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Laughing Mantis Studio

Art inspired by biology, created by a biologist

  • The Art of Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D.
    • Woodworking
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    • Graphite Pencil
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Dec 22

Cutting Board Christmas Gift #3 – Daniel D. Brown 2017

LaughingMantisCutting Boards, Kitchen, Woodworkingambrosia, cherry, christmas, cutting board, gifts, kitchen, maple, walnut, wood, wooden, woodworker, woodworking

Another cutting board I made as a Christmas gift. Made from walnut, cherry, ambrosia maple, and mahogany.

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Dec 16

Cutting Board Christmas Gifts #1 & 2 – Daniel D. Brown 2017

LaughingMantisCutting Boards, Kitchen, Woodworkingambrosia, cherry, christmas, cutting board, gift, kitchen, mahogany, maple, pittsburgh, walnut, wood, wooden

These are the first two cutting boards I made as gifts. Constructed from scraps of Ambrosia maple, walnut, cherry, & mahogany.

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Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D. | Senior Research Scientist | Breast Cancer Research | Pittsburgh, PA.
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Just posting these panels because I want them on m Just posting these panels because I want them on my profile. They turned out purty I think. I’ve never painted transparent wings before, so that was fun to try. I obviously could have gone a lot further with the painting. But this is an outdoor piece and the paint will probably be destroyed in a season or two anyway. Some of you pro scrollsawyers probably thought “Why TF did he grain-align and cut so many the pieces if he was just gonna paint it?!” (I already know @evergreen.daydreams did) Yeah I asked myself the same thing the whole time 😂 My initial justification was that cutting each piece like I do will end up with a tighter fit than simply segmenting a single board (which is true). Also having more or less random grain directions makes for more dimensional stability in the final panel. Enough to matter? Almost certainly not. But whatever - that’s how I did it. I’d probably do the next one a bit differently. The fit was so tight, you can’t even tell some of them were individual pieces. Like those closed pink buds are like 5 pieces each and could easily have just been 1. 🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️
I have 20-30 native plant species on our property I have 20-30 native plant species on our property now producing seeds. I decided to share them with our neighborhood (and bring awareness to the necessary intervention by humans to fight biodiversity loss, which planting natives can help). I’d love to see Greenfield (Pittsburgh) significantly greener! So I designed and built this “Little Free Seed Library” with two pseudo-intarsia panels (“pseudo” because they’re painted). Featuring a leafcutter bee on swamp milkweed on one side and black-eyed susans on the other. Sign by @tam_a_ryn. Built almost completely with scraps from the shed I built a few years ago. … #littlefreelibrary #nativegarden #nativeplants #biodiversity #pollinatorgarden #woodworking #scrollsaw #woodintarsia
Midpoint post on this new project. I’m building a Midpoint post on this new project. I’m building a “Little Free Seed Library” for our front yard, now that I’ve got at least a couple dozen native plants producing tons of seeds. I decided to make an intarsia for each side of the box: black-eyed Susan’s on one side and a leafcutter bee amongst swamp milkweed on the other. But being an outdoor, and possibly temporary decoration, unlike most proper intarsias, these are made of only cheap fence slat cedar and will be painted. Did I need to make each side consist of ~300 #scrollsaw cut pieces? Absolutely not. But hey, it’s fun and will be unique! These shots are of just the raw cut pieces, unglued and unshaped. The box itself is scrap ply from when I built our shed, and even the plexiglass front was an almost perfectly sized scrap I’d been hoarding for years. The door handle is the zebra swallowtail I originally made to adorn a front yard sign about that time the first one was seen reproducing in Pittsburgh since the 1930s. … #seedlibrary #gardendecor #nativeplants #woodworking #intarsia
I designed this as a T-shirt for myself for shits I designed this as a T-shirt for myself for shits and giggles. It’s based on a much simpler design I made a decade ago as custom yoga pants for @tam_a_ryn. lol. In the unlikely event that anyone is like ”ooh that’s rad I want one”, the Zazzle link is currently in my stories. Or just DM and I’ll send a link. Yes I will make like $4 or something. But I obviously didn’t design it to sell. No AI! … #birdnerd #tshirt #birds #birdart
This is a moth called “Stiria brava” (a member of This is a moth called “Stiria brava” (a member of the owlet moth family, Noctuidae), which was discovered around the Rio Grande in Texas, and first described in the science literature by my friend Dr. Kevin Keegan*. Kevin is the Manager of Invertebrate Zoology Collections at Carnegie Museum of Natural History (CMNH), and he played a big role in the whole “first known zebra swallowtail reproduction in PGH in almost a century” thing that unexpectedly happened in our backyard last summer (he had pulled the last known specimen from 1937 in the CMNH collection). Because of this, and because of the constant entertainment he provides in our local naturalist chat group, and because he’s just a genuinely good dude, I decided to take on this very rare commission. This piece took literally 6 months to finish from design to build mostly due to real job responsibilities and lack of shop time. I took some artistic liberties to keep it within my goal of being a completely all natural wood color intarsia. But I think it turned out pretty nice, and he seemed to love it. Built from: Yellowheart (Euxylophora paraensis; 2 trees: normal and spalted), Black walnut (Juglans nigra; 2 trees with varied coloration), Elm (Ulmus sp.), Brazilian walnut (Ocotea porosa), American holly (Ilex opaca; 2 trees: regular and spalted), white ash (Fraxinus americana), wenge (Millettia laurentii), lauan plywood (Shorea sp.), and tulip tree plywood (Liriodendron tulipifera). *A Preliminary Molecular Phylogeny for Stiria (Noctuidae, Stiriinae) and Description of a New Species from Texas. Kevin L. Keegan, David L. Wagner. The J. of the Lepidopterists’ Society, 76(3):175-182 (2022). … #woodworking #scrollsaw #moth #lepidoptera
There’s a little crabapple tree basically in the d There’s a little crabapple tree basically in the ditch on our street. Every few years it has a mast year. I decided to brew up a tiny batch of simple mulled cider, which I’ve done from this tree before. I added a handful of our American beautyberries I grabbed on a whim as I walked by them, boiled, mashed, strained through a cheesecloth, added a little maple syrup, and some sticks of cinnamon. Very slightly more astringent than last time - they could have ripened a bit more. And I don’t feel like de-stemming a few hundred tiny crabapples, which I’m sure added some tannins. Still delicious! @tam_a_ryn loved it, so good enough for me!
I’ve been working on this work-in-progress moth in I’ve been working on this work-in-progress moth in short bursts for, I kid you not, 5 months. It’s been incredibly difficult to find shop time this year, largely because of real job responsibilities. I’ll share the full story of this piece in the final post. But it’s a cool moth. Mainly because the species (Stiria brava, a Texan native around the Rio Grande) was first described by fellow Pittsburgh naturalist Dr. Kevin Keegan, collection manager of invertebrate zoology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History, for whom I’m building this piece. … PS If you’re wondering about all the Clutch @clutchofficial in my stories lately, I’ve been listening to them for like 2-3 weeks straight. They just seem to fit my mood lately. And they rock. I’ve been a fan for literally over 30 years, but it’s been a minute and I missed a couple of their later works. So I’ve been going back through their entire enormous catalogue. Still one of my all time faves. #woodworking #scrollsaw #moth #lepidoptera
A little while back, my wife @tam_a_ryn bought me A little while back, my wife @tam_a_ryn bought me this beautiful print of a monarch butterfly with a map of Pittsburgh on the right wing - designed by @mapsbykylie (who turned out to be a close neighbor!). I immediately decided it needed a custom frame, because why buy one for $10 or something when you have the technology and skills to spend hours milling expensive wood, building, sanding, and finishing one yourself? 😂😂 I actually threw this together from some cutoffs of mahogany, ash, walnut, and honey locust I had lying around from other projects. The alternating stripe pattern was initially a mistake when I was laying out the material for glue up, but when I noticed I was like “oh. That looks more interesting!” This is the way. … #woodworking #pictureframe #diyhomedecor #monarch #butterfly #map #cartography
Earlier this year I built a wooden intarsia Monarc Earlier this year I built a wooden intarsia Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) to look over our front garden. I decided that we needed a caterpillar peeking out as well, munching on the remains of a swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata). Built from scrap scavenged woods, and cut on bandsaw, scrollsaw, angle grinder, Dremel, and Foredom. I wrote a whole spiel on monarchs in the captions of the previous piece, so I’ll refrain from going on about how amazing monarchs, Lepidoptera in general, and the entire biological world are. Plant natives! Kill your stupid worthless monoculture lawns! And for god’s sake, stop using pesticides unless you have a REALLY good reason. … #monarch #butterfly #gardendecor #woodworking #woodcarving #homegrownnationalpark #backyardhabitat
Here’s the halfway point of this wooden monarch ca Here’s the halfway point of this wooden monarch caterpillar eating swamp milkweed to go along with the monarch butterfly intarsia I made earlier this year. Carved from random lumber scraps. … #monarch #caterpillars #conservation #woodworking #woodcarving #gardendecor
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