2025 / Coffee, Air Fryer, and Pepper is a multi-sensory piece that incorporates the smell of spices, the sound of preparing the spices, and music. Embracing the musicality in our daily life sounds, I found my compositions are most natural and sincere when I use meaningful sounds that happen around me as the model and the inspiration. I believe such compositions help transform one’s sound experience in daily life into a musical one. In my past pieces I have used daily conversation as sound model and apply the harmony that is naturally embedded in the speech. For example, in the piece “人有一天”, I used the sound of my grandmother’s monologue as the model, and assigned the harmony analyzed from the speech to solo Zheng and tape. Including the performance of grinding coffee beans, brewing coffee and roasting spice, Coffee, Air Fryer, and Pepper builds a bridge between the music and the audience through common everyday life experience.

The artist discusses the work presented in The Secret Life of Things, her Master of Fine Arts exhibition held at Slocumb Galleries, East Tennessee State University, from March 18th through 22nd, 2013. The exhibition consists of sixteen illustrations (four of these are digitally enhanced photographs) and one animation that show the artist’s interest in bringing household objects to life. Pieces in the exhibition can be characterized as humorous with a strong narrative and attention to details. Savić’s ideas are based on traditional education with contemporary influences. All printed work is twenty inches wide, sixteen inches tall, framed, and hung in one side of the gallery. The other side was reserved for an animated artist statement projected onto the gallery walls. This thesis discusses the most important influences and doctrines about art that support and further explain the presented work.