Montreal native Manon Gauthier is a self- taught illustrator and visual artist who studied graphic design and worked in that field for more than fifteen years. In 2007, after experiencing the joy of illustrating her first children's book, she decided to devote herself to books for young people. Since then, Gauthier has illustrated a dozen books for Canadian and European publishers. She has won several important prizes and nominations for her work, among them, four nominations for the Governor General’s Literary Awards (illustration), Canada’s most prestigious annual literary prize and more recently her illustrations for the book « Mon parc » published at Les éditions de l’Isatis have been selected for the prestigious Illustrator’s exibition at the Bologna children’s Book fair 2014. As a member of the Quebec illustrators' association, Illustration Québec and RAAV, Gauthier has participated in group exhibitions nationally and internationally. She is also involved in a Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications' program called Culture in the School, which was designed to ensure that the cultural dimension is integrated into classroom and school activities, and to promote careers in the arts. She regularly leads art workshops for children at the preschool, elementary and secondary school levels.

Appropriation art—sampling, mixing, whatever—is as old as the first time some creative person joined together scraps of ephemera into a composition. Fas…