San Francisco illustrator and fine artist Lisa Congdon (b. 1968) was raised in both upstate New York and Northern California where she grew to love the trees and animals that surrounded her. That love is now expressed most intensely through her paintings and drawings. Lisa comes from a family of creative people and has been making things with her hands since she was very small. She is also a prolific collector of old and unusual things, including bits of nature, and surrounds herself with these things in her home and studio. In 2010 she chronicled all of her collections in her Collection A Day 2010 Project. That project is now a book, published in March 2011. Lisa lives in the Mission District of San Francisco with her partner, Clay Lauren Walsh, her 10 pound chihuahua, Wilfredo, and her two cats, Barry and Margaret. She works at her studio several blocks from her home. She's an avid cyclist, swimmer and vegan.