"Field Guide" Project In Bay Nature Magazine

The Spring 2023 issue of Bay Nature landed in mailboxes in March and I’m pleased to have my Field Guide series featured in the magazine’s “Nature In The Arts” section.

Published in the print edition as "Bird Watching Reimagined," the write-up is by terrific Bay Area arts writer Matthew Harrison Tedford, who provides a thoughtful overview of Field Guide. I especially like his concluding paragraph:

“[Reiger’s] field guides also prod us to think about how and why we classify and perhaps to look at birds a little differently afterward. Reiger sees turkey vultures (Cathartes aura) every day, but through his classification system he began to see them differently, noticing colors that he describes as deep indigo ink, coffee, and dark chocolate, rather than simply seeing a black bird.”

You can also read the piece online (where it appears with the delightful title, “An Artist Goes Bird-Swatching").

Illustration Work In Bay Nature

I have some illustration work included in the Fall 2022 issue of Bay Nature magazine, hitting bookstore shelves and mailboxes now.

For this fast-turnaround assignment, I created 11 hybrid illustrations (traditional water-based media meets digital) to accompany Austin Price’s Nature’s Pulse, a piece highlighting the alliance of East Bay park and utility districts working to gather and evaluate data on key indicator species of habitat health. It’s always fun to create illustrations for a favorite magazine; working with a terrific art director and having my illustrations reside alongside Jane Kim’s – just cherries on top.

If you don’t have a Bay Nature subscription and you live in the Bay Area, you can pick up a copy of the first-rate magazine at independent (or chain) bookstores, as well as some health food stores and regional supermarkets.

Illustration Work In Bay Nature

Given how very little time I have for either the studio or paying gigs these days, I’m especially pleased to have some illustration work included in the Summer 2020 issue of Bay Nature magazine, which lands in mailboxes this week.

Three hybrid illustrations (traditional water-based media meets digital) of a little willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii brewsteri), western grebe (Aechmophorus occidentalis), and a Middle Fork of the Stanislaus River landscape accompany Jane Braxton Little’s “A Cautionary Conservation Tale,” a probing account of how a “historic and monumental” conservation deal dating to 2003 is today regarded as “a vision unfulfilled.”

If you don’t have a Bay Nature subscription and you live in the Bay Area, you can pick up a copy of the first-rate magazine at independent (or chain) bookstores, as well as some health food stores and regional supermarkets.

Recent Illustration Work

I subscribe to Bay Nature magazine because it’s a rich source of information for nature and ecology nerds living in the Bay Area. But it’s more than that; the articles are consistently well written and thoughtfully edited, and the magazine’s art direction, photography, and illustrations are top-notch.

It’s a pleasure and an honor to have my work on the cover of the Fall issue and (inside) illustrating Marissa Ortega Welch’s excellent feature about acorn woodpeckers, everybody’s favorite clown-faced communists. (Seriously. You’ll have to read the piece to learn more.)