A limited variable editioned artist book, by measure of depicts an allegorical conversation between medieval author Christine de Pizan and a contemporary woman. It is, in essence, an exploration of edges in which the characters examine the parameters of identity, both personally and societally designated–how to define/re-define/emphasize/blur them, and what happens in the space where they meet.

Field Guide is a mixed-media artist book detailing the exploration of a fictitious culture through cartography, narrative, and illustration. It is presented through the lens of an amateur archaeologist, navigating a chain of islands to search for ruins and artifacts. In part, the project is focused on the fantasy of an imagined world. The island chain is a place entirely of my own creation. By creating the viewpoint of an outside explorer, it was possible to navigate through this world. Although I, as the artist, can know everything about this fictitious world, adopting the perspective of someone distanced by time and place allowed for discrepancies, misinterpretation, and the sense of mystery that typically colors interpretations of foreign, ancient cultures. This character is forced to fill in the context for what she is viewing based upon her conjectures, which may or may not reveal the full truth. Overall, perspective on cultures is often shaped by the observations of a few individuals. In the same way, viewers are forced to consider this culture through the lens of one character, without being entirely certain if they are consuming objective truths.

Serial Editions: Another Book of Books for the Chapman is a collection of chapbooks whose titles include First Cold Morning, River Music, Vow, Intimate Interactions of a Corollary ( w/ braille translations), My Soul From Yesterday & Another Abecedarian for the World. You may or might not get a postcard in the mail announcing its distribution, then, one chapbook at a time, as in serial comics, slowly collecting, only later to receive them all, collected in a single book object..

The Girl Who Became a Rabbit is a book-length poem which explores the metamorphoses of the body, psychological and physical, after abuse. The poem engages with the language of fables, fairy tale, and myth, and through an examination of these forms considers how memories and trace of abuse and grief might be experienced as acts of transformation and haunting. Additionally, The Girl Who Became a Rabbit explores genre boundaries between prose and poetry through a prose-poem lyric essay hybrid form.

There is an in-between space during the act of seeing. The in-between space lies on the spectrum of the reality in front of us and what our brain tells us. It is within this suspended moment an individual can experience an unaltered and unaffected vision. While this moment is fleeting, it defines the highest peak of personal experience. It is my belief no two people will ever experience the same vision during this suspended time. And after it passes, the sigh/vision can never be the same. We are constantly bearing witness to the inexpressive, and this fleeting moment is something in which we should all revel.

This is a thesis that details the process of writing a short 30 page novel, and then converting the subsequent story into a graphic format via illustrations and into a comic book layout. The story itself deals in reworking our learned assumptions of good and evil, specifically in the supernatural and human possibility for both. The comic book format is an exploration of my reader’s different responses to the written and the graphic.

Sonder is an exploration of the relationship between digital media and graphic design through the creation of print and digital publications. At it’s very foundation, Sonder is a travel magazine with both a physical print publication and a digital publication designed for a tablet. It includes photography, articles, poetry, and travel tips. The print and the digital versions contain the same content, but explore different methods of presentation.

This paper examines nostalgia in photo-poetry book Nostos, and nostalgia’s existence as a theoretical global condition arising from displacement, looking at nostalgia specifically not as a yearning for home, but a yearning for a lost sense of feeling at home. It traces the lineage of image-text hybrid art practices and examines the significance of conveying meaning through both synergistically. It studies the psychoanalytic process of transforming loss into object, or absence into presence, ultimately using the object as a lens to view oneself and the way in which nostalgia manifests itself.

How to Be A Model Minority: Mastering the American Dream is a satirical instructional manual which teaches readers to be idealized Chinese Americans in order to integrate into American society. The booklet bases its standards off of the model minority myth, a conception of Asian Americans which assumes Asian Americans must repress their Asian heritage and embrace overachievement to attain the socioeconomic status of a middle class white American family. Through color illustrations, photos, and short expository texts, the booklet explains to readers how and why they should accept the standards of the model minority myth, and uses Asian American characters in popular television and movies as references. How to Be a Model Minority humorously deconstructs the model minority myth by exaggerating the expectations the myth places on Asian, particularly Chinese, Americans. This exaggeration allows the reader to question the validity of model minority expectations and the groups truly benefitting from these imposed standards. By examining media representations of Asian Americans, the booklet also suggests the role popular media has in disseminating cultural information.

The second part of a two-part MFA Thesis presentation, this paper distills the content from the preceding exhibition A Step of Two or The Pas de Deux: an installation of paintings, drawings and projected video. It touches on various themes that surround [well researched] ideas about perception, dissociation, the gaze, and relationships. Most of all, this paper and the body of work it describes is about the visual representation of a sensual understanding of the world.