About my traffic utility box design:

“The Fire That Comes for Our Trees”

Original Medium: Acrylic paint, collage, and monoprint on illustration board

I took the inspiration for my box from nearby trees. My box is a block from the Capitol Park that has 1140 trees representing 220 different varieties. With one of the largest urban forests in the country, Sacramento is known as the City of Trees. Forests and trees offer tremendous benefits to us but are vulnerable to the droughts and fires that have escalated in California due to climate change. I wanted to address this threat with my box project. I used leaves from nearby trees to create stencils for some of the collage elements in the panels of my box. The site of my box is rather dreary, so I used bright complementary colors for my panels so that they can be seen easily from cars driving by and to invite pedestrians walking by to stop and look at the details within the panels.