Rhea Reborn: Sustainable Footwear

About

My junior year of high school, I joined DECA and chose the start up business category. Participants are required to make a mock business to present to judges along with a paper. Many people don't realize the environmental impact of their shoes, shoes are made with harmful chemicals that can takes years to decompose in landfills. I wanted to buy a pair of sustainable sneakers but couldn't find any that I really liked online from the small selection. This is why I decided to create Rhea. Drawing inspiration from the greek titan named Rhea who was often referred to as "Mother Earth", I researched and prototyped a sustainable sneaker. Using materials such as algae foam, cork, polyester repurposed from recycled from water bottles, pineapple leather, and nylon from ghost nets left in the ocean, I figured out a way to make a stylish and sustainable sneaker. I began my process by sketching out what I wanted the sneaker to look like, being sure to include all angles. I then created a to scale prototype carved and sanded out of foam and painted.

• Rhea Sneaker Sketch Measurements: 8 1/2" x 11"

• Materials Used: Watercolor, Ink

• Rhea prototype measurements: 10 1/2" x 5 1/2" x 4"

  • Materials Used: Foam, Acrylic Paint

Man's Garden of Division

The Hands Behind The Work

About

Often times when we're eating cereal we don't think about the bowl. We don't once ever stop to wonder who made it, the hands that shaped it. This piece is a nod to the working class. I created a clay bowl using a pottery wheel and carved a design of a man painting on a ladder before firing it in the kiln and then glazing it. For my glaze approach I carefully and intricately applied a glaze outline and filled in the design of the worker before apply a blue glaze with glass fragments around the bowl. I applied red slip after firing to give the image an "in progress" feel. The piece depicts the man painting the bowl, intentionally gave the piece an "unfinished" look to give the appearance that the man is painting on the glaze.

• Ceramic With Glaze

  • Measurements: 4 3/4" x 4 3/4" x 2"

Three Pine Charcuterie Board

About

This custom charcuterie board was made for my cousin and her boyfriend as a housewarming gift. I wanted to design something that was meaningful to them and that they would be able to use. They met through AmeriCorps and their troop name was Three Pine so I created a design of three pine trees to burn into the board. A nod to their relationship while also accentuating the natural coloring and movement of wood in the poplar board which dips and rises as if to depict a sunrise in a landscape if looked at closely. To make the board I used poplar and mahogany wood, planing them down and attaching them using a wood glue and biscuit style. I used a router to create the holes for the biscuits and round off the edges. I then sanded down the wood and burned my logo into the lower left corner using a soldering iron. To add the finishing touch, I applied four layers of cutting board oil to seal the wood and allow for serving, giving the wood a darker, more finished look.

• Poplar And Mahogany

  • Measurements: 15 1/2" x 12"

Light From Within

About

This portrait I captured represents the beauty of "light from within". Oftentimes when we see portraits we are so focused on appearances. This is a reflection of society's standards and fixation with looks. I wanted to capture the beauty of a portrait without a focus on the physical appearance of the model. I set the model in a dark room with a black background. Using two iPhone flashlights with colored sticky notes over them as the only light source, I put them at two different angles so that they would cast different shadows onto the models face. Using the rule of two thirds, the subject draws the viewers attention in the two different blended lights seeming to come from within the model rather than externally outside.

• Digital Photography

• Measurements: 8 1/2" x 11"

Connected

In my mind, every pair of shoes has a story behind it. There's always a connection between the wearer and the shoes beyond the physical level. In my observational drawing of my favorite pair of beat up white vans, I drew the laces as red thread weaving its way through the shoes and up to the two individuals hands, tying in a bow at their ring fingers. This is a reference to one of my favorite legends, The Red Thread of Fate. The legend spans across many different asian cultures and describes how people are connected together with an invisible red string that connects you to your soulmate. I used light blue bristol paper to reflect the shoes as I see them, on a shelf with my blue bedroom wall as a background. I used white and black pastels for shading and value, doing multiple layers using Krylon. I used charcoal for the outline of the hands. I specifically chose to only outline the hands as it draws more focus on the sneakers. Finally, I used a red pastel pencil for the thread.

• Pastel and Charcoal

  • Measurements: 9" x 12'

Speak For Science

About

As a member of my high schools green team, the environment is something that I'm passionate about. The Lorax and Greta Thunberg are both advocates for the environment in different capacities but they both reach a primarily younger audience. I wanted to combine these two climate advocates into one piece, using acrylic paint I depicted The Lorax perched on Greta's shoulders representing her conscious. I then printed out articles talking about the climate crisis and global warming, cutting them all out individually and burning them all one by one around the edges, representing the fact that the Earth is burning away right before our eyes. I then layered them on top of one and cut out my painting of Greta Thunberg and The Lorax, I glued it on top of the collage. The words "We speak for the trees...will you?" can be seen along the bottom and serves as a daunting question to society to urge them to speak up for climate change. Greta Thunberg's famous line "Our house is on fire" is where her mouth should be to portray the image that she is saying these words.

• Collage and Acrylic

  • Measurements: 9" by 12"

Mini Crowbar

About

In my metals class in school, I was assigned to create a crowbar. I cut a 12'' inch rod of steel and heated it up in the furnace. After heating up one end until it was white hot, I used a mallet to pound in flat. I then repeated this for the other side. Next, I had to heat up the rod again to bend both ends to the correct angle. After that, I again heated up the crowbar and cooled it in the bucket of water. I then repeated this process several times in order to quench the steel to make it stronger. After, I cut the slit for the part that gets the nails out and I sanded down the whole crowbar. I purposefully made the crowbar smaller so that it could be transported more easily for workers who have to travel a lot.

• Medium: Steel

  • Measurements: 9" x 1/2" x 3/4"

House Number Garden Box

About

For a school project, my design and engineering class had to team up with our entrepreneurship class to create an item to sell on the school store for the holidays. The entrepreneurship class was responsible for coming up with the main idea and the designers (me) were responsible for telling them what was possible and working with them to create a product that meets their needs. We settled on house number sign that could hold plants or anything that suited the customers desires. We created a website where customers could order the product and enter their house number address so we could carve it into the wood using a CNC router. We used old pallet wood that was stacked outside the school building which was free and gave the piece a rustic look. The design and engineering class was responsible for filling orders. To be efficient, we created an assembly line. One person was responsible for collecting wood, one person was responsible for nailing the back piece together, another was responsible for nailing the front piece together and attaching it to the back piece, one person (me) was responsible for staining the wood piece that held the numbers, and one person was responsible for operations the CNC router to carve in the custom house addresses. We successfully made and sold many items over the holiday season and were able to experience what real life designers do when working with businesses.

• Wood Project

  • Measurements: 20" x 12" x 3 1/2"

Overtaken

About

More and more we're seeing how human waste is overtaking the ocean population. I chose to portray how human products and animals have become one through the creation on a ceramic mug. I love octopuses and am fascinated by their tentacles and how they act as hands for the octopus. For this piece I first sketched out what I wanted to create, being sure to include my inspiration and draw all the viewing angles. Then, I created the bowl part of the mug on the wheel. To incorporate the animal element into my piece, I made the octopus tentacle the handle for the mug. To do this I pulled a handle for the mug and created little mini pinch pots and scored them onto the handle, then scoring the handle onto the bowl to create the mug. After firing in the kiln, I put a clear glaze to show off the natural red clay used, a nod to the red coloring of octopuses.

• Sketch Medium: Graphite

• Mug Medium: Clay

  • Measurements: 6" x 3 1/2" x 2 1/4"

Repurposed Ocean Ukulele Lamp

Sticking with the theme of how human waste is polluting the ocean, I decided to highlight my design skills in repurposing an old ukulele of mine that had a large crack over the face. This piece is one that took some of the most planning out of all my pieces in my portfolio. First, I had to carefully cut out the face of my ukulele which is easier said than done, the ukulele was wade out of a cheap veneer that snapped easily. I then traced the cut out onto a piece of cardboard and using cardboard and tyvek tape made a mold for the epoxy. I mixed three separate shades of blue and I combined epoxy with sand to give the piece texture and capture more of an ocean theme. I poured the sand layer first at the bottom, then I poured in the different shades of blue, using a blowdryer to swirl the colors and get some of the bubbles out. After I added all the blues, I used my white dyed epoxy and poured three thin lines lengthwise across the top and used the blow dryer to give the appearance of the white foam after a wave crashes. While waiting for the epoxy to set and dry for 24 hours I sanded down the inside of the ukulele to make the edges cleaner. I then attached battery powered, remote control LED lights along the inside walls of the body to give the lamp its intended purpose. After the epoxy set and dried I sanded it down to fit the body of the ukulele and attached it using hot glue. The finished result is a repurposed ukulele that functions as a lamp, is remote controlled and gives you a glimpse of the ocean.

Materials: Wood, epoxy, sand, shells

Measurements 20"x7.5"x 2.5"