BFA CAPSTONE PROJECT
BFA CAPSTONE PROJECT
Fall 2025
Embedded Files
"The Scavenger Hunt"
"The Scavenger Hunt"
On view at the University of Texas in Dallas's SP/N Gallery from December 12-20th.
Inspired by the traditions of scavenger hunt art, like Walter Wick’s ISpy and Martin Handford’s Where’s Waldo, I remix the characteristics to create an interactive triptych. The art serves as a game which begs for viewers to slow down, search, and discover. Each panel centers around a different type of play; sports, recreational, and video games. These categories act as anchors for gameplay. For each panel, the viewer takes upon the role of a player, exploring the series as individual levels.
Items are frozen in time, as if they’re scattered upon a domestic tabletop. Individual scenes are separated, but connected by similar themes and characters. The elements hold a hazy nostalgia, one of color, novelty, and loneliness. There’s tension of presence and absence; clutter and solitude which viewers must sift through for the game, or for themselves.
For my capstone project my ultimate goal is to experiment with interaction. Specifically, to explore interaction, I’m using the fun-fueled vehicle of games. In our culture, games are everywhere. Board games, video games, sports, brain teasers, and gamified school assignments– we love entertaining ourselves, creating competition and declaring the winners’ luck, strategy, and skill superior to others’ or their own previous best. Connecting to my goal, every game has a direct or indirect interaction between people, and now-a-days, computers too (which were created by humans anyways). Games can involve interactions between players and interactions between a player and the game creator(s). With my project, I’m interested in the silent relationship between a games’ maker and the participants; what communication can occur? Can there be communication both ways? If the game never ends, does the interaction never end?
Now, for the substance, the scavenger hunt. This genre of game contains many inspirations and sentimentality to me; Walter Wicks (ISpy), Martin Handford (Where’s Waldo), and various scavenger hunt mobile games. As a child, my parents, brother, and neighborhood friends were always busy, so I had to entertain myself. As a born creative, I spent time drawing, but I also played games. What combined my passion for art and puzzles? The ISpy and Where’s Waldo book series, of course! I would replay the same pages over and over again, sometimes I would just observe the chaos and imagine playing in the maximalist, Seussian worlds of Wicks and Handford. Though I may reminisce longingly, I can’t forget the loneliness I desperately wanted to escape. The reason scavenger hunts are relevant to me, all these years later, is that I’ve found myself ignoring my loneliness by playing scavenger hunt games on my phone. History tends to repeat itself, so I’ve decided to remix the past and combine my passion for art and games again to create my own scavenger hunt series.
Primarily, my materials will be sources from what I have; my own art supplies, trash, and found objects. The majority of the work will be my original drawings, but I want to supplement my compositions with a range of textures and depth that come from found objects and printed material. For the original drawings, I will use a range of all I own like watercolors, markers, crayons, colored pencils, gouache, ink, charcoal, graphite, acrylic, construction paper, and photography (printed). Stylistically, the scenes will align with the tradition of hidden-object games; a repeated character, a cartoony or otherwise childish theme, and several narratives within one scene. To accentuate the true purpose of this work, to be a capstone, I made a bunch of small works utilizing what I've learned as an artist, and connected them all together based on three categories: sports, recreational (board/card) games, and video games.
My advisor is Brynn Higgins-Stirrup. I didn’t think we would be a good match before meeting, but after an interview, I found some unexpected similarities; she enjoys games, experimentation with media/techniques, and created game-related artworks in the past. Overall, the interviewing process was beneficial; I got great advice and recommendations for artists/artworks and readings.
access the more comprehensive essay here!
Sports
Sports
Recreational Games
Recreational Games
Video Games
Video Games
This is the thumbnail image I created for the University of Texas at Dallas's ATEC Capstone Celebration website. For the scanned photograph, I took a screen print from my project, scanned it, printed it, wrote on it, then scanned it again. Then, I took it into an photo editing program and added more legible text and an ominous black hole. The black hole hints to the outwardly impossible game of The Scavenger Hunt. The hole is also a symbol of the void; the pit one tries to fill with entertainment to avoid confronting one's own loneliness.
For this project, I wanted to overthink every little detail and be incredibly intentional with every magnitude of decision. Because of this I wanted my hand to be incredibly apparent in the end product. This need worked in my favor as since it was a project that remixed a game style usually targeted towards children, a crafty, lowbrow, elementary execution wasn't out of the question. The low cost and stakes of the art-making was relieving, especially when a UTD capstone is completed in a single semester.
On the topic of overthinking details, I had particular guidelines for hanging the work. The work was to be hung with an eye level of 50 inches, closer to a child's height. Mind you, the usual eye level in galleries is 60 inches. Not only does this make looking inside the black hole a little more difficult, it's like going to a place catered towards children as an adult. Experiencing a playscape or bouncy castle as an adult is nostalgic, but everything is smaller, cramped (hence only 2 inches between panels), and lower.
The worksheet is arguably the most important part of the project. One of my goals was to get people to view my work longer than the 27-second average. Without a worksheet, the work isn't interactive and loses meaning.
Along with the scavenger hunt, there's minigames throughout. Although the hunt is the main focus, I wouldn't consider the game "completed" without the side quests included. These games have little to do with the task at hand, a testament to the distraction excessive entertainment causes towards our goals. On the backside, radiating darkness is the void contained to the bottom right once again, mirroring the void on the triptych's third panel. This time, the void is a maze, disguising itself as another minigame. However, this maze is inescapable; there's no exit nor entrance.
In creating a philosophy that I'd explore in my work, I pondered how I could propose a solution to the issue of solitude expressed in the work, without resorting to consuming more entertainment (what the work warns against). As an artist, I created a work that communicates a message. With the game (the worksheet) being a part of the art, if the game never ends, the communication never ends. So, forever, or until it's forgotten, I have invisible strings connected to everyone who doesn't complete the game. Hence, why the maze is inescapable.
For those who are grimacing like "bro really? that doesn't solve solitude!" That's the point. You can't tell me that there's not at least one art work that has stuck with you. I'm just trying stick to whoever I can in a crude effort to dissolve the issue. However, like just making a bunch of friends, that doesn't always solve loneliness. Loneliness leaves with learning to coexist with the void and from working on yourself; like to complete the scavenger hunt, you must look inside the void. The void is a part of everything, including yourself. It's a living part of you, and it's ok to see it, feed it, and use it.
front of the worksheet
back of the worksheet
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