Since 2003, Los Angeles artist and RISD grad Sonia Romero has been dazzling Southern California with her exquisite, detailed linocuts and silkscreened prints of wildlife and civiliziation’s (sometimes precarious) connection with it. The daughter of artists Nancy and Frank Romero and the granddaughter of the founder of the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Romero didn’t have to stretch far to find artists inspiration. She introduced her first series, an animal alphabet (B is for Bear, U is for Unicorn), in 2003 and while the concept wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, the quality of her materials – she hand-printed her images upon fabriano paper – and the expressiveness of her creatures caught the attention of the craft world.

Since, she’s enjoyed a solo show at the Avenue 50 gallery and the thirteen tiles she has created for the Macarthur Park metro station in Los Angeles are nearly ready to be permanently installed within the transit station. In the meantime, she’s working on taking her printmaking into the third dimension with a line of felted brooches available on Etsy alongside prints of some of her other artistic explorations.

UrbanMedium is Derek and Heather, a husband/wife design duo who use paint, paper and the street to broadcast messages. Their iconic images use a mashup of pop culture and historical figures to provoke thought. One of their best-known prints, CheTrooper, reimagines the Marxist revolutionary as part of the Imperial starfleet. Back with some new screenprints, UrbanMedium now turns their attention to Kim Jong Il and Charles Manson. For the former, the duo presents a set of three prints, Kim Jong-iLL, mixing up the North Korean dictator with ODB, Michael Jordan and James bond. For the latter, Hello Charlie, UrbanMedium asks the question of what happens when an icon of evil is replaced by its absolute pop culture opposite.