George Zebot was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia and came to the United States at the age of 5. George’s work and travel have taken him to over eighty countries. He served as an artist in Viet Nam and is a former Peace Corps Volunteer. George has been on the faculty at the University of the West Indies, Chapman University, Saddleback College, department chair at Laguna College of Art and Design and currently professor emeritus at the School of Art at California State University, Long Beach. He was awarded the 1999 Rotary International Grant for University Teachers in Developing Countries.

In 2001 he spent time in the Cofan village of Zabalo in the Ecuadorian Amazon and in 2002 he returned from Viet Nam in the hill tribe region near the Laotian and Chinese borders 200 kilometers west of Hanoi. He is a recipient of the prestigious Beyond War Peace Award and in the summer of 2006 he was invited to be part of a University of Oxford Round Table colloquium which he was unable to attend because of his wedding in French Polynesia. George is a recipient of the Dawn Magazine Distinguished Faculty Award and from 2008 and again in 2009 he was part of the Art and Social Action in Cambodia program where he worked with underserved populations of HIV positive children and girls rescued from trafficking.

In 2010 he was commissioned by the Bolsa Chica Land Trust at ORA-83 which was cited by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as one of the country’s most vital archaeological sites. In June 2010 he was inducted into the Mater Dei Ring of Honor. George has worked as a gallery artist for over 40 years with a studio in Laguna Beach. The cities of Los Angeles and Newport Beach both have awarded him commendations. George has a gold medal from the Los Angeles Society of Illustrators with merits form the New York Society of Illustrators and the Art Directors Club of New York. He received a Lulu Award, second and third place medals at the IGI Exhibition and the Grand Prize for costume design in the school division of the St Kitts Carnival.