Caught! The Spanish Imperial Eagle

The following is a long-term project, intended to be interactive and multi-platformed, that I am working on when not busy with other things. The scope of it is massive, but it begins quite humbly in these samples:

This is an invitation to take part in a planet-sized story.

The immense and recent popularity of animals in photographs and videos in social media, suggests a level of global caring and wonder—and humor—of which we were unaware before the internet.

Animals make us laugh, at times through our tears. There is a massive call to action to save endangered species. On Twitter alone, dozens of organizations and thousands of individuals are taking part in the effort; financial aid, increased action to halt activities such as poaching and trafficking, destruction of habitat and ecosystems, as well as the closing of zones of demand that require captivity and cruelty. Animals are penetrating the social bloodstream at a speed impossible before the internet, teaching us to open fresh eyes for their value, their brilliance, and beauty. And disappearance.

Every dog one meets on the street, it seems, was rescued from a shelter. We join in this mission with illustrations accompanied by short stories from the perspective of the animals.. The working title is Caught!

Global issues happen somewhere else. Our environmental crises are too vast for anything we do to be of consequence. Or so we believe. This book of illustrations and short stories offers a small window of possibility. a fingertip of contact, the start of a relationship.

This project focuses on letting the animals talk, getting each endangered creature under your skin with their side of the story, based on facts about their daily struggle. In these first-person narratives these creatures have been endowed with self-awareness, and the capacity for reflection. They have names and homes, they have family and friends.

The narrative is not militant, political, or activist. It is a socially conscious, one-inch step into a forbidding future. As one goes about coloring, one shares the troubles told in each story, in addition to the meditative restfulness that has popularized coloring.

Looking after our planet is not solely a job for big organizations and massive change, but asks, more pointedly, for the participation of the individual. This is how ordinary people create real change in any arena. This book is just a beginning and the project may appear on a different platform. A venue to add to the conversation and benefit the collective — to participate in a new consciousness.

We have all been softened by an extraordinary act by an animal, shown to us on someone’s phone. This is the first time these two ideas, planetary and personal, exist in the same heartbeat.

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Howard Stein

South African-born graphic designer, illustrator, photographer, trained in the US and abroad, I have worked commercially for giant firms and tiny concerns. As a fine artist I have large abstract works hanging in corporate and private collections in eight countries. I now work as a Creative Director in New York City.

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