I view this untitled piece as a sort of autobiographical study. In my more recent work, I have been thinking about how to translate the way I view the world around me to create a true representation of myself. I chose to start accumulating a series of relatively quick blind drawings, something I feel is accurate to an artist’s perspective in that it directly translates from eye to paper through an artist’s hand without any room for correction. I believe that this can serve as a visual representation of how someone thinks—of who they are. Conceptually, this was much more abstract than I am used to, with most of my past work being representational.

The piece is a 24 inch tall, 75 inch long horizontal print. It is made up of a collection of many smaller individual blind contour drawings, originally done in ink on paper. These were then scanned and digitally arranged and layered digitally, along with some nearly monochromatic color blocking. The drawings that make up the piece already distort reality being blind drawings, but details become even more difficult to read in its final state, where different segments intersect and overlap. I chose this size specifically because it would allow a viewer to observe the piece both as a whole and to move in and view in more detail up close.

The Portals through Feeling and Time

This series awakens curiosity and growth around the relationship between the physical and metaphysical realms. The collection is an exploration of the process of grasping spirit through our reality. There is reference to portals, in and out breaths and multidimensionality. Each color in the series has correlations to temperaments and the emotive qualities of color: red from the center is courage, passion and action, yellow from above is love and connection, green reaching upwards is growth and renewal, blue from below is deep intuition, emotion and sensitivity, purple from the upper right is alignment with the universe, brown reaching up is strength and safety. I implemented circular shapes because they are unending and timeless. They are placed intentionally, radiating from the directions I see the emotions existing. Each layer and shift in analogous tone indicates a layer of dimensionality and intensity. The medium of pastel lets the work be earthy and textured, yet translucent and elusive. My process works in a similar way that my body of work appears. I work in my mind and visualize, then revise and gesture in abstraction, making sure my flow state is alive and then combining feeling, thinking and seeing together to make the final works. I begin working freely and openly, then work my way into precise delicate line work.

I investigate the way feelings and emotions interact so clearly and deeply with memory, time and space. It holds exponential visuality because it isn't easily visible except in the mind and the soul. Expressing the concepts of metaphysical feelings and vibrations is an area I feel constantly excited about and the possibilities to learn in this sphere is boundless. The psychedelic exploration of the mind during the counterculture movement inspires the rounded and organic feel of my work, along with the concepts of that time. My influences such as minimalism, simple color work and use of precise lines are drawn from Agnes Martin. The emanating fields of light and color are influences from James Turrell. An overarching and central influence to not only these works, but who I am as an artist and a person is the collection of knowledge and spiritual wisdom imparted on me by my dearest mother, my sister, my grandmother and the many women in my life.

My collection of work explores memories through unfamiliar yet nostalgic advertisement aesthetics from the early 2000’s in relation to the anxieties of growing up. Between flimsy aspirations and false promises are memories that nestle themselves as guilt in my uncertainty and places of simple comfort.

The work consists of looping animations interlaced between painted backdrops and filters that are finally distorted by their CRT presentation. The animation and cellular qualities take after the meditative, abstract work of Agnes Martin. Her work elicits a tranquility and vibration that I emulate through digital texture and, despite my representational work, abstraction gained in the digital processes. Altogether, the animation’s harmony promises a meditative reflection of a timeless, displaced memory that edges an obsessive twiddling and scramble for meaning. The contrast captures the fantastical tension of disappearing time, lost opportunities, and pacification through consumption.

This collection is from my cultural background, including holiday, hometown, and history. I believe a person is determined by their tradition. I use digital as my media.

In my drawings, I added a lot of traditional patterns. For "Holiday", I made a contrasting effect. The top and bottom are ancient and modern, as a way to show the traditions from ancient times to the present. I am showing the customs and hobbies of a country. These patterns have a symbolic meaning of beauty, luck, and reunion in China, also have many details, such as Chinese Fans as background, food, and firecrackers. These are very traditional Chinese cultures. The second is a food street in China, Showing some traditional food and a state of people's lives in my hometown. The third is history, the top is a soldier who fought for the security of a nation in the past, and the bottom part is from a mythical story about the birth of a son of God in China. I have combined these two themes because they both tell of the birth, whether a person or a nation.

I am very rich in the overall color combination because the Chinese style has distinctive features inseparable from color. I think red, blue, and green can show a unique oriental flavor. I hope it is an expression of cultural reproduction. I chose culture as my theme because this style of drawing is very recognizable, and I can also draw on some ancient Chinese painting styles, create based on heritage, and express the old things innovatively, and I like this kind of creative theme.

Because of my curious nature, I usually like to take a nap. After waking up, I riddle out the meanings of my dreams. Memories in a dream dissipate quickly, but the partial memories remain in mind as deeply impressive contents. For the most part, I intend to take inspiration from dreams and borrow them to record and express their meaning.

Before making this first piece titled Reptilian Woman, I once had a dream. I saw a woman standing in the rainforest who had the traits of reptiles. Maybe it was because I was influenced by reading an article about the reptile conspiracy theory the night before? In this way, I analyzed these thoughts floating in the stream of consciousness and interpreted dream journals.

Crystals have the power to embed history and memories of the world. It's an object that has been formed due to the flow of environmental memories or disasters and is left in fragments. What you can see in this second piece is orgonite, titled Orgone Dream. And you can see that the small canvas and slats placed next to the main pieces are an aura emanating from the orgonite. The pieces of holographic films represent the color of our daily changing emotions. As a principle of accepting the positive energy and filtering out the negative, I tried to express the built-in contradictory aura metaphysically. The images of ourselves or the places standing to stare reflected in this broken mirror are also temporary, but they can be viewed as traces embodied.

Nothing is permanent in this world, but many things are always changing due to external and internal forces. Just as day and night change because time exists, our world flows and changes daily. The realistic and abstract style that emerges in my paintings is captured based on my inconsistent memories that seem to be distorted and and illusive due to the subconscious mind linked to dream's influence.

My art is bright and colorful, abstract, and free. I have no destination or plan when I am drawing or painting, I just start and see where it goes until I am happy. This process is therapeutic for me and allows me to connect to my intuition and feel grounded. My work is usually mixed media, which adds to the playfulness that is present in my art; I feel like I'm able to connect to my inner child by switching between the media and deciding to add different things at random.

This diptych shows two different manifestations of a tree blowing in the wind. Both capture the movement through gestural organic shapes. I let the moving shadows guide me across the paper. After finishing the initial drawings, I went over the lines so they would stand out more, and decided the one should be colored to help balance the composition.The fun complimentary colors are loud compared to the subdued blue and black of the second piece. These two choices reflect the duality of emotion when I am making art: energetic vs. relaxed.

I am inspired by Yayoi Kusama and her art being a sort of escape from the realities of mental illness. She creates her own worlds through repetition and her work seems very meditative, which is also how I feel when I create. I make a reflection of the world through my eyes and it may only make sense to me, and brings me comfort.

“Adult.” A term that marks a period of turbulence, worry, and growth.

Before entering my third year of college, I’d use the word “adult” as a label for myself. But that did not mean I understood its weight. In fact, it was a term my mind and heart did not connect to, as if it was a severed part of myself I’d forget frequently. In the morning, when I’d comb my hair and stare at my reflection in the mirror, I’d think to myself blankly. “I’m Eleanor. I’m a girl. I want some breakfast now.” And that would be that.

Having to live in an off-campus apartment, however, shattered this blankness. It was an exciting, yet harsh environment that overwhelmed me with various responsibilities, worries, and inevitable events—all of which I had to learn to handle myself. Whether it be the simplest actions of having to plan and cook myself dinner, to drive myself to school, to accompany a friend to the emergency room in the middle of the night, or to buy groceries, these were all significant in that they marked my first-time experiences of how to exercise independence as an adult. Truthfully, I am accustomed to relying on my loved ones for life’s many tasks thrown at me, unwilling to deal with them myself because of how insecure I can be. Encountering these experiences pushed me to realize that it is also essential to explore my own strength to get through the day—even if I am frightened and will make mistakes along the way.

I utilize the technique of juxtaposing manga-styled renderings with realism in order to channel and accentuate felt emotions. I am fascinated by the manner in which manga extracts and exaggerates from realistic principles the playful and unreal, yet still coming across as convincing. For instance, in the kitchen illustration, I depict the manga-styled girl preparing food. Her big eyes gaze aimlessly about the table flooded with dirty dishes, bowls, spilled cups and ingredients, and so forth—a mess she is overwhelmed by and will have to clean up after. Some objects are rendered realistically, and some are not. Further, the second image portrays the girl driving late at night. The rain running down the window and the left seat of the car are photorealistic, but the girl is not. While they are colored a mute blue, her face is that of a bright, rosy peach. This creates a jarring contrast that brings out the girl as the focal point. The distinct styles of realism and manga weaved together throughout narrate a serious tone to the four pieces but also probe playfulness, overall suggesting a metaphoric real versus unreal that coexists within the same world—commentary on my experiences of becoming an adult. In addition, I arrange the four pieces tightly together with little space in between, enforcing an even more overwhelming composition where the viewers are forced to process everything all at once. This way, not only are they able to feel what I felt in each situation, but also everything that has happened as a whole.

Ultimately, my series of works titled Independent captures aforementioned events that have challenged me and stimulated my growth, and they have honed my artistic skills to express my journey to independence.

The works you see are the product of a personal passion project I've been contributing to here and there informally for the latter end of a decade. But it is in this body of work where you see for the first time an actual and concretized form condensed from the various ideas conceived and collected across the time. Each component of this body of work is a page in a pilot so to speak, to test the waters of these ideas portrayed in a serial form, rather than a loose collection of different ideas bound together like files pinned on a corkboard intertwined with a red string.

This loose collection of ideas and the body of work that it informed collectively go by the working title of "Fallcreek". It involves a slice of life story telling of three recently graduated young adults navigating their lives to the fullest in small remote town down the ridge Fallcreek, NY. The works that you see particularly focus on Edgar Ramirez, and his own endeavors through the mundanity of morning rituals. The main goal and focus of this narrative is to look closely at the small details and occurrences in our quotidian lives, fleeting things so often overlooked in the cognitive noise and tunnel vision of our minds embroiled in the interconnected machinations of the wider world. The adventures of Edgar and his fellow comrades also explore themes of identity, relationship, empathy, growth, and many others.

This work was primarily inspired from core figures and events in my life, for better or worse, but also other forms of media. One influence in media that really helped tie everything together was the 2017 indie title Night in the Woods, starring recent college dropout Mae Borowski in an episode of reintroduction to the small town she called home, it spoke to me the way that this particular game handled narrative, tended to in a manner more crude and down to earth.

Another title to mention, the MOTHER series, as it is know overseas, also broke ground with its own camp form of narrative following the bizarre earthbound sci-fi adventures of psychokinetic star children Ninten, Ness and Lucas. Each title in this series departed from the usual jargon filled elevated narratives of other RPGs of the time that often felt detached from life and bloated with perfunctory fantasy elements that provided less substance.

These pieces of media, with their stylized art direction, iconic dialogue, and unique, remote locales very much inform the person that I am today, and by proxy, the works and narratives that I create.

The works as you would see them are in a digital format, originally conceived on a tablet, displayed on a screen for a formal installation. Though digital in nature, I like to adopt some of the grit and teeth of normal implements onto the virtual canvas. I had played around with the idea of including color, but decided against it, lending to a stronger definition in tone using the limited palette.

There were several ideas as to how to manifest them into a physical form for onlookers to see, ranging from a physical printing of the pages set onto a plinth for people to flip through, or a microfiche for people to slide through for both the gesture and novelty of handling something analog to transfigure the experience into one interconnected with the world the piece is set in. Ultimately, a screen was chosen to give the onlooker something significant to look at when they pass by in the gallery setting.

Think of them less so as a singular collection forever inflexibly set in stone but as a seed for further exploration to emerge from.

As a biology major, I have a deep appreciation of our environment and concern for the health of our ecosystems. Every day I study plants and the negative impacts that environmental issues like the climate crisis are having on our ecosystems. Plants are of utmost importance to our planet as they recycle carbon dioxide to give us the oxygen that we breathe. Thus, I idealize plant forms and have made them the focus of my body of work. The drawing medium I chose for this piece is colored pencil because of its precision and the layers of colors I can build with them. This is necessary to draw the flowers photorealistically. This work was particularly inspired by the artist Se Jong Cho whose work captures the anatomy of plants beautifully while maintaining a graphic quality.

The plant forms I chose to draw for this body of work are all endangered species found in the Scripps costal reserve. I chose these specific species of flowers because of their bright colors. The bright colors made these works captivating and contrasted well against the black metal bars. The endangered flowers were originally supposed to be posted next to the real ones in the reserve, but the reserve is gated so there is no public access to them. Thus, I chose to post the flowers on the gate to the reserve to give people a glimpse of what wildlife is located behind those gates. Additionally, it shows how dire our climate crisis is because the species of plants behind those gates are in such danger of extinction that they must be kept hidden from the public. With my body of work, I bring awareness to endangered species of flowers located in San Diego and as a result bring attention to the importance of the climate crisis in saving our ecosystems.

The title of this work is "Who's Next", and my work uses a sculptural approach to reflect the impact of appearance anxiety on social groups, and to explore the causes and consequences of this phenomenon. Because I understand that appearance anxiety is a very common phenomenon, especially at this age of young people, and I created this work to call attention to this emotion and the dangers of excessive appearance anxiety.

Made from air-dried clay and mirror fragments, this group of works was inspired by the overly harshness of people on social media about their appearance, and their indiscriminate comments about the appearance of strangers on the Internet. Especially now with the popularity of new media, it seems that the way to hurt people has become easier. And this work is to restore the scene of appearance anxiety caused by malice from the outside world. Each part of the sculpture is made into a part that is closer to the human body, showing a broken feeling, just like a mirror and the human body are as fragile, and the flying glass fragments and all the sense of incompleteness that exists in the works reflect a kind of deficiency in the hearts of those who are anxious about their appearance. At the same time, the use of mirrors is also due to the multiple meanings that mirrors represent. It is not only a tool for observing oneself, but also the reflection of mirrors under natural light is a way to attract the attention of others. The meaning of using mirrors is not only It is only to reflect the inner contradictions of people who are anxious about their appearance. It is also that I like to use this method to attract the attention of the audience. I want more people to pay attention to the harm caused by this emotion and reflect on the psychological problems caused by this reason.

My way of working is to just go with the flow and not deliberately repair the natural damage that occurs in this piece because of the materials used. Because in my opinion, this is the best explanation for showing the bad effects of the external injury on appearance anxiety, the work will gradually shatter over time, and if care and attention are not taken, it will eventually shatter into a pile of worthless objects, and " They" do the same.

As a long time seamstress with experience in the art and industry of fashion, I have an extensive stash of fabric and notions that I have accumulated over the years, most of it untouched but not forgotten. My work space is surrounded by sewing supplies, so naturally, my drawing practice and fashion practice are intertwined. My body of work fixates on the precision of the drawing medium and its ability to represent the material. Fabric is fussy and complex, while pencil is precise and straightforward. Navigating this contrast is a task that is frustrating yet rewarding at the same time.

I have always been inspired by the talent and skill that photorealist artists display in their work, such as in the work of artist Vija Celmins. Photorealism is a practice in technicality, patience, discipline, and observing the material world with a certain balance of objectiveness and imagination. In a way, it has an obsessive quality to it, like narcissism except for the material. Representing the nuances of fibers and the texture of a single thread holding a piece of lace together takes patience and dedication to the subject. With my work, I capture a moment where I indulge in my own materialism and appreciation for the material.

Opposites are the central focus of my work. In this series, I use tonal contrasts between warm and cold to evoke different emotions in the same work. I use color to establish a theme of natural opposite forces. The winter-themed landscape with a layout of trees juxtaposes warm orange hues with cold blue hues on each cell of the trees in the foreground. In the background, orange trees contrast with the cold, bluish icy white below them. I make these arrangements to create a vibration in the contrast between warm and cold tones. The other landscape separates the orange and blue tones completely into two halves, with the upper half being warm and the lower half being cold, exploring a different approach to opposites by separating them to create spaces of different feelings instead of combining them into one. In my residential night-themed landscapes, I create a vibration between the yellow-orange luminosity from the artificial light and the dark blue shades of the shadowy forms from the houses. The pastel texture of the light which I use in the neighborhood painting and one of the winter landscapes highlights mixes together with the solid blue structures to make the vibration of contrast pronounced and noticeable while simultaneously being tiny and blended together. For the grainy texture, I drew inspiration from artists associated with the airbrush movement; in particular, I found the warm and cool contrast in Shooting Wide by Syd Brak to be visually inspirational between the cold hair and the warm tan grainy subtle tones on the skin. I also drew inspiration in the blur between colors from Mal Watson’s Chic Lady between the pink tinted cheek and the subtle transition to the rest of the woman’s face. The watercolor texture in the night house painting allows there to be a fluidity to the convergence of warm and cold color that creates a sense of smoothness on the exterior of the car and the building material. Through the opposite of the blistering heat and the icy coldness, I encourage the viewer to perceive the work in different lenses and perspectives, taking in a different mood depending on which area of the work the viewer focuses on. I give the viewer the freedom to make their own choice in the area that they focus on and the corresponding mood that they experience as a result, and can also experience both contrasting moods when alternating the gaze between different components. The opposite between warm light and cold darkness is central to this series and is in accordance with my central goal to explore opposites and contrasts in my works.

Developed on my interest in human body parts, this series is intended to explore the expressiveness of hands. I decided to focus more on the narrative side of the images this time, so I chose reference images of hands interacting with objects. The series is consist of four drawings on toned papers, two light grey and two dark greys, using graphite and white charcoal. The firstly developed drawing portrays two hands holding an old-fashioned film camera pointing directly at the viewers, while the other three drawings all portray hands interacting with musical instruments.

When I started up the project and was picking up drawing papers, I decided to try using differently toned papers. As I moved onto the dark grey papers, I found it was more difficult to handle compared with light grey papers. White charcoal leaves obvious marks easily and graphite marks are hardly visible. Even though the final results are not as ideal as I expected, the dark tone of the paper still achieves interesting visual effects, making the subjects fade into the background.

These drawings are meant to create a connection between visual arts and music, both of which require lots of practice and time investment. I have had an intimate connection with music since childhood and have learned at a very young age that mastery of anything requires lots of time investment, and is likely accompanied by struggles and sacrifices. I have only started making artworks seriously in the past two years, and my lack of foundational skills made my art-making process extremely painful when I started up. Aside from the visual effects they achieved, the process of making these drawings is extremely meaningful to me personally. I enjoyed fabricating a rather thoroughly rendered drawing from scratch, and gradually gained more self-confidence through the process. I think this series is a landmark for my art-making career, which serves as a good starting point for my future works.