Guild of Natural Science Illustrators

Virtual Conference 2020
Dates: August 8th and 9th

2020 Annual Members Exhibition

The 2020 Annual Members Exhibition was to be held at the Red Butte Garden Gallery on the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City but was converted to an online exhibit due to the postponement of that conference until 2021. The Call for Entries closed on May 31, 2020. The best works selected by jurors will be displayed on the GSNI website gallery once they are complete at a later date to coincide with the beginning of the Virtual Conference in early August.

The jurors and their biographies are featured just below the gallery. We are eternally grateful for their willingness to review our members' entries.

Animation Submissions

Image gallery embedded below, click here for full screen.

The Jurors

Jason Downs is a Philadelphia-based vertebrate paleontologist. He received his Ph.D. in Geology & Geophysics from Yale University in 2006.  Currently, an associate professor in the biology department at Delaware Valley University, Jason is additionally on the faculty of the Wagner Free Institute of Science and is a research associate at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. His current research focuses on the anatomical and ecological contexts of the vertebrate transition to land.

Erica Fielder, MFA in Visual Art, has 33 years of experience illustrating, researching, writing, and designing interpretive displays for sites throughout the U.S. and overseas. During nine years as a resident naturalist at Jug Handle Nature Center in Mendocino, CA, she completed college courses in meteorology, marine biology, ecology, dendrology, ornithology, botany, and geology, as well as in scientific illustration.

A recent large project includes 30 trailside displays for the Noyo Headlands Park along the ocean bluffs of Fort Bragg, CA. The project received a 2015 Award of Excellence for Regional Park Design, including Fielder’s displays, from the California Parks and Recreation Society, and the 2015 Mayor’s Well Done Award from the City of Fort Bragg.

In 2016, Fielder completed 18 trailside displays for the first segment of the 46-mile long Napa Valley Vine Trail and 24 paintings and illustrations for Anza Borrego Desert State Park. Erica Fielder grew up in the San Francisco Bay area in an art and science family. She is an avid birder, backpacker, kayaker, and swing dancer.

View her work at https://www.ericafielderstudio.com.

Rogério Lupo was born in 1970 in Brazil; graduated in Biological Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP, Brazil), in 1997; attended Art and Drawing Classes at Escola Clássica de Arte (Classical School of Art), with Professor Ángel Martínez in São Paulo, from 1993 to 1998. He works with biological illustrations mostly for academic research, mastering a variety of media like graphite, pen nib and ink, watercolors, acrylics, coloured pencils, pastel, and scratchboard. 

Ever since he began his career back in 1998, he has been giving lectures, teaching intensive workshops, and extensive courses throughout his country. He teaches at universities, educational institutions, artists’ associations, private studios, and online courses. 

In 2019, he traveled across several states and cities in the USA, teaching a series of lectures and workshops on graphite, pen nib, and ink applied to biological illustrations. 

He is the author of many didactic guidebooks that support his classroom courses, some of which are translated into English and all are distributed for free to the general public, just like his video lessons which are available on YouTube. He is a member of the American Society of Botanical Artists (ASBA) and founding member of the União Nacional dos Ilustradores Científicos (UNIC – from Brazil, which translates as “National Union of Scientific Illustrators”). 

Among his awards worthy of note, he won the first prize twice for the Margaret Mee National Contest of Botanical Illustrations (Brazil), in 2002 and 2003 (black and white category). He also won first prize twice for the Margaret Flockton Award for Excellence in Botanical Illustration (Australia), in 2010 and 2013. 

View his work at https://rogeriolupo.blogspot.com/ 

Mark Mandica is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Amphibian Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to the study and conservation of amphibians. His work puts him on the front line in the efforts to conserve declining native and tropical amphibians. He received his B.S. from UMass where his thesis focused on the ephemeral wetland ecology of amphibians. He then went on to the American Museum of Natural History in NY where he worked as a Curatorial Assistant before moving to South Florida for graduate school at UMiami. Mark’s M.Sc. explored the amphibian community ecology in the Everglades as well as photoreception related activity patterns in South Florida bufonids.

Mark is also a professional scientific illustrator and is published in textbooks as well as the journals Science, Nature, Journal of Experimental Biology, Zoology, American Zoologist, and many others.

Originally, Mark’s academic interests were broadly based on the form, function, and evolution of amphibians, with a particular interest in the biomechanics of feeding: prey detection, capture, and transport. During the course of his studies however, it became increasingly difficult to simply find amphibians outdoors, and as a result, he has joined fellow scientists and naturalists to address the global amphibian decline crisis. Before founding the Amphibian Foundation in 2016, he managed the amphibian conservation program at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

Mark has now dedicated the majority of his time towards conservation efforts aimed at reversing amphibian declines in the southeast US and abroad, and teaching amphibian biology, ecology and conservation at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, GA.