My sustained investigation is guided by an inquiry into the basic human form’s power to convey information to other humans.

In order to explore the human form at a base level, I decided to use the shape-making capabilities of printing processes. I started the investigation by reducing the human form to basic shapes using masked monoprint; from there, I iterated on the concept by exploring different types of information to be communicated and different printing processes. 

Throughout my portfolio, I continually experimented with new processes as I visited new ideas. Some of my favorite printing processes I tried for the first time in this portfolio were ink splatter prints, wax block prints, and watercolor prints, though I found success with many others. The ideas behind the pieces branched out as well; starting with simply conveying a mood with a human shape, I expanded my ideas to encompass more complex emotions and ideas such as visually representing the brain’s subjective sensory experience of the physical world. Outside of the main work of the portfolio, I regularly used charcoal studies and anatomical illustrations to practice my use of materials and human form. 

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Senior Lounge was anonymously assembled piecemeal on the corkboard wall in the senior lounge outside the Atrium over the course of my senior year at Ignatius. Starting as a single pencil sketch of a cockroach bearing the message “Welcome Back Seniors” at the very beginning of the year, the project grew as I made more messages as an exercise in draftsmanship and eventually typography. At the end of the year, someone added illustrations of birds to the wall as well, but I was unable to include them here as a collaboration because the artist’s identity was not made known to me.