Drawing What Equality Looks Like

I had the pleasure of leading a drawing activity for 250 people at the Asian American Community Development Conference in NYC last week.

First I did a quick drawing lesson showing people how to draw just about anything using simple shapes.

Then I challenged them to draw a picture of what equality would look like in their communities. 

Once they finished their drawings, they took a few minutes to do a show and tell with their neighbors, explaining what they were trying to communicate in their drawings.

Finally we created a popup gallery of their art! Just another way to engage your conference participants. 

Visualizing the Future of Cinical Trials

The clinical trials process is expensive, time consuming, and often disappointing. The DPharm conference exists for people to share ideas and stories with the goal of radically improving how we do clinical trials. I was honored to capture many of the talks at DPharm 2017 in Boston as a visual listener.  Here's a link to all the visual listening charts I created. 

Visualizing the Creative Process

I've been a "creative" person my whole life---I've created multimedia dance performances, co-created site specific theater productions, won a citywide poetry competition, accompanied world famous musicians with my video projected animation, created animated and live action videos, created comics, performed standup comedy, told stories accompanied by my hand drawn illustrations, hosted interactive video talk shows, helped make an award winning radio show, and of course in my current work, I turn conversations into illustrated info murals. But what drives creativity? And what techniques and approaches are helpful to people who make creative work? I'm diving into a stack of creativity books right now, and I'm translating what I read into sketch notes to help me remember and understand them better. The notes above are from a couple of chapters of Bird by Bird, the excellent book on writing by Annie Lamott. Other books on my list include The Creative Habit, by choreographer Twyla Tharp and Creativity by psychologist Csikszentmihalyi Mihaly.

Whatever sketchnotes I create are by no means meant to be comprehensive, or a replacement for reading the book. But they help me recall, understand, and assimilate the ideas in the books better. I'll keep posting these as I make them.

Visualizing a Mural

When I was offered a commission to create a mural on three adjacent walls at Liminal Studios half a block from the Empire State Building, I was very excited. Instead of coming up with something out of thin air, I browsed my sketchbook and found the doodle below which I created while riding BART from San Francisco airport to the East Bay a few months ago. It inspired me to create a mural of several fantastical flowers, pollinated by various creatures. I shot a time lapse video action video showing me painting the mural. I did it all freehand, without penciling anything in on the walls. The flowers are mandalas, combining simple shapes that add up to complex forms. I accompanied it with a track from my friend John Sully's new album, This Music Is Broken. Hope you enjoy this little peek into my mural creation process!

Cartoon about about Ryancare

Created a brief cartoon to convey the human face of who would be effected by the elimination of healthcare coverage for 24 million people courtesy of Ryancare. The 24 million figure comes from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.