(calm music) - [Interpreter] I remember when I was little and the Sunday newspaper had that comics insert and they were called the funnies back then.

I always looked forward to the newspaper arriving on Sunday.

And when it would come I would open up that big section of the newspaper.

And even as a small child, I would lay on the floor and take it all in fascinated with the colors and the storylines that the strips showed.

Growing up I would observe how people interacted around me.

After becoming a parent, I saw those interactions play out in my own life and some funny situations would occur.

I wanted to take that humor and put it on paper as part of showing what my life is like as a deaf individual.

When I think of art and how I use art, it's powerful and visual.

The stimuli comes in and we experience it.

Of all the information we get through our eyes visually it comes across in vibrations in our body.

So how I think about the world and how I view art is so much different.

I think the key theme for me is communication.

I struggled to communicate when I was growing up.

It became then a reoccurring theme in my life and in my work because of my desire to want to connect with others.

I want to communicate visually.

I feel the direct impact that visuals have on my life.

My work is intended to reflect this impact to others so that they can experience it for themselves as well.

When I started out drawing comics, the dialogue bubbles or word balloons would be filled with English text and this felt jarring.

I don't walk around in my daily life speaking English.

I speak American Sign Language.

I tried drawing ASL inside the panels, but the frozen words took up too much space and it wasn't enough.

I wanted the same conversational ease that English has within those word balloons.

After some time researching, I came across a potential method of written ASL that fit what I was looking for.

I spent some time learning that method.

It wasn't fully developed then.

So I worked with the written ASL community to develop a stable version that would be on equal footing with the English in my comic.

I feel so much better now being able to write in ASL.

It doesn't matter what language you're thinking of, there's always different nuances.

As an English user, you have your own traditions, thoughts, worldviews based off the language that you use.

It's the same idea for a person that uses American Sign Language.

It doesn't have the same structure as English whatsoever.

(calm music) Many people reach out to me and ask, "How do you work with a deaf individual?"

If you're hearing, don't impose your expectations on us.

If you're reaching out to a deaf artist, you need to be seeking for equal footing, seeing us eye to eye, try to communicate with us and we can grow a relationship from there.

- [Announcer] This program was produced in collaboration with the Center for the Art of Medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

And funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(calm music)