AURORA — To this day, Abhi Shrivastav still doesn’t know what initially inspired his art. He likes to turn nature’s nuggets into animals and mythological creatures.

“At the end of the day you find your own ‘me time’,” Shrivastav said.

As a kid, Shrivastav’s ‘me time’ was spent outside, exploring nature, while growing up in India.

“My Dad was a Forest Officer. I grew up in the forest with him,” he said.

When Shrivastav moved to Colorado in 2000, he started to explore our state’s beautiful landscapes. Most weekends he’ll go out on a hike somewhere and discover bizarre shaped twigs and stones.

“If it looks interesting, cool or out of the ordinary,” Shrivastav explained.

Since he started turning things like twigs, branches and stones into art (in 2006), Shrivastav has created more than 300 pieces.

Some are lions, others are birds and a few are even dragons!

“There’s a wide variety of them,” he said.

To see some of Shrivastav’s impressive art pieces, hit ‘play’ on Kevin Torres‘ ‘Unique 2 Colorado‘ story. If you have a ‘Unique 2 Colorado’ story idea for Kevin, e-mail him at kevin.torres@kwgn.com