off into a pile of rocks and I never did see it again, although now and then I get strange text messages in what appears to be crabbish. 

Curio Folio: Crab Phone, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4654b)

Curio Folio: Odd Glasses

And now for something completely different, as Monty Python used to say. When I was painting around the train tracks during a sun set last month, I noticed some very odd looking glasses. In fact, if you go back and check the third painting in the blog called Tracks and Switcher, you will see these odd glasses sitting next to the train tracks. I bet you didn't notice them the first time you saw that blog. For posterity, I made a painting of the odd glasses and at first did not think much more about it. Certainly, the glasses were not odd enough to belong in my Curio Folio, a collection of oddities that no person has ever seen before. Perhaps these glasses had been melted in the sun, or run over by the train, or part of some art installation. Yet, they had a manufactured look to them, nothing was bent or warped or in any way damaged, in fact, these glasses were custom made for someone, or something. There was an air of familiarity about the shape of these odd glasses, like a vague memory or a sense of déjà vu. If there was one clue to be had, one of the screws holding the arm of the glasses appeared to be loose. 

Then it dawned on me, in a flash of inspiration I knew who lost these glasses.... scroll down 

 the...

 

Train Gremlin!  

 

In a rush of excitement I carefully painted the outline of the train Gremlin, which is a creature that I thought I saw on the train, you can click the link above to see the painting. As you can see here, the odd glasses are a perfect fit for the train gremlin, its one eye dangling down is covered by the lower lens, and the bent arms of the glasses fit its pointy ears perfectly. It must have lost them while crawling around on the train.  And now the screwdriver that I saw the train gremlin carrying makes sense. I thought it was trying to sabotage the train, because that is what gremlins do, but it was just trying to tighten the screw on its glasses before they must have tumbled to the ground in ville st Henri. Mystery solved, and another fine addition to the Curio Folio:

Curio Folio: Odd Glasses, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4634)

Curio Folio: D'Oh Moon

Believe it or not, I went out to paint a picture of the waxing gibbous moon tonight but instead I saw the most unusual thing in the sky. The moon was partially covered by a rare comet called Simpson's 56223 which only orbits earth once every 310 years. The Simpson's comet is unique in that its surrounded in an elaborate halo of sprinklets... that's the technical word for small debris that orbits a comet, kind of like sprinkles on a donut. I thought this painting would make an excellent addition into my Curio Folio, a collection of oddities that no person has ever seen before. I was lucky enough to be standing there at the exact moment that the Simpson's comet and its halo of sprinklets passed between the moon and the earth, creating the fantastic eclipse-effect you see in the highly accurate painting. I also took a picture with my smartphone camera but it turns out that the combination of comet aura and partially eclipsed moonlight can not be photographed with conventional camera technology. So this painting is perhaps the only image of what many astronomers call the D'Oh Moon, at least for another 310 years. 

Curio Folio: D'Oh Moon, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, August 2025 (No. 4628)

Curio Folio: Solar Wind

 

Its time for another edition of the Curio Folio, the serious series where I paint things that no person has ever seen (or heard of) before. In this case, its a painting of something that people have heard of before, the solar wind. In fact, a group of solar astronomers at the university heard about my famous Curio Folio and asked me to help them out with a project they were working on with Federal funding. They built a solar wind tunnel in the Astronomy and Solar Science (ASS) building and had difficulty in obtaining photographic evidence of the solar wind. Any camera that got near the solar wind was instantly erased and drained of battery. Hearing of my ability to paint incredibly realistic and accurate watercolours of various phenomenon, they asked me to stand in the solar wind tunnel and make a painting for further scientific study. For protection I had to wear a welding mask and lead underpants, but it did not bother me. It was quite a sensation, kind of a mixture of being hot or ticklish, but I got the painting of solar wind done, which you see above. The solar scientists made statistical analysis of the painting and asked me to do more with various settings of the machine. Apparently the data is so good, it will published in a prestigious journal called "Sceince". 

Curio Folio: Solar Wind, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4543b)

Curio Folio: Impossible Colour (blureye)

You may have heard of impossible shapes, they are optical illusions that fool your eyes into seeing a shape than can not exist. The infinite staircase is a good example, by Escher. For my Curio Folio series I thought it would be a good idea to create an impossible colour, one that theoretically can not exist based on considerations of the rods and cones of the human retina. Working on the premise that certain types of squids have additional cones that allow them to see invisible parts of the spectrum, I reasoned that I could produce a similar sensation of an impossible colour for humans. After making some test paintings and showing them to one of the squids at the University research aquarium, with permission from the professor in charge, I determined that a combination of 3 dimensional shape and reflective iridescent pigments would be required to allow humans to see the impossible colour. In the painting, the center of the impossible shape is actually pure white, but if you look at it long enough, and blur your eyes a bit, then the center of the shape will fill up with small dots, then, if you are patient enough, the impossible colour will appear. It took me some time to see it. It was hard to describe, like cyan but with shimmering tones of magenta and yellow... visually it was the equivalent of peppermint ice cream, or maybe cherry cream soda, its hard to describe in words unless you can see it for yourself. The only thing left is to name the colour, since the colour is closest to being blue red or yellow, it should be called blue-red-yellow. or just blureye for short. 

Curio Folio: Impossible Colour (blureye), watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025 (No. 4577)

Curio Folio: Train Gremlin

 

This year, I started assembling my Curio Folio, its a collection of real-life oddities that you have never seen or heard of before. Adding to the authenticity of the series, I provide original watercolour paintings in lieu of photographic evidence which is often not possible for various reasons. On a recent trip by train to Toronto, I had the fortune of sitting in seat 11A which is considered to be the luckiest seat on an airplane because people who sit in seat 11A will often survive crashes. So I was feeling pretty good until I saw this train gremlin clinging to the outside of the train. Its one eye was hanging out, it had a dopey smile on its face, and it was holding a screwdriver which did not bode well for the safety of the train. I called over the train attendant who took a quick look but the gremlin had popped its head below the window. Patiently, I waited until I could take some photos with my smartphone camera, and then, I actually showed the photos to the attendant who quietly told me not to worry or say anything, and then proceeded to delete the pics off my phone. Since photos clearly weren't allowed, I did this watercolour painting, and would you believe it, the darn thing posed for me with its screwdriver the whole time. Later, I caught a glimpse of the train attendant reaching out of the emergency door with a large net, like for fishing, but I don't know if they ever caught the thing. In the end, lucky number 11A held up and we made it to Toronto Union station on time, with only a few screws loose. 

Curio Folio: Train Gremlin, watercolour 6 x 7.5" cold press, July 2025