Daniel Zender  (Design Foundations and Illustration 2)
Conforming to his own artistic vision, this Brooklyn-based illustrator is mastering uncanny beauty.

Last October, Daniel Zender did something you have probably never done: he went to Easter Island on a whim. In truth, the word whim doesn’t really capture the passionate curiosity that led to Zender’s adventure. The illustrator, 31, has an affinity for mysterious phenomena and traditional art that goes back to his childhood. “I was an X-Files kid,” he recalls. “I was into aliens and Area 51 and just weird stuff.” From early on, he was fascinated by Easter Island, “a place that took a long time to understand and still is not fully understood.” His interest had been dormant until he recently happened on a book about the Chilean island at a stoop sale near his Brooklyn home, and started wondering how he could actually get there.
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