Grief twists, turns, and folds in on itself. Creativity can be the thread that unravels it.
In the first part of my thesis, I held art-making sessions with grieving college students. Each student reported that creating gave them a way to navigate and process their emotions related to their loss.
With this understanding, I set out to sculpt grief itself—not as a singular emotion, but as a process. My sculpture embodies the duality of grief: the tangled, inescapable weight of mourning and the release that comes with permission to explore.
The act of creating this sculpture became its own confrontation. I embraced intuitive making, allowing my own grief-related emotions to shape the form, rather than focusing on the aesthetic outcome.
My studies in The Practice and Theory of Creativity have taught me that creativity is not just about making—it is about problem-solving, adaptation, and interdisciplinary exploration. Drawing from basket-weaving techniques I learned at CC, I wove together salvaged scraps of fabric that make up my own loss and healing, using this interdisciplinary approach to the creative process.
This sculpture is both a reflection and a release—an embodiment of loss that is held, honored, and processed.
Scroll Down for my May 2024 Fashion Line
Influenced by the mockery and anti-art of the 1960s Fluxus Art Movement, I adopted a playful, yet thought-provoking approach to answer the questions how can fashion be anti-fashion? How can I undo fashion? How can I destroy fashion and put it back together? How can I value the process and fun of fashion rather than its aesthetic outcome? By departing from aesthetics and visual appearance, I focused on the skirt’s function and how it can involve the viewer. I became interested in the notion of destruction and rebellion of the skirt, and with fashion at large. The outcome is a skirt that is meant to be teared apart, displayed in a video that highlights the destruction, rather than the outcome of the skirt’s body.
Majorly inspired by anti-art, playful experimentation, chaos, basket weaving, and Elliott Smith, this line is created with upcycled materials and uses alternative construction methods that are scrapy and resourceful.
Scrap Dress
In using an old unwearable wool sweater, I coiled with scrap fabric given to me by loved ones, hand-me-downs, and from thrift stores. The dress and wider collection is in conversation with ideas of play, love, impermanence, and a sense of release. I do this with the dichotomy of tight weaving with drooping fabrics and expressive color choices.
Wool sweater, fabric from clothing, needle and thread
25 x 27 inches
i hold on to every word you wrote me. a top inspired by the words of affirmation love language and an obsessive reliance on validation.
needle, thread, paper, fabric modge podge, and fabric.
