"Little Things I Love About Humans" masonite, cardstock, ink, watercolor, embroidery floss, designed with Adobe Illustrator, cut with the laser cutter. May 2023
In February 2023, I started a list on my phone in the Notes app of the same title. As I went about my day, I would often add to this list with small things I observed people doing that made me happy or that I appreciated about people. During this month I was often sad and anxious and I recalled the suggestion that looking for things to be grateful for vastly improved many people's outlook on life. Once I started this list, I continued to add to it over time, and while it did not necessarily improve my sense of happiness on its own, it did help show me the value in myself, as I realized that many of the things I appreciate about other peopel are things that I do, too. Looking for the goodness in the world is a valuable exercise, in my opinion, because when you look for all the reasons that people are wonderful and that life is worth living, you will find that they are, that it is, over and over again.
In particular, I chose this format for my final project because I really love using the laser cutter to create sculptures and artist books, because it is a way to use digital means to create a tangible product. Each page was hand-written based on each of the notes and then sewn together, both to emulate the veins and arteries of a heart and to create a sense of literal and metaphorical connection between people's actions- as we are all more alike than unalike in the ways we are beautiful.
Here is the full list of notes:
"For My favorite People" copy paper, printer ink, embroidery floss, white gel pen, designed with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and Indesign. April 2023
For My favorite People is an artist book I created for my friends. Each page contains several poems and posts that are uplifiting, wholesome, cute, or funny. As the school year draws to a close, I wanted to thank my friends for their kindness and friendship, so I created 20 copies of this book and gifted one to each of my friends. The doodles in white pen are hand-drawn, while the rest was created through digital means. The dedication page is a reference to my discord status, which for many months read: "My friends are the best people in the world."
"Cranes" plexiglass, monofilm, designed with Adobe Illustrator. March 2023
Cranes uses the simple material of colored plexiglass to experiment with the affects of light and shape on color. Inspired by the art form of origami (which I partake in regularly), and the paper stars that hang from the window of my childhood bedroom, Cranes indulges in the simple pleasure of creating small beauties in simple spaces, like the sole window in a college dorm room.
This piece was designed with Adobe Illustrator, and then printed using the Laser Cutter at the Brown Design Workshop, which I am certified to use. Over 60 cranes were created in pink, yellow, and blue, and only those with sturdy, non-broken openings were used for this project. The rest were given as gifts to my friends :).
The Adobe Illustrator image. Red vectors represent vector cuts, blue vectors represent engravings.
"Dissolve" digital (primarily Photoshop), photography, and mixed media on semi-gloss. February 2023
This piece serves as a first experiment with creating a larger project through mostly digital means. I started by collecting various imagery (pictured below). I also painted over the image to add texture, manipulated it with liquify, and added several color, compositional, and textural efffects.
The piece creates an emotive quality by focusing on vibrant colors, coupled with the figure's solemn, solitary gaze. While the portrait itself was generated with DALL-E 2 and is not representative of my personal photography, I take care to create highly detailed prompts, and often go through dozens of generations before I settle on one to use in my work. I also paint over the image by hand to ensure the piece retains anatomical accuracy, and a life-like, human quality.
The first image is a photo I took at 85 Waterman, fourth floor Conservatory, which is my favorite place on campus. The next four photos were genenerated with DALL-E 2. I also used a photo from a page in my journal, which I will not include here for privacy reasons.
"My Room" digital (primarily Photoshop), photography. February 2023
"Trees, Smoke, and Water" digital (primarily Photoshop), photography. February 2023
These four images represent the outcomes of my half of a collaborative work of art (the other half done by Christine Baek). My Room was created using three images that she created based on prompts I gave her, while Trees, Smoke, and Water were images I created using the three aforementioned prompts she gave me. Each of the images I gave her were created by compiling photos I took that I felt represented the themes, and were then edited in photoshop.
"Naked Donut Run Poster" digital (FireAlpaca), Adobe Illustrator. December 2022
This poster was created by myself and Cassius Hall, for one of Brown University's most infamous traditions: The Naked Donut Run, where on a random day during reading period, a group of students will strip naked and hand out donuts in two of our libraries on campus. Primarily, I drew the donuts for the poster.
"Seeing Double (Or Ten)" digital (FireAlpaca), photography. November 2022
Working with portraiture and color experiementation have always been some of my favorite artistic explorations, and the theme continues here. Though I have spent most of my artistic journey working primarily in physical materials, I've gained a greater affinity for the ease and comfort of digital materials in the last year. This piece delves into that topic, starting with a base black-and-white self-portrait painting, and then creating various color variations to create various emotive qualities.
"Leafy Sheepy" digital (FireAlpaca). August 2022
Leafy Sheepy is the most quintessentially "me" piece I have ever created. Representing my profile picture on all of my main social media platforms including Instagram, Discord, and Zulip, as well as my usernames (all a variation on LeafySheepy- some being just "LeafySheep"), I created Leafy Sheepy with the intention of creating something that would simply make me happy, and ended up being so pleased with the results that it has essentially become my branding. While the base for the image was initially generated with DALLE-2, I spent over 10 hours hand-painting over the image to give it my own personal artistic touch, as well as fix the proportions, and add details and elements to the image (including expanding the image from a square to a portrait size, accomodating the sheep hooves).
"Painting Painting (Album Art)" digital (FireAlpaca). July 2022
This piece was a comissioned work of album art for Asher Pereira, entitled Painting Painting. The frame was handpainted and the text was individually manipulated and placed.
This year, the Puzzle Club at Brown has decided to take on the challenge of hosting its first ever puzzlehunt. For those reading who don't know what that is, a puzzlehunt is an event where people (usually but not exclusively in teams) solve a series of puzzles. These puzzles usually have a word or phrase as an answer, and are part of a meta (think of it like a round), whose culminating puzzle uses all of the individual puzzles as part of its own puzzle. The first team to solve all the metas wins. For more information check out: All About Puzzlehunts .
One of my friends, Thomas Gordon, is a primary leader of Brown Puzzle Club, and asked me to help out with some art and design for the puzzlehunt. Below are the details and results (so far- more to come soon) of that process.
NOTE: This is a spoiler for Brown puzzlehunt. If you're reading this before April 17 2023 or are interested in partaking in the event without spoilers, skip this section and move on to Traditional Art, Mixed Media.
The first thing I did was make this initial primary sketch (February 2023), fitting the theme of Blueno but make it Eldritch Horror. For those less familiar with Brown University, Blueno is the nickname given to Urs Fischer's "Untitled (Lamp/Bear)", a sculpture that was a prominent part of Brown University's landscape from August 2016 - August 2020. My version of Blueno is meant to emulate it, but with a horrifying, eldritch style twist.
After this initial sketch, I made two digital versions (March 2023), one with the lamp off and one with it on. These would become the foundation for the first three landing pages design and the physical sculpture that I later made as the final prize for the winners of the hunt.
The team chose to move forward with the design where the lamp is off, though later increasing contrast on the image. I then made the sculpture (April 2023) based on the digital paintings:
The sculpture took me roughly 8 hours to assemble and paint, which was a lot less than I anticipated.