I draw the goofiest little self portraits.

Monsters & Roses

4D Core class, scanner project; 2013

This is a throwback to my first year at CCA. I made these for a quick one-week project that required us to use a scanner in a creative way. The prompt was so simple, but I enjoyed it and I still love these.

7 | 19 | 14

Sand beneath my feet Promises I cannot keep I will dream of you

I'm obsessed with ghosts, quotes, and crystals.

The Sad Tales Of The Box-Shaped-Heart

from Love Hurts by Murilo

This is what’s going on in my sketchbook right now. Self (not quite) portraits and my signature pattern.

Metastasis Hair Piece Sterling silver set with garnets and cubic zirconia. Here is the third piece of the series. I wanted to make specifically a hair piece to symbolize the bad effects of chemotherapy, as I've realized in this creative process that I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. Chemotherapy kills all cells in your body that multiply quickly, which aren't always cancer cells. The most obvious cells that naturally multiply quickly are hair cells, explaining why people undergoing chemo lose their hair. I did not want to incorporate spinels (the black gemstones) in this piece at all because your hair cells are healthy, but are attacked by the chemo regardless.

Metastasis Brooch Sterling silver set with spinels. My Jewelry/Metal Arts 3B final had to be based on a previous piece. I chose to make more pieces based on the chemotherapy necklace, which I'm now calling the Metastasis Necklace (hooray, a series!). This brooch solely resembles cancerous/dying cells, and can be moved around the body to symbolize the spread of cancer. My mom had "small cell" lung cancer, meaning her cancer spread throughout her body quickly, rather than develop solely in one spot to start. More commonly, cancer is detected as one big tumor and can be isolated + treated. Small cell means it cannot be detected until it has already spread.

A piece based on the celebration of Spring: White Nights Pendant Sterling silver (cast) set with alexandrite and a moonstone. This is the final for my casting class. We could make up our own celebration of spring if we wanted to, but I decided to base my piece on the White Nights festival in Saint Petersburg, Russia. I’ve been missing Russia a lot recently, and when I was last there I caught the end of the White Nights festival. The festival is their marker for the beginning of spring and for about two weeks, the sun never sets. When it would otherwise become night, it becomes a constant twilight (my favorite time of a normal day). The time of this natural occurrence becomes an art festival, especially celebrating music. Outdoor performances are held since it never gets dark, and some of the best performances are held in the opera / ballet as well. If you didn't guess it already, the building on my piece is modeled after The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood (Храм Спаса на Крови) AKA the church with all the colorful onion-looking domes.

Jack & Jill Comic Here’s another homework assignment from my Graphic Novel class — to make a two page comic based on the Jack & Jill nursery rhyme!

December 28, 2009 (almost) Wordless one-page memoir comic about the day my mother died.

It seems I’ve been doing morbid stuff lately, especially about my mom. However, I don’t see this process as a sad thing. Since she passed away when I was 10 years old, I was too young to deal with it artistically. Sure, I drew a lot, but I had to deal with it in many other ways first. Now that I’m a decade older, it’s refreshing to express that time of my life in a new light — through my art!

A piece based on non-visual research: Metastasis Necklace Fine silver set with garnets, spinels, & cubic zirconia with patinated sterling silver chain. For my Jewelry/Metal Arts 3B class, I chose to research chemotherapy and definitely found out more than I ever knew. This piece was very interesting to make, and hard at times. Since my mom passed away from cancer when I was 10, I didn’t really understand everything that was going on when she was sick. Designing this piece brought up my mixed feelings about chemotherapy. It prolonged her life, but towards the end she stopped getting chemotherapy because it made her feel terrible (and it was never really intended to cure her cancer anyway). The main inspiration I pulled from my research is that chemotherapy kills cells that multiply quickly, the main sign of a cancer cell. However, we also have cells in our bodies that multiply quickly naturally, like hair cells. Chemotherapy cannot distinguish which is which, and eventually will kill everything (causing hair to fall out, an extremely week immune system, etc).

The Osaka Exchange Exhibition

This post is a little late, but here are some pictures from The Osaka Exchange Exhibition -- the juried printmaking show I wrote about awhile back. Anyways, the show is long gone (if you were thinking about checking it out), but here I am checking out my print! This is the first time my work has been shown at an on-campus CCA gallery! 

Incense Holder Copper. This piece is part of Project #3 for my Color On Metal class. We have started learning about patinas, and were encouraged for this project to use simple forms / forms we are familiar with, then transform them using patination. On my incense holder is a torch patina created by heating my piece and immediately quenching it in water after it becomes red hot.

A piece based on black or white Sterling silver set with onyx, spinels, and cubic zirconia. This piece contains a lot of firsts! • first time using fancy bezel wire (and I hardly ever bezel set to begin with) • first time surface setting • and first time using onyx in a piece, especially since I just found out it is one of my birth stones! (Aside from peridot.)

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Taken in summer 2012.