Carla (Gal) Guillermo Paredes

Computer Science major, Studio Art minor

I am a visual storyteller that explores time, memory, and emotion. I work across illustration, animation and interactive experiences, often using a restrained and monochromatic palette, transforming personal experiences and abstract feelings into soft and dreamy artworks that blur the lines between reality and a surreal intimate dreamscape.

I am heavily inspired by comic paneling and sequential art, tools I use to play with composition. Helping construct visual narratives that manipulate the sensation of time and movement within a still image. Through my pieces I also explore existential themes of mortality, impermanence, and transformation using the human body and the natural world as symbols of change and transience.

Weaving personal experiences ––moving between places, living far from home, and navigating the world around me– along with surreal elements, my work reflects on the fleeting nature of these connections and the ways they shape memory and identity in order to create a space for vulnerability and invite introspection.

Semelparity

watercolor on paper, digital animation

Jewett Gallery

6 small blue and white watercolors, each with multiple panels, depicting the life cycle of an animal - L to R on the top row: butterfly, salmon, stag beetle; L to R on the bottom row: frog, jellyfish, snake

At its core, Semelparity explores the fundamental questions about what it means to be born, to change, and to die. By condensing the life cycles of various animals into illustrated moments –confined within the boundaries of paper yet unfolding through animation–I invite viewers to reflect on the significance of small, intimate experiences of small, intimate experiences amidst the vastness of life. Though the themes may be unsettling, the work is not meant to be harsh. Rather, it offers a gentle space: comforting yet thought-provoking. A quiet reminder that there is beauty in the decaying and the fleeting

By using a combination of mediums, such as watercolor, with its fluidity and organic nature, reflecting the delicate and transient nature of life. While the animation complements it by adding movement. An interplay between impermanence and change. Together, they both immerse the viewer in a world that feels both soft and ethereal, yet deeply reflective.

small blue and white watercolor with 4 panels showing a jellyfish with various forms of its life cycle

small blue and white watercolor of salmon with 5 panels, some of which show various parts of its life cycle

Echoes of death

cut paper

Jewett Gallery

Echoes continues the meditation on mortality explored in Semelparity, where death is not portrayed as violent or tragic, but as something subtle, persistent, and quiet. Unlike Semelparity, which uses movement, narrative, and color to explore the cycles of life, Echoes retreats into a more minimal space—one where presence is suggested rather than directly shown.

Inspired by the three-dimensional qualities of pop-up books, these paper cutouts become tactile moments frozen in time. The delicate silhouettes of animal skulls feel almost absent, revealing themselves only through shifting light and shadow. They invite stillness and close attention—a quiet reminder that mortality doesn’t always arrive with force, but can take shape in soft, fleeting impressions.

pop up cut-out white on white cut paper animal skull; the area behind the skull on the paper glows with reflected light

white on white cut paper pop up of an animal skull viewed from the side, showing blurry blue and white paintings in the near distance to the left

6 small blue and white paneled watercolors with animals between two columns of 3 each white on white cut paper animal skulls, all pinned to a white gallery wall

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