American artist, Jonah Mitropoulos (b. 1982) creates works in wood that ironize beauty and celebrate non-human life. Combining highly colloquial self-representations of human beauty with the ancient practice of representing animals, he recesses relief portraits into wood boards, heightening their shadows. His works immediately appear familiar, ridiculous, or even vulgar, but are ultimately disrupted by the unsettling, uncanny, and transient gaze of animals overshadowed by human impact.

Jonah sources his materials locally or through highly accessible means (i.e. lumberyards) in order to question the conventional attitudes of what wood is good to carve. In eschewing standard species, he continues the theme of disrupting expectations by using commonplace building materials used for housing development - one of the leading causes of habitat destruction. Machine reproduction often masks itself by sanding and staining away the fingerprint of the drill. Consequently, his works are neither stained nor sanded, and the chisel's marks play a dominant role in reminding us of non-industrial production. 

At this time, he is developing a series of "manifestos" that play with the idea of representing animals through hand shadow-puppets. Jonah's larger ongoing series entitled, "aviary," depicts bird-headed selfies. He is currently based in Taos, New Mexico.