Table of Contents. Inside My Mind -- pg. 2-3

. Bird of Paradise -- pg. 4-5

. Enter Through the Blackhole -- pg. 6-7

. Night Light -- pg. 8-9

. Face Melt -- pg. 10-11

. Line of News -- pg. 12-13

. Underwater Vision -- pg. 14-15

. Japanese Sunrise -- pg. 16-17

. Falling -- pg. 18-19

. Bliss Chord -- pg. 20-21

. Intertwined with the Vines -- pg. 22-23

. Pieces of a Bird -- pg. 24-25

. Zoomin’ Through -- pg. 26-27

. Movement of Emotions -- pg. 28-29

. Rising From the Clouds -- pg. 30-31

. Chlorophyll -- pg. 32-33

. Ballroom Dance -- pg. 34-35

. Resurrection -- pg. 36-37

. Inside the Creative Mind -- pg. 38-39

. In the Middle -- pg. 40-41

. Grace of Time Travel -- pg. 42-43

. About the Artist -- pg. 44

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The main focus of this piece is the buddha looking man. It makes him the main character for the piece and what is being unlocked from the mind. The message of the picture is to see things in new perspectives and not be so closed minded. I wanted the audience to get a dream like state while viewing this piece. Also, I wanted the audi-ence to see how we are one with the universe and not just a small part of Earth. I wanted the pic-ture to have somewhat of a dreaming effect. The eye in the center of his head symbolizes the "third eye". As you notice, his eyes are closed so I wanted the piece to be in a whole new perspective.

I wanted the viewers eye to drift up the picture till you get to space. First I started with the buddha looking man, I wanted there to be a center focus to the whole picture. Next, I started working my way up and out starting with the barcode looking lines, I felt that it had sort of an egyptian look to it. Next came the peacock feathers, I always found peacocks to be a beautiful animal. I then thought of a million eyes staring out of the picture but I ended up making a design within the oval instead. I created a barrier or wall look-ing structure and finally space.

Inside my Mind“The barrier towards the top of the picture is based off of the "heavens" so to speak. This is a very spiritual image to me.”

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Bird of Paradise

This piece was done with Blick colored pencils on sketch paper. It took me half a year to do. I started drawing a tree, then I transformed it into a plant, and finally it ended up being a peacock. I drew the peacock from the in-side out started with the veins and ending with the feathers. I wanted the viewers eye to mostly look at the peacock since it is in the center and there are so many lit-tle details to it. Then the viewers eye could travel backward start-ing from the top and then making their way down the spiraled rectangular pattern. I also added a couple of leaves so I could continue my style of using organic objects or shapes.

“ I started this at my friend’s apartment in Chicago and finished it in a hammock in Sher-wood Forest when I attended Electric Forest Festival”.

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This piece was done with acrylic paint on canvas board. When I finished it, the image had an animated feel to it. I wanted the viewers eye to start at the bottom of the bird and then shoot up so the first thing you see is an orange flower with the birds eye as a nose. Then the viewers eye should transition from the flower into a bird flying foward. The viewers eye could also start from the top right corner where the entrance to the blackhole is located. The lines coming form the center of the blackhole are supposed to lead you to the bird as if he flew out from the entrance. Again, I used abstract and organic shapes to fill all around the bird. I made all the small marks and shapes because black-holes bend time, space and also spaghettify anything that comes through it. So I wanted to add a little bit of my knowledge to the image.

Enter Through the Bla

ckhole

“When painting, I don’t re-ally think in the beginning, I just start with a mark that I like and branch out from there”.

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Night LightThis piece was done with acrylic paint on canvas. I finished it in one day surprisingly and ended up selling it to one of my co-workers. The elephant is supposed to be afraid of the dark and his trunk is his night light to see where he is going. The light is also being re-flected off of the water he is standing in. I wanted to make a surreal painting. It was also an experi-ment for me, I didn’t use the same mark making, I tried to make differ-ent textures to the image so each layer standed out differently. I didn’t want everything to be as smooth as the elephant, such as the dirt and grass in the background. I left the elephant smooth be-cause that was the texture I think of when I picture an elephant. I wanted the viewers eye to start at the elephant, travel down the trunk, around the reflect-ed light and up the tree.

“Even though my elephant isn’t pink, my inspiration for this piece was the song “pink elephants”.

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Face Melt

This was created with acrylic paint on canvas. The main focus of the image is the melting face in the middle. I started painting a flower and it was too plain for me so I added eyes and it turned out to be a transitional image from a face to a flower. I added a lot of abstract shapes to fill up the negative space around the melting face. In the background, I also wanted a transition from hot to cold. On the hot side, the face is melt-ing and on the cold side the leaves towards the bottom corner have a frosted look to them.

“ My inspiration for this piece was the movie Alice In Won-derland. “

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BLine of News

This is a photograph of newspaper stands out-side of the 159th train station in Orland Park. At the time I was doing a photography summer studio class at the Ameri-can Academy of Art in Chicago. The class had the freedom to wander anywhere as long as we had pictures and the placement of the news stands seemed inspiring to me. It’s something you see everywhere but a lot of people ignore. We printed these in a darkroom and I think the black and white really has an emotional effect on the image.

“I like the old look to the picture and the single filed line of the news stands”.

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Underwater Vision

This is the first image I made for my series “Living in a Dream”. I started with the purple and red curvey line in the middle of the pic-ture and branched out with other curvey lines. Eventually I saw an outline where an eye looked like it could fit in so I exaggerated that negative space. The blue background gave me the idea of being underwa-ter so I added seaweed and coral looking shapes to make the underwa-ter image stand out. I wanted the viewers eye to start at the top of the long dark blue lines, around the coral, up the red and purple lines to see the eye and then up and around the sea-weed. The underwater world is very fanscinat-ing to me and has the most beautiful creations on Earth. I would hope that after my audience views this, they further their knowledge to learn about the deep sea.

“ The underwater world is something that will always be inspirational to me, especially the deep sea with all the glow-ing fish”.

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Japanese Sunrise

“ My inspiration for this piece was just a beautiful sunny day. I also like to use rect-angular patterns in my pictures”.

This is a third piece from the series “Liv-ing in a Dream”. It was actually the second piece made. I wanted the viewers eye to be scanned wherever their eye is attracted to first. I wanted the image to be radiant and peace-ful. I kept up with my style of abstract shapes, organic shapes and small details. It had a japanese look to me af-ter I was done making the picture. Especially the blue moon in the top left hand corner. I named the image Japa-nese Sunrise because the sun in the image really sticks out to me. It is the most radiant part of the image and I liked the long light yellow lines that drag all the way down the paper.

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Falling

This is another piece from the series “Liv-ing in a Dream”. This is probably one of the most simplest ones in the series and speaks to me the most. It is noth-ing but abstract. I want the viewers eye to begin at the bug like shape at the top of the image and work its way down the yellow goop, over to the caterpillar shape and explode from the lines coming out from that shape, over to the rain-drop shape. The concept of this image is how ev-ery shape has a natural or organic underlining.

“ My inspiration for this piece is all the small things in life that are ig-nored but are the most miraculous and myste-rious creations of life”.

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Bliss Chord

This is another image from my series “Living in a Dream”. I wanted the viewers eye to begin at the top of the picture where the lines sprinkle down. Then down the two blue spikes, around the green spiraled vine, up to the headphones and down to the middle where the flower is at. The picture itself seems blissful especially with the theme of simplic-ity in the series. I made the headphones blue to exaggerate the “bliss” in the image.

“I want the viewer to feel the same uplift-ing feeling when music and art are incorporated.”

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Intertwined With The Vines

This is an abstract picture I made with chalk pastel. I wanted the viewers eye to start with the big or-ganic shape in the middle and travel all around the picture in a circular form. I left a lot of negative space because I wanted the picture to be in the simplified as much as possible. I like the small shapes in their random places. This is also one of five pieces in a series of mine called “Living in a Dream”.

“I am always inspired by natural areas and organic objects.”

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I had the birds tongue stick-ing out to have some sort of humor added. I wanted the viewer to see the pattern first and kind of get lost in every direction the lines go. Also, I wanted the viewer to put the puzzle pieces together. On one side of the picture, its the back half of the bird and on the other side is the front part of the bird. I wanted to have a bright red pattern in the background because the bird is mainly in cool colors, and I wanted the pattern to stand out.

This piece was inspired by another called “Bird of Paradise” and I wanted to incorporate the same cool colored bird in the picture.

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The arrangement was meant for the viewer to see in all different angles. I first made the checkered pattern in the bubble like forms in really fine detail. I then decided to expand that pattern to create a different perspective and more enlarged version of the same pattern. I didn’t want the picture to have one focus; I like to make the viewer keep viewing to see multiple things or whatever they can point out that I didn’t notice.

I wanted the viewer to view in the bubble like forms, the checkered pattern and how it was morphed into the back-ground. Doing that, it makes the viewer focus on the vocal point (which is the face in the cen-ter). Also, the viewer’s eyes wonder throughout the picture seeing every shape, color, and pattern blend

That way, I can con-nect with the viewer as well to understand their perspective on the piece.

Zoomin' Through

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The message is how quickly emotions can change because of cer-tain events. I wanted the viewer to see any of the lines first, depending on which shape stood out to them more. It may not be the most detailed piece of work but I wanted the viewer to see how art re-ally is expression and can be therapeutic during any time or emotion. Some of the feelings I had were relaxation, stress, and energy.

I arranged this piece pretty sporadically. I wanted the viewers eye to travel in all different directions. I figured that is what emotions are any-ways, sporadic feelings. The shapes symbolized the different emotions as well. The smooth long lines represented relax-ation, the more rough, rigid, brown, zig zags rep-resented stress and the circles were energy. The smaller lines towards the center represented fading of each emotion.

“Everyone lives their life and never know what will happen next or how you will feel next.”

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I first want the viewer to start from the bottom up. Towards the bottom, you see the earth. Then, going up through the stormy weather. If you focus in on "the earth" you'll see the fine detailed sew-ing thread that I made a design with. I made most of it horizontal and di-agonal to represent wind. Next, floating up above the clouds. Finally, you see the woman fighting through everything reach-ing beyond the clouds.

It represents how I have been feeling since I start-ed college. I feel like I am pushing through every-thing that holds me back to achieve where I want to be. The toilet paper roll represents the ground and stormy weather and once you get passed the clouds, you reach the sunshine and freedom. The white ribbon accents the clouds and gives it a shiny and beautiful look with all the curves.

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“I chose to make this project based on reusing previous unfinished projects, plastic and paper products.”

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Chlorophyll

I am not a winter person and I lack inspiration so this piece will give me a boost. I kept it 3D rather than pressing glass over it, so the viewer could see the texture of each leaf. After rearranging the leaves to get the set up I liked the most, the main focus ended up being the organic bird in the middle of the rain-forest.

After finding out the objective of this new as-signment, I decided to pick a bunch of leaves and make something out of it. I didn't just pick the same leaves, I wanted to get a variety of textures and shades of green in the different leaves. I made the background a pattern of thin bamboo leaves. I pasted them and cut them down so it would have an even look. Then, I ar-ranged all the other leaves several times to see if I could find an actual im-age in the setup. I pasted them over the bamboo leaves in an order so that the bird is coming out of the rainforest but still covered.

After that, I took a dark green sharpie and made some of the creases in the leaves stand out more. Finally, I wanted to give the image a wet and shiny look, so I painted two coats of a glossy varnish over the entire piece.Composition: I want the viewer to focus on the bird first. That is basically the main and only focus of the image. Then the viewer's eyes can wonder around the image looking at the placement of the tree leaves. They drape around and under him.

“I made this piece to remind me of the beautiful, sunny and breezy weather that I love.”

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“I used Vincent Van Gogh's line style and Henri Tolouse Lautrec's color scheme.”

I created this piece as a spoof of Henri Tolouse Lautrec's picture "Doing The Bolero In Chilperic". At the time, we had learned about how some artists mimic anthers and I was very fascinated with that piece. I made them animals to incorporate my image with the rest of my series. I have a sort of surreal style and I some-times find animals in my work. Also, I use a lot of movement in my work and the dancing going on in the picture was a great way for me to put every-thing together.

The main focus of this image is the elegant elephant dancing in the center of the room. With the line style being a freestyle and loose type, I want the viewer's eye to travel around the picture like scanning around a ballroom or dance floor.

Ballroom Dance

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The name of the piece sums up the overall idea I was going for. I've had the pressed flowers and butterfly for a couple years and I knew I wanted to make a piece with it to bring them back to life. I found the butterfly dead by a lake and I didn't want it to disintegrate so I kept it to continue the beauty. I feel that I did a nice job bringing the lilac and leaf at the bottom to life with the bright vibrate colors behind them.

As for the clock, it is a symbol for the passage of time. Time and beauty are eternal in life through my perspective. Most of what this image consists of like the color, pattern and ma-terials are to bring in my previous pieces of work together. Another example of "resurrection" in this image is the leaf and lilac at the bottom.

The lilac represents me and the leaf represents my boyfriend who I have been with for about 3 years. I placed two small flower petals between the two to form a heart. For a long time we would fight and hardly ever get along, and recently we spent a weekend together to fig-ure everything out. So the part at the bottom repre-sents our love resurrected to continue to grow.

Resurrection

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Inside The Creative Mind

I wanted the viewers eye to begin at the center where the young girl is at. Then, moving upward like the spikey design to the top of the clouds. Next, venturing down the drip dops and back up the tree till you reach the leaf. Finally, the viewers eye is located back at the young girl.

She is in my major semi-nar class and makes a lot of pictures based around a woman's figure. The girl is peaking through her heart and glancing inside her imagination. The pic-ture is also a self portrait only not realistically. I wanted to incorporate some of the same ideas in my previous work such as the natural symbols and the rectangular pattern in the background.

“I made this picture inspired by Kristen Murphy's artwork.”

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In The Middle

I started off on the video jockey program Modul8. I pasted two of my previ-ous works into their own layer. One image was "Resurrection" and the other piece was "Zoo-min' Through", which I had cropped down to a T shape. I added minor effects to both images on Photoshop. Then, I recorded a live session of adding animated effects to each picture. Once I was finished with the recording, I had to re-cord a second time so the video could be saved as a movie. Next, I opened the video into iMovie and synced it with the song In the Middle by The Streets. Some effects I used were auto color, auto scale, sound in, and auto rotate. I also added a ripple effect at the end of the video so it wouldn't just abruptly stop. I wanted the video to fade out as it did in the begin-ning. Finally, I uploaded the video onto Youtube so I could have a direct link for everyone to see.

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All of the images are my previous works for my series this semes-ter. I cropped most of them on Adobe Pho-toshop so it wouldn’t be a bunch of squared pictures. I also added effects from Photoshop into a couple of the pieces. I separated these images into two groups on the video jockey program Mod-ul8. That way I could crossfade between the two. I added different auto effects with the pictures and turned up the sound-in selection so the images would automatically sync with the music that is play-ing and move to the different beats. As for the music, it was all created on the program Ableton. A friend of mine and I collaborated with the music because I was unfamiliar with this complex program. We used two differ-ent midi controllers to sound-in different loops and sounds. They were APC 20 and an MPD 18 controller. We also faded in different loops, so it was somewhat similar to Modul8. I recored the video and audio together and transferred that onto iMovie. Then I finalized the project and upload-ed it onto Youtube.

Grace of Time Travel

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About the Artist

I have a huge passion for art. I took almost every art class during high school and I plan to do the same at SXU. I work with whatever I have around me, mostly acrylic paint, oil paint, pastels, colored pencils, and various sized sharpies. During high school, I dabbled into a bit of ceramics and turned out to be the new ceramics teacher's lab rat with AP Art. She taught me person-ally how to work the kiln and whatnot. I also made an 8ft'4ft oil painting mu-ral for my school, though I didn't like the subject matter I was happy to leave something behind. I have attended two years of sum-mer studio classes at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, oil painting both years and then a life drawing class and photog-raphy.

I learned developing skills in life drawing and oil painting with live models. In photography; the class had the freedom to walk around the Chicago loop area to take photographs, then we learned how to mix the chemicals to de-velop the film, transfer the pictures onto photo paper, and after constructing a sculpture we took profes-sional photographs and manipulated them on pho-toshop. I was also lucky enough to create a short film for the class that was displayed to all the sum-mer studio students. It just previewed an adventure day we had taking photos of a model downtown. I love developing my skills and having fun along the way.

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