CREATORS
D. Evan McCormick
D. Evan McCormick’s work lives at the intersection of Esoteric healing modalities and foundational art principalities. A cross cultural bridge of oral traditions from antiquity to current day, healing through storytelling.
His journey began not in publishing houses, but in hospice rooms. While working at a free clinic in Brooklyn, New York, McCormick began blending mythic storytelling with clinical energy medicine to help patients navigate profound moments of transition. What he discovered there shaped the foundation of his life’s work: stories are not simply entertainment—they are structures that help people heal, adapt, and transform.
For more than thirty years McCormick has guided individuals through this process, working with marginalized communities as well as artists and cultural figures such as Salma Hayek and Josh Brolin. Through decades of practice he developed a systematic approach known as Process Storytelling, a framework that treats transformation as a pattern that can be recognized and repeated.
He has inherited healing and allegorical systems through his practice. Across these systems he found a recurring truth: the processes that heal the body mirror those that heal the psyche, the spirit, and the natural medicines we create. Everything is connected.
Now McCormick brings these ideas into fiction. His debut novel, _Shapes In Time: Poly_, introduces readers to a speculative universe where cosmic forces, consciousness, and love intersect. It is the first book in a larger series exploring transformation at both human and galactic scale.
Whether guiding healing work or crafting stories, McCormick continues to explore the same question: how narrative shapes reality—and how it might help repair it.
" I’ve spent decades watching what happens when story meets the human nervous system—especially in the insurmountable pain of transition, where language often fails but narrative still finds a way through. The old oral traditions—once used to heal, guide, and transform entire communities—are finding their way back through art.
I’m deeply grateful that through Reishi, a world filled with images and art has begun to sprout from my words, bringing fresh and living storytelling events to the modern reader. When that happens, story stops being entertainment and becomes something far more powerful: a force that can change how we see ourselves and the universe we live in."
Ariel Vergez
Ariel Vergez, aka BlackBrain, is a traditionally trained artist seasoned through years of design through a Human-Based ethnography structure in crafting the beauty of data and telling the story of people's 'pain point' — the remedy, design.
Ariel matriculated a rich heritage and a passion for storytelling through art. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Florida, Ariel is the child of two immigrants who came to the United States in search of opportunity and met each other while working in the service industry. Growing up in a household where art was a daily presence, Ariel pursued his passion for art at the collegiate level, studying Industrial Design at the Cleveland Institute of Art.
With a background in fine-art and traditional methodologies, Ariel, focused his talents into industrial and graphic design. He has worked with world-class brands and has a keen understanding of the importance of storytelling in design. He has fused that experience towards his first love art. This experience is evident in Ariel’s art series, which feature unique narratives, a cross-wiring of pop culture icons, and a vuja dé feeling of nostalgia.
Ariel layers allegory, pop culture, and history to create new and at times, bizarre stories that inflect on the ‘remembered.’
Over the past decade, Ariel has been featured in a plethora of shows and has created a range of concentration of subject matter. He has completed a slew of murals worldwide, many of them focused in Los Angeles and Miami, his previous homes. Ariel is particularly known for his ability to tell stories through his art, which is a reflection of his pursuit to expound parody and symbolism as key tools to his method of creating rich visual stories.
With a portfolio that spans across different mediums and styles, Ariel continues to push the boundaries of what art can be and challenge our perceptions of the world around us. His art is a dissection of ancient and pop cultural story telling. His work has a diversity that makes the art unique and relate-able while maintaing mystery and depth.
" I spent many years using my creative instincts to solve problems for corporations—translating human emotion into campaigns, products, and brand moments designed to capture attention and drive profit. Over time, I began to feel the quiet exhaustion that comes when creativity is asked to serve everything except the human spirit. Burnout wasn’t a failure of talent—it was a signal that the work needed to return to something deeper. Art became the path back.
Through murals, sculptures, and visual storytelling, I shifted away from extracting “pain points” for product insight and toward recognizing pain as shared history. The same emotions brands try to mine for relevance—loss, hope, struggle, transformation—are the very forces that connect communities and shape our collective memory.
Through Reishi, I’m grateful to help cultivate a space where those human stories can be expressed honestly through art, translating emotion into images, symbols, and environments people can stand inside together. In that space, creativity becomes something older and more vital: a way for us to see ourselves, and each other, more clearly. "
CREATED BY_
Evan McCormick
Ariel Vergez
WRITTEN BY_
Evan McCormick
ART BY_
Ariel Vergez
STORY MAPPING_
Evan McCormick
Ariel Vergez
A NOTE FROM CREATORS_
For 2026 We are seeking representation for the following products:
Shapes in Time: Poly, a novel.
Needs: agent.
If you are an agent please connect with us at: reishistudios.manager@gmail.com for any inquiries
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Children of Plants: Poly, a graphic novel/manga.
Needs: publisher.
If you are a publisher please reach out to us at: reishistudios.manager@gmail.com for any inquiries
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Process Story-Telling, concept development tool.
Needs: artists.
If are an artists please DM us @ChildrenofPlants on IG.
CP