Robbi Behr - illustrations, fetus

Robbi Behr was born and raised in transcontinental fashion, spending the school year in the tiny burgh of Chestertown on Maryland's eastern shore and summers just a stone's throw from the gravel airstrip of Coffee Point, Alaska (which has four full-time residents and does not appear on any map). In the course of 30 summers on the tundra, she has personally caught more than 62,000 sockeye salmon with her bare hands and once contracted trenchmouth, which she swears is not as grody as it sounds. Her parents are to blame for her entrepreneurial spirit and general distaste for structure, deadlines, or jobs with benefits.

Following brief periods of employment as museum docent, children's portrait photographer, gallery assistant, and t-shirt designer, got her MFA in illustration. Though her work is often messy and indebted to the inadvertent genius of accident, much of it comes from a surprisingly dark place that baffles even her.

In the fall of 2006, she took up residence in the hayloft of a barn two blocks away from her childhood home. There, she makes illustrated books with her husband, writer Matthew Swanson, and occasionally produces fine art prints for the Carla Massoni Gallery.

In April of this year, she expects to meet her first child, and hopes very much that it does not have her husband's nose.