I went to as many protests as possible since January 2017 and have been documenting protests against the policies of the Trump Administration. I have been heartened and inspired by my fellow New Yorkers' steadfast and joyous resistance and their willingness to show up for each other.
Drawn on location at the Families Belong Together march protesting the immigration policy of family separation. The march began in Foley Square and crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, where I drew this.
Drawn on locationJanuary 29, 2017 at Battery Park in New York City, New Yorkers protested the first "Muslim Ban"—Trump's first executive order attempting to restrict people entering the US based on the religion of their country of origin.
Drawn on March 25, 2017 during the People for Free Press Rally and March that started in Bryant Park and marched to the New York Times building in support of the free press.
Who doesn't love a dance party-protest? This was a protest against Attorney General Jeff Sessions' rescinding of an Obama administration memo that protected transgender students in schools with binary and gendered bathroom and locker room facilities. Drawn on location on February 26, 2017 just outside Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan.
Drawn on April 29, 2017 at the 100 Days of Failure rally to mark Trump's first 100 days in office.
Another one from the Queer and Trans Dace Party-Protest, from when the MAGA dudes tried to join the dancing.
Drawn on February 4, 2017 at an LGBT rally in solidarity with the Muslim, immigrant, and asylum-seekers community outside the Stonewall Inn.
From January 29, 2017 Battery Park City protest against the first Muslim Ban.
Drawn on April 29, 2017 at the 100 Days of Failure rally to mark Trump's first 100 days in office. Every protest draws a few to a dozen very vocal Trump supporters. They are very interesting to draw as they're always very theatrical.
From January 29, 2017 Battery Park City protest against the first Muslim Ban.
Drawn at the People for a Free Press Rally and March
Drawn on February 4, 2017 at an LGBT rally in solidarity with the Muslim, immigrant, and asylum-seekers community outside the Stonewall Inn.
I created illustrations for some Amplify e-books that will be in elementary schools next year. One of the main directions overall was that each book should look distinct, as if a different illustrator created them.
Art direction: Julia Sverchuk
An illustration depicting Mount Fuji, Japan’s famous volcano, for the e-book Volcanoes.
The cover for the Volcanoes e-book. I had a lot of fun with this illustration, done in pastel on black board.
This illustration features the baker’s boy Christopher in Colonial Boston. This image had to capture the setting as well as Christopher’s resentment at the British soldiers quartered in Boston.
This illustration features James as he and a fellow British soldier patrol Colonial Boston harbor in a rowboat.
This illustration centers on Betsy, the slave of a tailor in Colonial Boston. As she overhears the tailor and his friend discussing their plans for a revolution, Betsy wonders about her place in their plan for a new country. I wanted to capture Betsy’s hopes and doubts in my depiction.
This illustration shows Einar confronting the villain Asger as his sister looks on.
In this illustration, Einar searches his Aunt Olga’s bag for the missing scimitar, much to his aunt’s chagrin.
I love creating illustrations for books. Since I read a lot, it's an inexhaustible resource for inspiration.
I couldn’t decide which character should take precedence: the mysterious man who disappears, or the opaque, frustrating narrator who searched for him. See more about my process here.
An Illustration for Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper."
A detail from The Yellow Wallpaper illustration. *Who* is that creeping woman being the wallpaper?
People are among my favorite subjects to draw. I try to get a likeness, of course, but what I try for even more is the feelings they give me from what I know about them—from what they’ve written or said. Or if I draw them from life, I consider their way of talking, their expressions, and gestures, all the cues that express who they are beneath their externals.
How many times have I read Jane Eyre? That would be really, really hard to say.
I'm often inspired by things I read. In a Letters of Note post about Helen Keller's impressions at the top of the Empire State Building. She wrote that, there, at the top of what was then the tallest building in the world, she had a vision of the universe.
There was the Hudson – more like the flash of a sword-blade than a noble river. The little island of Manhattan, set like a jewel in its nest of rainbow waters, stared up into my face, and the solar system circled about my head! Why, I thought, the sun and the stars are suburbs of New York, and I never knew it! I had a sort of wild desire to invest in a bit of real estate on one of the planets. All sense of depression and hard times vanished, I felt like being frivolous with the stars.
One of the joys of drawing people is trying to use all the graphic tools at my disposal to convey not just what a person looks like, but their life experience, what it's like to be in their presence. This man had clearly been through good times and bad, and I tried to convey the impression he gave me of enduring all things, and surviving with warmth and humor intact.
A fashionable Upper West Sider in her natural habitat: a chic café.
Friends of mine during a crit.
Blacksmiths from a gathering at Mystic Seaport.
I'm lucky enough to live in the greatest city on the planet, where scenes and people to draw are just outside my door.
I created these illustrations for games for pre-literate children. Since the target audience can’t read yet, each one has to be very visually and conceptually clear.
Art direction: Julia Sverchuk
Players have to put the three pictures into a sequence. In this case, the sequence is: bears fatten up in the fall, hibernate in the winter, and wake in the spring.
Another sequencing set. In this one, the chicken is brought home in the first, lays an egg in the second, and then the egg is fried up in the third.
Another one from the sequencing game. Number one is planting seeds, number two is caring for small plants (and being patient), and number three is enjoying the sunflowers.
Sometimes, it’s as simple as defining a word. I looked to playing cards for inspiration on this one.
In this, players have to discern the degrees of difference between words that can be put into a sequence. In this case, our mice start out having a difference, which turns into a disagreement, and then a squabble, which then escalates into a fight, and finally a brawl.
Another one where players learn about the nuance of words. In this case, the sequence is adore, admire, favor, dislike, and hate.
Misha is a little boy who finds himself mysteriously transformed into a fox.
Book covers for Madeleine L'Engle's classic Time series. In her 2004 New Yorker profile of Madeleine L'Engle, Cynthia Zarin quotes a friend who says “there are really two kinds of girls. Those who read Madeleine L’Engle when they were small, and those who didn’t.” I was definitely one who *did* read Madeleine L'Engle and was influenced by her thoughtful, sensitive characters and their quests to make things right in their world. When I thought about making book covers for her books, I was inspired by Robert and Sonia Delaunay's Orphism art movement. Their experiments in color seemed a perfect correlation to L'Engle's understanding of the universe as a place of harmony and joy: a musical geometry that can be shattered by the evil actions of the Echthroi or set right by the protagonist Meg Murry.
Sometimes I leave New York.
A little girl falls asleep on the way to the amusement park and has a dream heavily influenced by the unicorn tapestries.
My work was shown along with other artists of the Dalvero Academy at the Mystic Seaport Museum. We shared the reportage we created around the historic 38th Voyage of the Charles W. Morgan, the last wooden whaling ship in existence, as well as our own personal explorations of the whaling industry. The show ran from November 2015–November 2016. You can find out more information about the exhibit here at the website.
I drew this on location in Boston when the Charles W. Morgan made a stop there on her historic 38th Voyage. I had thought the Morgan quite a large ship until I saw her next to the behemoth that is the Constitution.
This drawing was made on location during the Sea Trials of the Charles W. Morgan after the sails had just been put on in New London. I had only ever seen the whaleship without sails and they added a whole new dimension to drawing her. They added so much drama and excitement because they were ever-changing with the wind: now billowing, now slack, now taut. And because of the activity they caused in the crew who were always swarming up the masts to attend to them.
I made this drawing on location in New London while the crew were bending on the sails in New London. It was a flurry of activity that involved perching on a line (a sheet, I guess they call it) under them, leaning against a spar, sometimes climbing up onto the spar. They all had to work together since the sails were too big for any one person to handle. It was, at all times, a five-person job.
To tell the truth, I can't remember if I made this little watercolor as the Morgan was leaving Mystic, or arriving somewhere else, but as you can see, I was in a romantic mood. I think this was my first sighting of her after Mystic, and it seemed to me the dawning of a new era for the whaleship, at the beginning of her 38th Voyage.
This seems too good to be true, but in the waters off Provincetown, this is exactly what happened. The crew put down a whaleboat that used to be for hunting whales, and as the whaleboat's crew was maneuvering around in the water, a curious whale came up and began to frolic around the whaleboat. The whale approached in complete innocence, and it broke my heart a little. If we were still in the business of killing them, this is how easy it would have been. Happily, we were there for another purpose and with a different attitude, and I decided that would be the perfect moment to capture for a stamp to commemorate a new kind of meeting between our two species.
I made this drawing at the Whale Naturalist Conference in Provincetown. Speakers had been invited to talk about the threats facing whales today. After enumerating the threats, one of the speakers talked about the difficulty of protecting them since they live their lives out there, free in the ocean. "It's not like we can keep them in boxes," he said. And I thought about how happy I would be if I could keep them in boxes, safe from big ships that would strike them, and fishing lines and nets that might entangle them, and pollution that would poison them. I can't keep them in boxes, but I can make a drawing of it. So I did.
This is the piece on view at Dalvero Academy's show, Journey of Transformation at Mystic Seaport.
Whales are the largest mammals yet live their lives unseen, to their detriment and ours: if we could more easily see them, perhaps their survival might be more urgent to us. When we do catch a glimpse of one, it’s impossible not to be moved.
In my piece, “sea change” refers to the change in the ocean over the past two hundred years. The whales have suffered these changes: first, from whaling and today from other survival challenges created by humans. “Sea change” also refers to Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, in which the ocean transforms the substance of the body into riches. As the sea changes eyes to pearls, bones to coral in the song, so we changed the substance of the whales’ bodies into commodities.
I hope that my piece makes visible that lost, uncommodifiable richness and inspires connection with the whales that still remain.
A reportage of the restoration of the last wooden whaling ship in existence, the Charles W. Morgan at Mystic Seaport Museum of America and the Sea. I was privileged to take part in a show, Restoring a Past, Charting a Future at the Seaport in 2013 with the Dalvero Academy. Watching and documenting the restoration of this venerated whaler was a real joy.
The Mystic Seaport Magazine chose my piece for the cover of their quarterly magazine to let their readers know about the Dalvero Academy show Restoring a Past, Charting a Future.
Workers touching up the hull of the Charles W. Morgan near the completion of the restoration.
The Charles W. Morgan surrounded by scaffolding.
A portrait of Quentin Snediker, the Shipyard Director at Mystic Seaport Museum of America and the Sea.
A reportage of the James Driggs Shipsmith Shop at Mystic Seaport complete with blacksmiths and all those tools that are really fun to draw!
Drawing on site is both an exploration and an experiment. You can never predict what will happen, who will wander into your drawing, so you're forced to react honestly, from observation.
In late 2014, I documented some of the Black Lives Matter protests in New York City that followed the deaths of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice by the police. These drawings were made on location during the protests and appeared in a show about reportage illustration at the University of the West of England.
