The beauty of the natural world, from the literal to the abstract: color, texture, shape, sounds, plant structure and anatomy, has continuously been the source of inspiration for artists and graphic designers. Our natural environment provides a readily available resource as a basis of visual study and exploration to develop a unique visual language and construct compelling work. Therefore, the aim of my thesis investigation is to create a new visual language and communication based on the inherent beauty within nature and geometric forms found in nature. I began my investigation by developing a family of symbols based on natural elements and geometry, for example flowers, water, mountains, clouds, stars, etc. These symbols and shapes were then simplified into abstractions and illustrations with geometric and organic characteristics. Next, I transformed the family of symbols into patterns that formed the basis of raw material to develop this unique visual language. The elements (line, shape, direction, size, texture, color, value) and principles (balance, repetition, contrast, harmony, unity) of design formed the building blocks to help create my design language. These visual explorations are manifested into a unique design language, and then applied to the methodology of visual communication and problem-solving to promote the Helsinki Design Week 2015. This international festival, the largest design event in Northern Europe, offers a city-wide meeting place and discussion forum for design professionals. The program includes exhibitions, fashion shows, seminars, galas, and workshops. Helsinki Design Week 2015 is a noteworthy event that invites enthusiasts, professionals, and all friends of design to participate in extraordinary happenings throughout the city of Helsinki, Finland. Through these visual investigations and experimentations, introducing typography and juxtaposing patterns, I was able to achieve my goal of developing a unique visual vocabulary and adapt it to communication design.

She Pricked Her Finger transports the viewer into a landscape of the bucolic and the macabre. Large scale sculptures and drawings create a panorama-environment which explores ideas of familial and geographical identity through themes of mortality and loss. Her work utilizes a self-generated folktale as a vehicle for expressing her experiences with new landscapes and many family deaths. Ultimately Veronicas work reconciles the transition of home; the journey we take from our childhood home to the new homes we build.

The Veil is a print media exhibition exploring the politics surrounding internet and internet related technologies and how they shape our identity. All of the works shift within a satirical and enigmatic visual language which accumulates to form a critique of our online habits and rituals. My work is driven by questions surrounding digital identity, privacy, data mining, narcissism, and commodity fetishism. How is the internet changing us as people and consumers? What are the repercussions of frivolously sharing private information online? And how are new government bills affecting our freedom online? Gallery visitors will encounter the hand-pulled print in a variety of forms. The first room provides a dedicated space for my mural installation (figure 1), an immersive and accumulative work comprised of four hundred screen prints and relief prints. The backroom of the gallery provides a space for twenty three works on paper (figure 2). These prints are more reactionary and trace a more specific lineage in regards to my research.

Facing Reality is a show of landscape paintings and drawings of Baton Rouge, executed mostly through direct observation. Working this way has allowed me to slow down and specifically engage my surroundings and the physical locations that are compelling to me. I am interested in being open to the possibilities provided by experience, and using what I find to create meaningful, honest, and visually poetic pictures.

I am interested in painting figures from direct observation as well as from photographs and memory in an invented theatrical interior space. My models act in an artificial stage to create the drama of a narrative. My figurative paintings present a rolling panoramic space that is manipulated over time. In addition, as a foreign student I had access to many sights in the new world once I came to the United States for the very first time. The expansiveness of the capital culture helped to develop the depth of my narratives in my art work.

Built to Play is an interactive art exhibition featuring four participatory installations. Each installation transforms non-playful objects and activities into handmade porcelain replicas used for exciting gallery made games. Focusing on the carry over from childs play to adult play the exhibition emphasizes the importance of play in our adult lives. As gallery visitors risk breaking handmade ceramic objects for a moment of fun and a chance to win art as a prize, their interaction completes the exhibition.

Mosaic art gives the appearance of immutability and endurance. The materials and designs often echo or emphasize the architectural forms upon which they are fixed. Mosaics have an aura of permanence that is lacking in drawings, paintings, and frescoes. However, these same materials that present an appearance of solid form are mere fragments of stone or glass set into a base of concrete. As an art dependent on architecture, they are subject to the vicissitudes of time and weather. In the nineteenth century, human intervention in the form of invasive and unenlightened restoration practices arguably halted the deterioration of important mosaics. The result, however, was often irreversible changes to the iconography of the images and to the period style of the original. This paper discusses the church of San Michele in Africisco, Ravenna, highlighting its cultural importance as a sixth-century Byzantine monument. The recounting of its history, followed by two case studies of mosaics workshops in Venice, explain common restorations practices for buildings and their mosaics in the nineteenth century. At that time, foreign interests involved with political and social movements in Germany and England, recognized the crucial need for conservation of Byzantine heritage represented by mosaics and pressed for the establishment of more strenuous regulation and preservation.

The photographs in the series A Meal Denied offer a unique portrait into the lives of individuals currently serving as Texas Death Row inmates. In 2011, due to an extravagant meal request by an inmate, Senator John Whitmire sought to put an end to the last meal requests in Texas. Whitmire stated, "It is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege." However, I disagree with Whitmire; every inmate on Death Row should not be denied one of the only choices they will perhaps ever have during their incarceration in prison due to one particular inmates' meal request. In this body of work I engage in a correspondence with Texas Death Row inmates who share with me their last meal request and its significance. I then select those ingredients, prepare each meal, and make a photograph that is sent to the respective inmate. By showing the commonality that we all share with food, I hope to humanize these inmates who most of society has forgotten.

Mademoiselle Louise Josephine Sarazin de Belmont (1790-1870) was a landscape painter, born in Versailles, France. A gifted artist with natural talent, she studied under Pierre Henri Valenciennes. Though not his most remembered pupil, her work was picturesque and popular in the French art market. Sarazin de Belmont had no patrons and relied on auction sales to fund her lifestyle as a traveling artist. Venturing from Naples, Rome, and Sicily to the Pyrénées Mountains of France, she evaluated the romantic vistas of the masters who came before her. After becoming the first female artist to have her works sold in a solo auction, the innovative Sarazin de Belmont promoted her works beyond the auction block. During her lifetime she donated at least six original paintings to museums throughout France. This generosity served to place her in the collections of established museums and to ensure that her work would be experienced by future generations. More than talent, Sarazin de Belmont possessed an independent spirit and a bold nature which drove her to make her career exactly what she desired it to be.

The common thread in all my work is timeits passage, effects, and remembrance. I have created a series of works that are meditations on time, the ephemeral quality of memory and the effects of aging, profession, and life decisions on our bodies, especially faces. The physical materials and my treatment of them reinforce these themes, showing the erosive qualities of earth, and drawing inspiration from natural features that signify the passage of time such as desert hoodoos, desert varnish, old wood, erosion and chemical oxidation, and from man-­‐made features such as old documents that have been written, erased, and rewritten. The effects of time are likewise reflected in my treatment of surfaces, for example the use of oxide washes where oxidation equals rust or weathering, the exploitation of the characteristics of clay, which dries and cracks over time, and the layering of other media result in surface textures that are like geological strata. As we age we begin to feel the high speed of time going by. Like our bodies, our memories fade as well. We cherish memories of friends and family but memory is ephemeral, because we are ephemeral. We often judge character by facial appearance. The patina of age on people is not valued, although old finishes on furniture are highly valued. Ultimately my sculptures are about placing value on the relationships we have with our family members and friends and cherishing the short time we have with them. Its making lasting memories of our times together because they are the most valuable things we have in life.