Homeless

When developing my children’s book series, I worked with many organizations to make sure my story was as accurate and sensitive as possible. I reached out to and coordinated with Ruth Cross, Senior Social and emotional learning Consultant from CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning). I also collaborated with the lead social worker, Michael Geier, from the Tenderloin Elementary School. With the help of Hamilton Families, which houses homeless families in San Francisco, I conducted one- on-one interviews with the many homeless people I befriended on the streets of San Francisco. I have written and illustrated two children’s books to explain homelessness and to create a dialogue about this growing community that affects us all. The books, targeted to children aged two to ten, are educational and uplifting. I have been going to schools and reading them to the students. They and their teachers love them, and that means the world to me. This book tells the story of a child and their family who go from having a home, to becoming homeless, and then go through the process of getting a home again.

San Francisco is known worldwide for its culture, community, and compassion. It is a city of incomparable beauty and diversity, which over the last decades has become an incubator of innovation in art, technology, medicine, and social media. But it has an underbelly. Homelessness. Proportionate to its population, it has the most people living on the streets anywhere in the country. And the numbers are growing month by month. When developing my children’s book series, I worked with many organizations to make sure my story was as accurate and sensitive as possible. I reached out to and coordinated with Ruth Cross, Senior Social and emotional learning Consultant from CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning). I also collaborated with the lead social worker, Michael Geier, from the Tenderloin Elementary School. With the help of Hamilton Families, which houses homeless families in San Francisco, I conducted one- on-one interviews with the many homeless people I befriended on the streets of San Francisco. I have written and illustrated two children’s books to explain homelessness and to create a dialogue about this growing community that affects us all. The books, targeted to children aged two to ten, are educational and uplifting. I have been going to schools and reading them to the students. They and their teachers love them, and that means the world to me. This book tells the story of a child and their family who go from having a home, to becoming homeless, and then go through the process of getting a home again.

I am an enthusiastic and passionate illustrator and designer, a visual storyteller working for the causes and education of children. I feel most at home behind a pencil and a pad of paper, creating adventures based on my own experience as an artist and as an equal rights advocate. A graduate of the California College of Art in San Francisco. I won the California College of Arts Libraries Arts Award for my book design and aesthetics, and was prominently showcased in the CCA 2017 Commencement Exhibition for my story book design. What moves me is change. People standing up for their rights and what they believe in. My relationship to craft and function is that I design stories around experiences for those people who are often under represented or abused. I am a social justice warrior, a philosopher, and an activist.I make work for oppressed and marginalized communities: children, women, queer, unhoused folks, people of color, differently abled folks, I make work that is pushing platforms for understanding.