Non-Taxidermy Projects

I have worked with Chiodo Art Development for more than ten years, doing foam carving and clay work for casino interiors, parks, museums, and monument sculptures.

Taught with Anandamayi Arnold at Castle in the Air. All classes are introductory level, covering a range of useful techniques essential to my work with this material.

Window displays for Castle in the Air and Tail of the Yak.
Custom party and event decorations.

Small gift crafts sold at Castle in the Air and Tail of the Yak.

Collaborations with Anandamayi Arnold

Event decorations and party favors.

Site specific murals, farmer's market banners and signs.

Wacky costume design and construction for personal amusement, as well as professionally for a large Halloween merchandise company, now called SVI.

My experience in Halloween merchandise prototyping gave me an opportunity to learn a great deal in the use of a variety of media for sculpting. I also learned about aspects of the mass merchandise production, including visiting a few of the manufacturing facilities in China and having my job slowly outsourced to China over the period of a few years.

I use salvaged materials where I can in my vegan taxidermy. It is, however, a different experience to create art entirely inspired by the salvaged items themselves: allowing shapes or qualities in a discarded item to be the creative inspiration.

I have also won awards for trash-art in competitions: Trash to Treasures of the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, Robogames static art-bots, and the Berkeley Green Festival.

Local designer Cari Borja featured my bird hat in her Summer 2009 collection. Hat created for/donated to the 2009 Discarded To Divine, trash fashion charity event.

Giant street chalk-art murals, and infiorata (flower petal mosaics) for cultural events and street fairs

Doing live public art events with Arte de Leone has been my most immediately gratifying experience in the exchange between my creating art and the viewing audience. Creating art in a public space engages people in the process.

Large infiorata mural (40'x40'), made from flower and plant materials for the 2007 Italian Fashion and Arts week, at South Coast Plaza, Costa Mesa, CA.