🎨 Justin – The Artist Who Brings Feeling to Form

Justin is the illustrator, co-creator, and creative director of Cup & Poem. With a background rooted in personal storytelling, emotional resilience, and visual symbolism, he brings more than just images to the page—he brings presence, atmosphere, and feeling.

His hand-drawn style, cartoonist and whimsical vision captures the quiet poetry of everyday life. Whether rendering a single bird in flight or an entire scene of emotional metaphor, Justin’s work carries the weight of lived experience and artistic discipline. As an artist, he explores themes of healing, memory, nature, and the inner lives of both people and places.

A lifelong storyteller, Justin approaches visual work with the sensitivity of someone who understands how art can restore what trauma once fragmented. His personal journey—from silence to self-expression, from surviving to creating—infuses every illustration with soul and intention.

In founding Cup & Poem with poet and writer J.T. Contardo, Justin found not just a creative outlet but a mission: to make books that don’t just sit on a shelf—they breathe, invite, and stay open. Their first collaborative piece, The Secret Life of Birds, reflects this purpose, blending poetry and illustration to create something timeless and emotionally rich.

Justin believes books can be sacred objects. Not for worship, but for witnessing—of growth, stillness, curiosity, and care. Through Cup & Poem, he continues to build a body of work that does just that.