ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Inspired by nature, fiction and film, this native SoCal artist received her BFA in Illustration and Entertainment Art from Cal State Fullerton in 2007, working in a wide variety of traditional/digital media. Erika is a portrait and caricature artist at Disneyland, furniture touchup technician, and a youth art instructor at the Greater Los Angeles Zoo. Erika started commissioning watercolor animal portraits in 2006, further integrating her passion for animals into her art. In 2007, she established her first line of ©Mad Maki Works sushi graphics and t-shirts, inspired by her other love…food! She is constantly working on new projects and exhibitions and feeding her sci-fi cravings. I follow the teachings of the completeness and solidity of the old masters and the gesture of traditional animation. Erika has special interest in animals, designing creatures, sculpting and visual effects for sci-fi films. Her childhood passion for movies and creatures only deepened after her recent trip to New Zealand where she saw her first visual effects workshop, followed by an internship at Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. in LA, and constantly being encouraged by inspirational figures in the industry that created the very characters she enjoyed watching on TV as a child. I’ve had many great teachers, and I hope to someday teach and inspire young minds as many have inspired me!Erika lives by the wise words of Daisaku Ikeda, “A wave grows stronger with each obstacle it encounters. Realizing absolute happiness is a state of happiness that can never be destroyed or defeated.â€..
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