Hello! My name is Mica Angela Hendricks. I am an illustrator and graphic artist. I started this blog as a sort of place to share all the random projects I get myself into. I don’t think I’ve spoken the word “bored” in YEARS. I keep myself quite busy.
So why a mockingbird, you might ask? Well, because according to Tom Robbins,
“Mockingbirds are the true artists of the bird kingdom. Which is to say, although they’re born with a song of their own, an innate riff that happens to be one of the most versatile of all ornithological expressions, mocking birds aren’t content to merely play the hand that is dealt them. Like all artists, they are out to rearrange reality. Innovative, willful, daring, not bound by the rules to which others may blindly adhere, the mockingbird collects snatches of birdsong from this tree and that field, appropriates them, places them in new and unexpected contexts, recreates the world from the world. For example, a mockingbird in South Carolina was heard to blend the songs of thirty-two different kinds of birds into a ten-minute performance, a virtuoso display that serve no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.”
So basically, this is a collection of a variety of interests. I like lots of things. I enjoy making and doing things with and for my daughter. And I wanted to share ideas and to inspire creativity. And, as my daughter once said, “I like to make to make things I think is beautiful.”
busy mockingbird 
Just wanted to say that I love your art – it’s beautiful and inspiring! Thank you for sharing it!
Hi Mica — I edit an art/design and visual culture clog called Colossal (www.thisiscolossal.com) and am interested in speaking with you about your work. Any chance you could get in touch?
You should caricature the drag queen Jinkx Monsoon – her style matching yours very well!
Thank you–I did, actually! It’s on my Facebook and Twitter page for busymockingbird! I love Jinkx!!!
I love your work–and I can see why you were so fascinated by the collaborations with your daughter. Wonderful results…!!! – Bill Whiting
Greetings,
How could I get a hold of you to ask you a few questions about your collaborative work with your daughter? I coordinate gallery shows for a children’s museum, and we’d love to host your work. Please contact me at heidi.m.lubin [at] gmail [dot] com
Thank you!
Emailed you! Thank you
Will you be selling any of the originals works?
Not as of yet…I want to do something special with them, but I’ve not yet decided on what. I am donating one for a fundraiser a friend is hosting, but beyond that, I’m still considering. It may just be something she might appreciate having when she’s older. 🙂
Hello! I would like to interview you for an online literary journal and discuss your work, especially your creative collaborations with your daughter. If this idea seems interesting to you, please contact me so that we may begin the process.
That sounds great!
Super! I’m looking forward to this. 🙂
We are putting together a TEDxSFA event and our theme is creativity. What you have written would make an excellent talk. IF you are interested please email me at TEDxSFA@gmail.com Thanks!
(Ha, I see that we’re not the only ones who were riveted by these pieces…)
Mica,
We are a long-established literary journal and would be interested in using art from this series for our “Featured Artist” for our upcoming issue. If that’s a possibility, would love to discuss it with you. And in any case, we loved these!
Literal Latte
Thank you so much! Please contact & tell me more!
Hi Mica,
I work for a press agency in the UK, we find and send stories to the UK national and international press. I was hoping to get in touch with you regarding your work. I was wondering if you had a direct email address? Mine is dale@catersnews.com if you would like to get in touch.
Thanks for your time.
Dale
Hello Mica,
Love this collaboration with your daughter! I wonder if you would be up for trying a collaboration drawing a tree of someone climbing a tree for my book: ‘The Art of climbing Trees’? Here’s the info: http://uptrees.net/2013/07/27/draw-me-a-tree/ Thanks for your inspiration….
Henrik
My wife and I adore these pieces! So wonderful and creative. We got to wondering: does Mica and her daughter do commission pieces? Forget a family portrait; we want a family doodle! So, yeah, is that something you might do?
Hello Mica!
I just wanted to let you know that I LOVE your work and will be featuring the prints you made with your daughter on my blog. I used three of your pictures for it – please let me know if you want me to remove them.
All the best from Germany,
Lisa
I am enchanted and inspired by your work! Also, you have a lovely writer’s voice!
You’ve made my evening reading through your blog and imagining what I might borrow from your song for my own.
All the best to you,
Rhonda (a fellow mockingbird)
Great artwork with your daughter! It’s amazing!!! I would like to offer the opportunity to include one of the collaborations in a future edition of Stepping Stones Magazine, the quarterly magazine for members of SpiralScouts International. Please email me at magazine at spiralscouts.org to discuss more details. Thank you for sharing and creating!
[…] Angela Hendricks est The busy mockingbird. Et Mica Angela hendricks est également une maman très fière des œuvres de sa petite fille. […]
[…] Angela Hendricks est The busy mockingbird. Et Mica Angela hendricks est également une maman très fière des […]
Hello Mica,
At first I would like to say I am really fascinated of your work. I simply love it.
I wonder if you and your genious daughter could do such a painting from a picture of my dear way too early passed away father. It would really mean a lot to me.
Sorry for my bad english…
Greetings from Germany,
Is there any place I could buy one of these collaborations with your daughter? I have a teacher friend who collects children’s art as well as really great illustrations and this is BOTH and that is amazing.
I dont’ think I’m selling the originals, but the prints are on sale at society6.com/micaangela
I can’t say enough good about the collaborative work with your daughter. I have experienced all the same possessive feelings about my art supplies and projects. I showed your blog post to my daughter and she was intrigued. Since I am not an accomplished artist we will likely have to find other ways to work together. It will be fun trying things out. A question: would you be interested in selling me an original? Your choice. Please let me know.
Having been in the art biz for a long time, and having seen everything under the sun, this is new and captivating. Cripes on a cracker. Your work and the work with your daughter is beyond wonderful.
Ah, thank you so much! I appreciate it!
i am 8 years old and love your art and your daughter! You guys make a great team!
Thank you so much! You sound like a pretty awesome kid yourself…
All I can say is that I absolutely LOVE to collaboration art! The pieces are so fun and bright! I smiled looking at every one of them! Hope to see more in the future
Mica,
If you’re interested in getting a print book done, please contact me… I run a small company that picks up great ideas and helps get them funded on Kickstarter.com. We walk you through how Kickstarter works, and guide you to setting up a brilliant campaign (including a professionally shot and edited video).
Looking forward to hearing from you!
David O’Hagan
Do you and your daughter do collaborative commission work? I would love so very much to give my husband a portrait of the two of us for our one year anniversary. Your whimsical style is exactly what I was looking for! If you’re available for commissions please let me know. It would be an honor to have a piece of art created by such a talented duo.
[…] tiroir au milieu du collier de pâtes et autre cendrier en pâte à sel, Angela Hendricks, aka busy mockingbird, illustratrice et blogueuse américaine, a décidé de mettre l’imagination débordante et […]
I love your work with your daughter. What a wonderful idea and shared experience you will learn from each other and create a life long bond.
Mica,
My name is Mike Jewett and I love the collaborativve works of art with you and your daughter. I am the editor of a poetry magazine and would like to know if you would be alright letting us use one of your collaborative pieces for a future cover.
May I buy one of your pieces?
Thanks to @EmmaK67 I was introduced to your work with your 4yo. Wow! 2 very talented ladies.
Dear Mica – what a glorious idea! My late mom, Sydell Rosenberg, was a published haiku poet and public school teacher who never fulfilled her dream of publishing an A-B-C reader for children. I’m trying to carry her poetic legacy forward today by collaborating with kids to illustrate her work. She would have been so thrilled by this idea of pairing her haiku with the visual arts — of her word-pictures being interpreted by children with unfettered imaginations and free-ranging expressiveness. This idea is bearing fruit … and I use this phrase deliberately! Please take a look at this PoeTree Project now installed for the delectation of children (and I hope, their parents) at the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Manhattan. I soon will be working with another NY nonprofit, Arts For All, to develop a haiku/arts program for second graders which will be conducted at an elementary school in the Bronx, NY! You and your daughter have a lovely partnership underway and I wish you success. http://blog.cmany.org/featured-artists/poetree/
dear mica,
i love these..are any available to buy as prints?i love them all!
x
Yes, they are available at society6.com/micaangela. Thank you!
I love the collaborations you did with your daughter. My 6 year old and I are at the moment doing side-by-side drawings and are having a lot of fun. if you ever need writers (or a teeny-weeny book publisher) for a book project, then let me know, as I run a tiny press and know of a fair few writers too…
Thanks, and best wishes,
Teika
My husband loves your collaborative art pieces with your daughter! Do you ever do special requests? If I sent you a picture of he and I could you draw our faces and let your daughter to the bodies? How much would you charge for something like that if you even do it? A small version would be fine, we don’t have tons of wall space! Please email me at bonniekate3@aim.com if this is something you would do! It’d be a great Christmas gift, he’d LOVE it!! 🙂
Thanks,
Bonnie 🙂
Thank you so much for asking, but We’ve decided not to do custom orders. I don’t want it to seem like a job for her, she just has fun with it. But I appreciate the offer!
Your illustrations are just lovely, and the collaborations are painfully charming 🙂 It makes me wonder if my 4-year-old girl would do something like that…but of course SHE would, the real question is, would I (I’m sort of a perfectionist, too…)?? Thank you for sharing!
Love the entry about collaborative work with your daughter. I looked on society 6 and didn’t see the initial image you posted of the 2 heads that your daughter drew a figure peaking from behind. I love this one and would live to see the finished project and possibly buy a print of it!
Ah, thank you so much! We have many others that I didn’t yet put up for sale as prints…I hope to make a book from them and want to keep some a surprise!
Hi Mica!
I really like your work “in colaboration” with your daughter. I would like to write about your story in a magazine of a group of Commercial Center from Spain. I will finish the article with a QR code redirecting to your post. I would like to get your permission to use your ilustrations in the article. Thanks a lot and congrats for your great work!!
Sergio.
ACAD shared your blog on Facebook, and I’m so glad they did! I love the art you created with your daughter. I have an 8 month old son, and it’s basically my dream to create things with him, so I hope he shows some interest! I reblogged and shared it with my Facebook, as I think it’s totally wonderful.
I’m pumped to follow you as I discovered we have similar interests! Our kid(s), crafts, art, roller derby and I’m sure plenty more! Looking forward to more posts!
[…] Mica Angela Hendricks teamed up with her 4-year old daughter on some rather interesting pieces. I love the way they turned […]
Please contact me. Would love to do an interview. This is very special.
Hi Mica!
Adore this collaboration with your daughter. I’d like to introduce Snaptee, a new mobile app that allows you to design and order your own gorgeous T-shirts with just a few taps of your smart device. Your co-drawings would look awesome on one of the 100% organic cotton tees! We just launched kids’ sizes this week to round out the collection so the whole family’s covered. Would love to tell you more and see about working together. http://www.snaptee.co
Thanks!
Catherine
catherine@snaptee.co
Hi Mica,
I just read your story and saw your lovely prints…and could´t help getting some pillows! Up and downs friends, Shore and Falling leaves…can´t wait to receive them! Please tell you daughter some of her (and your 🙂 drawings are travelling around the globe all the way to Spain! Thank you for the inspiration!
Ah, thanks so much! I’m sharing clipping of several of the articles and everything for when she’s older. How exciting, thank you!
Hi Mica,
just like many other visitors, I found your beautiful site when someone re-tweeted the story about you collaborating with your daughter on the amazing and fun drawings. Seeing them and reading the story made me very glad.
I was wondering if it would be OK for me to write a blog post on my company’s website about the concepts of collaboration and inspiration, using your and your daughter’s project as an example?
We are a communications agency operating in Finland and in the Nordics. The blog post would be in Finnish and if you gave me the permission, I would love to feature some of your drawings in the blog post. I would of course credit them very clearly to you and include links to your site and your shop.
What say you?
Thanks again for inspiring me!
Thank you so much! I think that would be okay. If you don’t mind, please link to the blog at busymockingbird.com and the print site at society6.com/micaangela. And please send me a link when it publishes! Thank you so much!
Thanks for a quick reply and thanks for your permission! I’ll do just so. 🙂
Hi again! Here’s the blog post, I hope it’s alright with you: http://www.kaikuhelsinki.fi/fi/blogi/uskalla-irrottaa-otteesi Thanks!
Hi Mica, I’m not surprised to see so many people lining up to contact you, this is such wonderfully creative work and merges the adult world with the child within us all.. to me, these are begging to be animated and part of a story… I’d love to talk about storybook app ideas if you’re interested…
This is our most recent app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dino-store/id585701049?mt=8
Hi! I LOVE your drawings so much. I am 4 years old just like your daughter and my mommy is an artist just like you! (She’s typing for me) I think it is so cool that you made all those with your daughter because they are so beautiful and it makes my heart feel big that you did them together. Does your daughter want to be an artist when she grows up? That’s what i want to be. I’m so happy we saw your art on here because now me and mommy have our own sketchbook that we draw in together. I also think that mockingbirds are my new favorite bird. An artist bird?! That is Awesome! Love, Olive
From “mommy”:
Just wanted to add— I adore your work as much as my daughter ( and that is a LOT, let me tell ya)! I find both your collaboration with your daughter, and your work itself, incredibly inspiring. Such captivating and expressive figures! It’s so rare that I stumble across work that captivates me in the way yours does. I definitely look forward to seeing more!
P.S.
1) You look so familiar to me. Did you by any chance either teach or study at SCAD?
2) I hope you don’t mind, but I re-blogged your “Collaboration With A Four Year Old” for my daughter on her blog. If that’s bothers you in any way please let me know and I will remove it.
3) SO sorry for the super long comment!
To Olive:
Well, hello there! I’m so happy you like our doodles, and even happier that you & your mommy have started doodling together! My daughter (Myla) says she is an artist right now. Some days she wants to be an artist when she grows up, but she also wants to be a vet, a cowboy, and a superhero. It’s so good to hear from you!
To Mommy:
Thanks so much, it’s great that you’re drawing with your daughter! And thank you–since heads are my favorite to draw anyway, and since Myla’s constantly asking me for more heads, I’ll do them as long as she’s into it! Or until I run out of faces…. 🙂
Yes, I did attend SCAD! I majored in Illustration, and graduated in 1997. Did you go there?
Thanks so much, and it’s great to hear from you!
(Btw, this is Olive’s “mommy” (aka. Lindsay). I decided I should log in as myself to reply so I didn’t completely hi-jack her account:))
Wow, crazy small world! Yes, I did go to SCAD, and I majored in illustration as well! Though, what’s crazier is that I was there from ’97-2001, so I only came in after you graduated. Did you stick around there for awhile afterwards? For some reason you reminded me of an Illustration Techniques class I took, in probably ’97 or ’98 (one of my all-time favorite classes, I might add). My first thought was that you were my professor or possibly a TA?? Though, since SCAD always displayed so much student work, it’s possible I just saw some of yours at some point and that’s what seems so familiar to me. Like I said, I adore it– and you have such a striking and memorable style– I can certainly see how it would still be in my head after all these years.
Illustration is such a tough business. It’s so great that you have stuck with it and are doing so well– though I’m not at all surprised considering your work. I love seeing people who have been able to make a career of it. I fell back on regular ol’ painting (mixed in with the odd design job here and there) almost as soon as I graduated… but I still secretly hope I’ll make it as an illustrator some day!
Anyways, it was great to hear from you. Thank you for replying to us so quickly. Olive is flipping out because I told her that I might have been at art school with you 🙂 She wants me to tell you that she supposes she might be a real artist already, too– also, that she thinks being a cowgirl someday is great idea– why didn’t she think of that?
Take care, Olive and I will definitely be following your work– and your daughter’s, of course. Consider us big, big fans!
– Lindsay
Hi!
Im working for a swedish interior magazine and would love to have one of your pictures (the collaboration with your daughter) on a product page. Is it possible to get high resolution pictures for print? I was thinking of Dinosaur Girl and Sad Chrysalis.
All the best, F W
Thank you so much! I’d love to hear more–those requests can be handled through the agency I’m under at munrocampagna.com.
[…] — here is an example of a 4 year old being a 4 year old. Mica Hendricks, an amazing illustrator has an equally amazing daughter who obviously shares her passion in […]
I just wanted to say that I think your collaborative art with your daughter is unique and soo beautiful. I’ve just ordered “Pretty on the Inside” and asked my husband and mother for two more prints for Christmas.
I wish you the best. I also love your idea of saving the originals for her…my mother is an artist and I have a lot of her work from when she was young. It’s priceless.
K
So here’s the deal … Years ago I knew this fabulous girl in Norman, Oklahoma, and she was creative and funny, and big curly hair and a space between her front teeth, and then she had this baby and named it Mica, and then I lost touch with her. And now that Mica would be a grown lady. Could it be you? From Jaquine
Hi there! I asked my mother, but I don’t think it’s us, sorry! My mom hasn’t been to Norman…:(
Hey Mica, I think you may be going viral! Awesome stuff. Your work with your daughter is equal parts inspiring and touching. I’m a mother of a 4year old and a 17 month old. I’m also a teacher. I love the idea of seeing how my class would respond to one of your heads. What do you think? Would you be ok with that?
Thank you so much! Yes, I’d love to see what your kids come up with! Maybe I should do a post with a few blank heads soon? PLEASE send me pics of what they come up with!