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.

“Rooted In Relationship”

On Wednesday, September 8, I presented a webinar for the Mount Diablo Interpretive Association. Rooted In Relationship surveyed two decades of my art, illustration, and design projects with a focus on the through lines – my fascination with the relationship between human and nonhuman animals and my conviction that each of us urgently needs to cultivate a sense of place (if we’re to be responsible stewards). I’m honored that the MDIA invited me to present.

If you’re interested in viewing the webinar, you can find a recording of it here. I also encourage you to check out some of the other talks archived on the MDIA events page.

Illustration Work For Hover Pictures

Watercolor and digital illustrations associated with the Lookout Slough Mitigation Bank in Solano County, CA. An aerial view of Lookout Slough; Chinook salmon fry (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha); a light morph Swainson’s hawk (Buteo swainsoni).

Despite the pandemic relaxing its grip a bit (in the States, at least), I’m still a full-time dad. I’ve taken very few paying gigs in the last 14 months. I look forward to the fall, when I expect to return to my work in earnest. Still, the studio isn’t totally fallow now.

I recently created 17 hybrid illustrations (traditional water-based media meets digital) for Hover Pictures, a production company based in Oakland and NYC. The illustrations are used in a film highlighting the work of Ecosystem Investment Partners, a private equity firm that acquires, restores, and manages properties that generate wetland, stream, and endangered species mitigation credits. Mitigation credits are similar to carbon credits; they’re used to offset ecological losses associated with development projects by providing for the preservation and restoration of a different area. These credit programs have their critics, but they’re also a critical tool for regional land trusts as well as global conservation nonprofits like the Nature Conservancy or Audubon Society.

Watercolor and digital illustrations associated with the Lake Superior Mitigation Bank in St. Louis County, MN. A great grey owl (Strix nebulosa); a light morph rough-legged hawk (Buteo lagopus); a grey wolf (Canis lupus); white pine trees and cone (Pinus strobus).

Watercolor and digital illustrations associated with the Riverpark Mitigation Bank in Riverside County, CA. An aerial view of Riverpark Mitigation Bank; spreading navarretia (Navarretia fossalis); Tidy tips (Layia platyglossa).

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.)

The Parsha Project

As part of a communications and design job I held from 2016-2018, I created illustrations inspired by the weekly Torah portion, or parsha. Each Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath), the artwork appeared on the cover of Congregation Beth Sholom’s service pamphlet, along with an expository note about the image and its inspiration. In all, I created over 112 illustrations, beginning with Parashat Beshalach (13 Shevat 5776 / January 23, 2016) and concluding with Parashat Vayikra (1 Nisan 5778 / March 17, 2018).

My artwork and writing generally wrestle with contemporary constructions of nature and the human relationship to non-human animal species. That’s my wheelhouse. My projects rarely draw on my Jewish identity, practice, or knowledge base in obvious ways. It was a privilege, therefore, to spend two years closely reading and visually interpreting Torah, a text that’s familiar to so many, but earnestly read by too few. Because I created each parsha illustration with its destination - a pamphlet cover – in mind, I felt the illustrations should *not* be displayed on their own; they are meant to appear framed by text. This preference gave rise to the poster format, which best reflects the project’s constituent parts: interpretation, illustration, and design.

Here, four of the posters that were selected by the Jewish Community Library (San Francisco) to be included in “The Parsha Project,” on view now through November 14. Maybe I’ll see you at the opening reception on Thursday, September 26, 6:30pm.

Details about the exhibition can be found here.