Stanislaus County visual artist Laura Perrone is inviting adopters, fosters, volunteers, shelter and rescue workers, advocates, transporters, and community members to share first-hand animal rescue stories for Drawn Home, a new mixed-media portrait and storytelling project rooted in Stanislaus County.

Submissions are open through Oct. 10.

Selected stories will be paired with handmade mixed-media animal portraits, creating a body of work that tells the fuller story of how an animal found home. Each will center the individual animal, the people who became part of their journey, and the transformation that happens as an animal becomes part of a family.

There is no cost to participate, and no writing experience is required. Stories must have a meaningful connection to Stanislaus County.

Perrone created Drawn Home in response to the way rescue stories are often encountered in fragments: an intake photo, a social post, an adoption listing, or a statistic. Through portraiture and first-hand narrative, the project creates more space to see each animal as an individual and to understand the people and care surrounding their story.

“The artwork creates a reason to pause, and the story helps us understand what we’re looking at,” said Perrone. “My hope is that together they build empathy and celebrate that moment when an animal stops being ‘a rescue’ and simply belongs. Across many stories, the project can also show how deeply rescue is shaped by the community and the people who help animals find home.”

Drawn Home builds on Perrone’s ongoing animal portrait practice. Since 2018, her work has focused on capturing the individuality of animals and the emotional bonds people form with them. Her animal-centered work has also extended into rescue and storytelling through children’s book illustration and pet portrait artwork donated in support of rescue fundraising.

Much of Perrone’s portrait work has traditionally lived with one family at a time. Drawn Home expands that practice into a shared body of work rooted in Stanislaus County, bringing portraiture and written narrative together to make local rescue more personal, visible, and emotionally understood.

The project is being developed during Perrone’s 2026 KDA Individual Artists Fellowship. Perrone was selected as an Emerging Artist Fellow in Visual Arts, Design & Applied Arts through a confidential regional peer-review process focused on artistic excellence, sustained practice, and community impact.

Of the 36 artists who applied from Stanislaus County, four were selected as 2026 KDA Individual Artists Fellows. Perrone was one of three county artists named an Emerging Artist Fellow. Her $5,000 unrestricted fellowship supports a year of continued artistic development, during which she is developing Drawn Home.

The KDA Individual Artists Fellowship is part of the California Individual Artists Fellowship program. It is supported by the California Arts Council and administered regionally by KDA throughout California’s Central Valley and Eastern Sierra.

Share a Rescue Story

First-hand rescue stories with a meaningful connection to Stanislaus County may be submitted through Oct. 10. Submissions may be directed to: lauraperronedesign.com/drawn-home-submissions