Safe Haven
For this observational study of my safe haven at school, I wanted to capture a sense of space using my brown Micron pen. I was used to working in mediums like acrylic paint, where I can build on top of unlimited layers, so working with the pen was difficult. Every line was permanent and could not be covered completely with another layer, so I had to stop and practice before starting another session the following day. I eventually learned how to build value through cross-hatching. I later added a light wash of watercolor with the same color to create more depth
Figure Drawing- Kaitlyn
Using blue pastel pencils and a yellow pastel pencil on green construction paper, I drew my friend relaxing. I used the green paper as one of my midtones to really make the colors match the feeling of serenity.
Sketchbook
This is an arrangement of sketches I have made in the last couple of years. It includes the idea sketches behind my finished pieces, such as The Weight of Choice and Echoes of Empathy along with experimentations in different mediums such as graphite, pen, acrylic paint, watercolor, thread, hard pastels, and more.
The Realm
I Imagined
The Realm I Imagined is a life-size mixed media installation that invites viewers to step inside my imaginary world. I tried to depict the characters I created that live in this world. Stretched across the floor lies a blue figure, a version of me, her body painted with a soft landscape that carries the freedom I feel whenever I create. Beside her looms a giant purple head: the ugliness she feels about herself, pulled out of her mind and made real enough to touch. Bringing her to life was a struggle, as the chicken wire kept cutting my hands until I learned to pack her with newspaper so she could hold her shape. Surrounded by a caterpillar slowly becoming a butterfly and a TV playing footage of me at work, this world is where I wanted to capture what I've come to believe: beauty can't be rushed, and the freest, most beautiful version of me appears when I'm simply creating as myself.
Echoes of Empathy
This piece first started from my desire to help and to express those specific feelings. Specifically the unhoused people I meet while volunteering to the lonely, elderly individuals I know. The blue dots, made from hard pastels, represent the repeated “ripples” from my heart. The fragmented shapes are inspired by Cubism, allowing me to merge different locations together. In the middle of the class, I wanted to depict myself walking up stairs to show how it is a true privilege and honor to meet people where they are in life.
Weightless Dreams
This tank once held my beloved fish, and after he passed, I couldn't bring myself to let it go. Now it holds the world I escape to when I create: a painting of myself drifting underwater, sculpted sea creatures floating beside me, and colored strings spilling over the glass like ideas reaching out into the real world. I wanted to capture the weightless joy I feel when I'm making art, and to give the home of a life I'll always remember a new kind of life of its own.
Mom Figure Study
This is a figure drawing of my mom. As she was posing for me, she was moving and looking in the opposite direction so instead of waiting for her to turn back and stay still, I wanted to illustrate the movement. I drew four live figures in sequence to capture the motion of her turning. Working in charcoal, I kept the lines loose and gestural, smudging and layering marks so her body feels like it is still in motion.
Ripples in Solitude
Ripples in Solitude is a meditation on finding stillness in a world that never stops moving. My bedroom, painted upside down, is the one place where I can escape the ringing phone and the endless images telling me what to look like and how to live. Through a screen set into the canvas, my animated eyes survey the room, so for once I am not the one being looked at; I am the one looking. I wished to capture that rare pause, a reminder to stop, take a breath, and simply exist.
Refractions Still Life
For this observational study, I found eight glass objects in my home and arranged them on a wooden table, illuminated by sunlight and viewed from above. I included my clay sculpture enclosed in a clear box made of translucent sheets in the middle to create a sense of drama within composition. Working in graphite and white pastel pencil on toned paper, I tried to capture how each glass object glows and alters through the sunlight.
Every Road Leads Back
Every Road Leads Back reflects the long search for beauty that began the moment I started comparing myself to the faces on my screen. Inside the glassy face of my baby self, a lost girl and a line of small figures wander a winding road beneath the background glitching feeds, searching for something they can never reach, yet the road never leads outside of her. I wanted to capture the truth I keep forgetting: the beauty I've been chasing was already mine from the start.
Who I was Becoming
Who I was Becoming takes place the marble goddesses of ancient Greece beside my own face: the "perfect" woman and the real one, thousands of years apart. Across a broken mirror, my warm skin hardens into cold stone and ends in a shattered chrome face, as polished and empty as a filtered screen. Within the frame, my younger self, still untouched by the pressure to be perfect, sits beside a goddess buried under her own veil. I wanted to capture how chasing an ideal, whether carved in marble or filtered on a screen, slowly erases the real me.
Between Being and Machine
Inspired by the ornate mahogany cabinet I remember from antique stores, I built this interactive piece to explore how technology like AI is reshaping our idea of beauty, even though it can only reproduce what already exists in our world and history. I wanted the top surface to feel familiar yet quietly troubling as faces and landscapes are slowly overtaken by binary code, the way technology now filters how we see ourselves and everything around us. By inviting viewers to open each drawer and discover what's hidden inside, I hoped to remind myself, and everyone else, that the beauty a machine can't imitate is never found on the surface.