here and do specific projects with the artists and and then have to show the work that we collaborated on show us some art pieces that you are currently excited  about so this is a drawing that actually is is in progress i've been working on this for several months now some of the things that i like to represent in my in my drawings is this this kind of investigation of of suburbia and the urban suburban landscape really an investigation of my my landscape and trying to find you know maybe a little hidden hidden children in our culture struggle a lot with brands in this kind of what what what does it mean to wear a certain brand and branding is a very kind of present part of our lives we can't get away from it whether it's through television advertising or otherwise and in fact the pose of these two children is taken from a circa one nine hundred sixty band aid ad you know that was meant to depict the this this peaceful moment where  a child was helping bandage girls foot and so it starts out actually from advertising and then in addition these kids are literally physically branded with these these other messages and if you look at the back of her wheelchair there's a advertisement that i found you know particularly kind of compelling and interesting and the caption reads juicy couture for nice girls who like stuff so in a way this could be yeah this could be one of the kind of and it is and there's a lot of messages in one frame that you do your print thank besides the plants and media and the concepts i see the you know the animal figures with these animals the kids do you want to tell us what the animals represent is so i'm very interested in an old artistic practice which is having animals communicate you know the human condition so i'm i've i've always had an interest in animals as a vehicle for telling the human story in respect to many ancient works of art and i'm trying to do that a new way and use it in this case i like to use animals or from our environment we've got skunks crawling in our trash cans we've got bluejays everywhere we've got robins so i'm pulling animals from our environment is another example of from an action of vine where you know where this girl is also going through a transformation the boy is literally a butterfly scroll is a flicker type of woodpecker the other girl is changing into a skunk so maybe one one one of my feelings about it is despite the sort of treacherous qualities of the environment maybe because these characters can are transforming and trying to you know change their environment change their situation it's a it has a lot of massa making the work beautifully rendered there hours that go into building the works so i hope that at least the viewer comes out with a strong of the kind of visual experience they should and so i so i want to offer that innit with with  is a business where we sell the work of other artists so we try to i try to as an artist you know do as many things as i can do kind of creatively a concert couple together a living i also stay at home with with with three kids so that's another very important part of my my career so i work from home over my business from home and so i also watch the kids so  my mentors have told me to always keep your hand in your work even if it's only an hour a day ok but rather than taking three months off and trying to read reinvent the wheel i've been successful in continuing to work you know  while i'm juggling even if it's just a little bit and sometimes it's difficult to be satisfied with it's it's always difficult to be satisfied with you know a limited amount of time when you're very passionate about a subject but it's been very helpful to have that art what is your teaching philosophy and what do you want your students to get out of your classes i mean my particular philosophy with our in general is to give students like  like a skeletal structure of of skills but then with those skills ask them to do compelling kind of mindsets or projects so right from the beginning my goal as a teacher is due to equip the kids with with tools but then throw them right the deep end  on right now so i'm excited to see we've already visited my studio next door which is where drawing the drawing part of the process takes place we also have this community space here which is a print making studio where several members of our community and our guests as well can make prints here what i want when you come on over and i'll show you the the plate so today  i'm going to be doing a copper plate etching and essentially an etching is a very simple technology where an image is incised in the copper so if you look closely at this plate which is there are tiny grooves which record the lines that i drew with an implement so first i apply the ink and then i'm going to pick up some of these tarlatan and use them to kind of work the ant into the cracks and also pull up the excess as well so you have to apply a lot of ink to make sure that you have in all of the grooves etching is a is a medium that really captures a lot of detail and  is able to represent very fine line work this is actually the first time i think it's played so it's a bit of a bit of a mystery as to whether or not we're going to have a happy result there's always there's always some doubt and surprise now you can see the ink is gone into those grooves what you saw when the cover was clean so hopefully when we print this the ink will transfer from the grooves onto the paper so i'm transferring the plate over to the printing press are you ready to see what we have right so i'm pretty happy it looks like we have an image here it's a pretty nice reproduction of of the scratching that i did i can see you know there are adjustments to be made through the process where you might want certain areas a little darker than others in which case i would wipe less of the ink away and then go from there this particular project you see it's unfinished looking my idea is to use this this print as a template for a series of drawings which in which each drawing will be different each one will feature a different boy each one will feature a different landscape so i'll be traveling to switzerland this summer and painting from the landscape so imagine maybe an alpine vista here with this nice al ibex the imagery in this this print is my sort of version of the heidi story and i'll be exploring that and deconstructing and playing with ideas from the classic children's story while i'm over in switzerland