Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

My favorite medium is a graphite pencil in order to make obsessively detailed and delicately rendered drawings. These drawings are representational in style but employ diverse visual language and techniques to create allegorical works about environmental issues. I have long explored humanity’s impact upon the natural world and our complicated relationship with nature.

Where do you find inspiration?

My artworks’ imagery derives inspiration from both the urban environment and natural ecosystems. The human-made and the nature-made are mashed up in dystopian compositions that address environmental degradation and creatures’ adaptation to our intrusion. My current series is a multi-year project of drawings that highlight each animal native to Southern California on the federal endangered species list, juxtaposed with a toxic sociocultural issue that I argue more rightly should go “extinct.”

What would you do with $25,000?

This prize money would allow me to spend more time on creating my “Species In Danger” series, a long term project of making one drawing for each of the approximately 54 creatures based in Southern California on the federal endangered species list. It is a slow, laborious process for each hyper-detailed drawing, so I have completed a modest 15 pieces thus far. I would utilize this award to purchase supplies and work less at my day job in order to dedicate more time to this project.