Linnaeus “Linn” Marshall

Curator in Residence, Odditree Society

Linnaeaus “Linn” Marshall is self-taught stuffed naturalist and artist hailing from Webberville, Texas. As a young ringtail, he spent many nights on the front porch listening to his grandmother (a naturalist in her own right) tell stories of the 1961 fish kill incident on the Colorado River, an environmental disaster that exposed local live and stuffed wildlife to harmful chemical waste originating from an Austin insecticide manufacturer. The incident had drastic effects on the area’s stuffed ringtail population, which was often seen frolicking and washing in the river. Repeated exposure to the contaminants eventually turned their fur from a light tan to a bright neon yellow. Linn’s family’s first-hand accounts of the disaster and its fallout instilled in him not only a deep desire to observe and protect the natural world, but also a fascination with how toxins can affect fiber-based creatures for multiple generations. His own inherited neon yellow tail is both an integral part of his identity as an artist, and a constant reminder of the tragic effects environmental toxins can have on exposed populations.

Ann Armstrong

Founder, Odditree Society

Ann is a human architect and maker with a design practice in Austin, Tx. Her creative work takes the form of illustrated field guides, workshops, play structures, immersive walks, interpretive programming, and cartography. She loves developing tools to help people more intimately engage with and understand: place, ecology, and history. She’s been gathering hand-drawn maps of Austin through participatory events since 2012 and is building an idiosyncratic, hyper-local atlas of the city. In 2013, she founded the Odditree Society–a public platform for increasing awareness and advocacy of Austin’s urban forest. In 2021 she was the Observer-in-Residence at The Contemporary Austin and wrapped up her tenure with an illustrated tool for exploring the museum grounds with fresh eyes. She is currently doing field research for an immersive guide to Austin’s natural and man-made hydrological infrastructure.

Wendy Mitchell

Founder, The Stuffed Animal Rescue Foundation

As a toddler, Wendy cried every time she heard You Are My Sunshine, and she was very particular about nighttime stuffed animal placement. Many years later, she studied Art and Art History at The University of Georgia, wrote a lot of songs, and eventually moved to Austin, TX. There, she quickly realized that Ctrl+Z was much more efficient than a Kneadable Eraser.

Since then, she has worked as a graphic and web designer/developer, animator, writer, song-crafter, production designer, and general creative problem-solver. She currently runs The Stuffed Animal Rescue Foundation, occasionally shoots cans off of her porch from her bedroom with a Red Ryder BB gun, obsesses over the number of choices in grocery store toilet paper aisles, and plays a lot of volleyball and tennis. She has adequate-but-noticeably-aging hand-eye coordination and is intermittently thinking about working on a play or novel or thought experiment based on a fictional reality TV show involving advertising, marketing professionals, sadness, the internet, and outer space.

Annette Weft

Stuffed Black Widow Weaver, Arachnid Artist Guild of Austin

Charlotte Lasher

Stuffed Pantropical Huntsman Weaver, Arachnid Artist Guild of Austin

Thorn Catchman

Stuffed Joro Weaver, Arachnid Artist Guild of Austin