Vanessa Ruiz

Why you should listen

Vanessa Ruiz is the driving force behind Street Anatomy, a blog that aggregates works that explore the intersection of art and medical illustration. Since its 2007 launch, Street Anatomy has published more than one thousand posts, revealing human anatomy in pencil drawings, tattoos, 3-D printing and interior design, among other media.

Fascinated by the surge in street art that was happening in Chicago while she pursued a master’s degree in biomedical visualization at the University of Illinois, Ruiz found a lack of public knowledge about the profession. She created Street Anatomy in the hopes of taking medical illustration into more public spaces and built an online resource for the public to discover contemporary anatomical art that gained instant popularity.