Artist Statement

As an artist, I work primarily as a graphic designer, painter, digital drawer, and photographer. My earliest core childhood memories include a black and white composition book my father and I would create pen sketches in. I was always drawing outside on the front lawn with my crayons, colored pencils, and finger paint. My mother and I would collect rocks, pinecones, toilet paper rolls, tissue boxes, and everything in between to upcycle them into crafts. At a young age, my family was incredibly supportive of my artistic interests and encouraged my creativity. I remember taking plenty of art classes in elementary school, but one core memory I have from those years includes a wonderful substitute teacher I had in 5th grade. She gave us a brief lesson on how to do loose and expressive abstract art, just letting your emotions fill the page with lines, shape, and color. That lesson completely changed the way I viewed art. It was no longer just completing prompts and recreating the teachers' examples, it was whatever I wanted it to be.

In middle school, I began taking 2D and 3D art courses which expanded my love for visual art. I then moved on to Dearborn High School where I took every single art class they offered. Such as photography, ceramics, painting, and drawing. Eventually, I ran out of art classes to take at my high school and dual-enrolled at Michael Berry Career Center to take Graphic Design courses. This is where my interest in graphic design was planted. I am currently a BFA student at Siena Heights University with a major in Graphic Design and a double minor in photography and drawing and painting. I mainly focus on graphic design and digital drawing, although I do often work as a painter and photographer.

 I use Instagram and Facebook to gather commissions from family, friends, acquaintances, etc. I accept commissions for digital drawings, logo designs, mural paintings, photoshoots, and custom-painted canvases. Basically, anything that falls under the category of graphic design, photography, and drawing and painting I will accept and use it as a learning experience. It has given me a lot of opportunities to practice communicating with clients and work within an iterative process.

Whether I am creating a logo for a client or a digital design for myself, I work in an iterative process. My iterative process begins with some search for inspiration, usually done on websites such as Behance, Dribble, and Pinterest. I then collect my favorite images and compile them into a mood board. After creating a mood board, I will go into Procreate or grab some colored pencils and a sketchbook. I like to give myself and my clients as many options as possible; usually, I like to start off by creating at least 25 thumbnails. That way I have options and I can expand on my work. I get rid of the sketches that are not working and expand on the designs that are working and continue to make more and more thumbnails until I have it down to a few final sketches. Those are the ones that will make it into Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop for the final stages of the design process. I have about four years of experience in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop as well as one year of experience in Procreate.

My personal beliefs are often themes found within my work. I’ve always created work to express how I feel. Since a young age, I've always felt strongly about women’s rights and equality. It angered me that others weren't angrier about the inequality’s women face, and what we have to go through physically, mentally, and financially as menstruators. Ever since middle school I’ve been creating art pieces with feminist themes and plan to continue to do so for the rest of my life. I created it to educate others on the injustices women face from the pink tax to period poverty. I want to raise awareness on these important topics and start these uncomfortable conversations that can help push us towards a better future for us and all the young women growing up in this world. Not only do I focus on feminist topics, I like to focus my work on mental health, LGBTQ+ matters, and racial equality. During the summer of 2020, I designed a set of Black Lives Matter stickers using Procreate. I was able to sell these stickers and donated the profits to the Equal Justice Initiative. It is my goal to not only educate others but to encourage others to work towards equality.