“Ponderings” Pen Set is a luxury and sentimental pen set complete with a spiral glass pen, a customized pocket journal, three high pigment inks, and a “Pen Pal” pen rest. The high-quality and visually pleasing packaging calls for a place on display with or without products inside. The outside is made of hand-bound faux leather that I laser-cut with my illustrations. The pocket-sized notebook displays the same method of binding, though with ornamentation featuring whatever variation of Pen Pal that is in the set. In this case, it’s a swan, though I would love to expand this series further to act as a sort of mystery box, the plans of which can be found on the back of the belly band. Also inside is a hidden folder sleeve to hold the instructions, some ink sampling paper, a place to name your Pen Pal, and some stickers to use in your new notebook. The inside features more of my illustrations to compliment and call attention to the products. Perfect for the detail-oriented artist or hobbyist in your life for any occasion.

Nostalgia is everywhere, especially now as our college careers winds to a close and I look back on what has inspired me to get here. These acrylic paintings are all a part of my series of “Alemurity”, first of which I made in Design II and plan to continue for a long time. Alemurity can be described as one’s “desire to reconnect with one’s childhood self while still somehow holding onto the idea of what it is to be a civilized, responsible adult”, and I want to channel that exact feeling in these works. As mentioned, I made the first painting in 2019 in Design II as a color study but absolutely fell in love with the style and the freedom of collage-style painting. I take inspiration from Pop Artist James Rosenquist as I continue to work on pieces with the Alemurity mindset, and I have many more planned out to do in the future.

Redesigning classic novels to fit a new age of readers can be challenging, but that’s not to say designing contemporary novels is easy. For my book design class I was tasked with redesigning one contemporary and one classic novel cover. For my contemporary novel I received “The Hummingbird’s Daughter” by Luis Alberto Urrea and “The Old Man and the Sea” by Ernest Hemmingway for my classic novel. I wanted to capture the main ideas of Urrea’s novel; themes of Christianity, war and captivity, hence the heavier and messy feeling of the lines and illustrations. For Hemmingway, I wanted to catch the younger viewers eye with the bright pink, while illustrating the cause and effect for the happenings of the whole novel, the fabled swordfish.