Kathleen Sheppard 🍁
Art, nature, environment. she/her
Settler on Blackfoot Territory.
I blog at www.thiswildcuriosity.com
- Art isn’t about whether you can draw a straight line, it’s about expressing your humanity - something a machine can never do. AI can generate a picture, but that picture isn’t art, even if it’s pretty.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Remember, sneering works. It’s working now. That’s why the lowliest AI fan and the CEO of Microsoft are trying to get us to stop saying “slop.” AI art is supposed to be its flashy flagship and treating it as disposable rubbish (which it is) ruins everything
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁We need to shut down the word "performative" until we can figure out what the hell is going on. Of course adopting symbols of protest and resistance is performative! Performance is a core strategy for mass movements!! That's why the call them demonstrations!!!
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁The thing about Catherine O’Hara is she is so hilarious and talented that I forgot she was mortal
- Never mind the jobs you had, tell me five classes you took in university: 1. Parks and Protected Areas 2. Geomorphology 3. Cartography 4. Plant Physiology 5. Women's Studies
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- Farewell to one of the greatest there ever was.
- Chapman's is the best. Great company. Great ice cream.
- Everyone is rightfully making Doctor Who jokes, but I love how this is obviously a 'use up the extra ends of yarn' project.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Being a journalist is sick: I just contacted a pre-eminent jaguar conservationist in Argentine with a question that has been weighing on me for ages and he wrote back right away with an informed answer.
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- It’s nice to get some good news for a change.
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Canadians you are not prepared for the temperature he tells you he is experiencing here.
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁RT if you don't even know how the hell to open a ChatGPT tab
- No one does it better than Victoria Goddard in The Hands of the Emperor.
- Oh so it's going to be that kind of day.
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Hi we're abstaining because it sucks ass, hope that helps
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- Oh no. Anyway...
- Really feels like Europeans are going through the same anger cycle that Canadians went through a year ago.
- Letter to the Person Who Carved His Initials into the Oldest Living Longleaf Pine in North America by Matthew Olzmann lives rent free in my head at all times. #smallpoemsunday
- happy #smallpoemsunday! 💜 feel free to post small poems you wrote, +/or small poems you love by somebody else :) I’m not great with resolutions, but I do hope to share more work by living poets this year, & this page from Pascalle Monnier’s Touché (tr. Cole Swensen), all in infinitives, feels apt~
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁As a Canadian, my advice: do it anyways.
- I've been rereading as well as watching some of the new adaptations lately and her stories hold up so well.
- I made a little zine about chasing joy in *these* times. Maybe that's something you need as well? www.thiswildcuriosity.com/2026/01/16/c...
- The world is scary but at least there are blue skies and trees in it. Looking up for a minute helps #SkySky 🌿
- The only question I want answered is How. Do. I. Turn. It. Off?
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Correct. The Kalaallit, Inughuit and Tunumiit own the land. Probably time for us all to learn the names of the indigenous people of Greenland, they’re going to need us all (by which I mean NATO minus the rogue state)
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Getting snow where you are? Did you know that there are 121 categories of snowflake? ❄️ This graphic is an old favourite which gives an overview of the 39 intermediate categories: www.compoundchem.com/2014/12/10/s... 🧪
- Ice on the Oldman River at dawn.
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- A bicycle for the mind.
- Last year I stopped buying US vegetables, this year I'm going to try to get off US tech (as much as possible).
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Entire planet could be frolicking in the woods and meadows but instead we have to fight fascism because far too many of you love billionaires and bigotry more than you love yourselves.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Love this from Guillermo del Toro
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- The best thing I ever did for my creativity was to stop making things for sale and to start making them for myself. It's so much easier to be weird and take chances when I'm not asking myself if someone will be willing to buy what I make.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Don't forget folks: allowing yourself a vision of the future you'd want for our country and planet - not the one you'd settle for, not the one you fear, but the future of your dreams - isn't naive, it's a vital cognitive skill. That's how we articulate what we most value. What's worth fighting for.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁My whole life, advocating war has been fed to me as “the adult position,” akin to drinking your coffee black or reading the business section of the newspaper. Let’s be very clear — war is the childish nonsense of impulsive destructive idiots playing baby-brained video games with real human lives.
- Too bad for him that my goal for 2026 is to say it even more.
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- Glances suspiciously at the stapler on the corner of my desk.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁I don't want gen AI in my software I don't want gen AI in my phone I don't want gen AI in my email I don't want gen AI in my recipes I don't want gen AI in my safety documentation I don't want gen AI in my schools I don't want gen AI in my healthcare I don't want gen AI in my life
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- Merry Christmas to all the cats who got exactly what they wanted this year.
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 24 A snowy embroidery scene for Christmas Eve.
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 23 I made this stained glass mosaic? collage? a few years ago when I was feeling stuck creatively, so I challenged myself to use as many different materials as I could in combination with stained glass.
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 22 This is one of the first embroidery pieces I ever made (about 25 years ago). It's done almost entirely in backstitch, because that was the only stitch I knew at the time.
- Happy shortest day of the year to all who celebrate. Tomorrow the light starts to return!
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 21 This little sunflower will probably end up as part of a bag or other sewing project, but I like the simplicity of it. Satin stitch petals with long and short stitch in the centre.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁My friends, I say this with all the love in my heart: Right now might not be the moment for “But we should be TOLERANT and NUANCED about the plagiarism machines!” Your tolerance and “nuance” will be weaponised by the grifters and their apologists. Please respect yourselves more.
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 20 This aerial landscape is one of my favourites. I really like how the different stitches show the slope of the river banks.
- How about we have an election instead?
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- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 19 One of the favourite handmade books I've made. Each page features a pull tab that changes the inset photo.
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁those who predicted authoritarianism were both dismissed, & deeply misunderstood, by the media my latest for @newrepublic.com newrepublic.com/article/2042...
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 18 Another soft sculpture object, this one is more pear-shaped. Stitched using long and short stitch.
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- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 17 More experiments with lino block printing with four interpretations of a sunflower.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁the enthusiasm for generative AI would not have been possible without prior decades of capitalist conditioning to view works of art as products, rather than acts of culture and shared human life
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 16 A soft sculpture plum, stitched entirely with long and short stitch.
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 15 A trio of tiny fabric baskets. The opening to each on is about the size of a toonie (or slightly larger than a quarter if you're in the US).
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁Idk who needs to hear this, but talking to blorbo on the plagerism machine is crossing the picket line.
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- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 14 No one said this had to be recent art, right? My mom recently regifted this pottery tile that I made when I was a kid back to me. She says that it's good because you can tell what it is. Thanks, Mom.
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- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁The UCP has made 2025 one of the darkest years for Alberta’s democracy. Albertans can turn on the lights in 2026. By simply being Albertan. Let me explain. 🧵 open.substack.com/pub/drjaredw...
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 13 I've been dabbling in lino block printmaking and I was pleased with this little mountain scene.
- Reposted by Kathleen Sheppard 🍁"You have to use AI." ...why?
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 12 This miniature stained glass set of drawers is from a few years back. It's roughly seven inches tall.
- #ArtAdventCalendar Day 11 Another soft sculpture object, this one with honeycomb stitch on the base and sides.
