There are many ways to tell a story. You could go the traditional route - pen and ink or words spoken over a fire, equipped with rising action and plot. Maybe it’s through a song or in the way someone makes their coffee, two scoops of sugar and a long pour of cream, just like their mom makes it. Everybody has a story, yes, but the difference is in how we tell it.
I see every design as a story. Brick and mortar are far from words, but how they’re laid - why they’re laid - is different. A structure is erected to fill a void, resurrected to serve a new purpose, a new reason. We spend so much money, time, and effort - but for what?
My passion lies in the details behind each reason. I design to answer society’s call, to place another ring in history’s tree. Every person has a story; mine is to design spaces that support each and every one, to put the focus on those we design for.
The following is a sampling of work from my architectural portfolio featuring various examples of both digital and physical media, as well as more creative projects tying to my social media presence and writing experience. These were created with the use of Illustrator, Photoshop, Indesign, Rhinoceros, AutoCAD, and Lumion.
EXCERPTS
2021 - Present
The following are excerpts of my current manuscript to demonstrate my dedication to the hobby I’d like to make a career.
Excerpt: Ivory and Onyx, Chapter One - Matissia, 2696
“She was Fate.”
The gaggle of girls laugh, three against one at the fountain’s edge, their small hands chasing bubbles across the water’s surface.
“No, I know she was,” the girl whines.
“Fate isn’t a person, it’s It,” another says, heaving a bucket of laundry onto the stone’s edge and gesturing for the others to do the same. “She was just a strange lady, Vella.”
“But–”
“We’ve all heard the stories,” a girl on the end says, biting back a smile. “Fate at war with Destiny, the Below meddling where It shouldn’t. A troublemaker and a trickster but certainly not a woman.”
The youngest has kinder eyes. “Even if she was Fate, it’s best not to speak Its name, lest It come for you.”
A girl with tanned skin scoffs. “Fat chance of that.”
They laugh again, dumping soiled clothes into the fresh water. Each undoubtedly works for the laundress down the street, the work a task for many little hands, but one of them – Vella – isn’t having it.
Her little lip trembles, tears come to her eyes. “She was Fate, I could feel it.”
“Matissia.”
I turn at the sound of my name, my gaze torn from the girls to a familiar face. I spare but a glance for the warm eyes half-shrouded by a crimson cloak, reaching instead for the bundle of steaming parchment in his hand.
Toran snatches it back just before my fingers clamp down. “Ah ah, no thank you?”
“Thank you,” I say quickly, reaching forward again. He lifts it beyond my reach. “For?”
I roll my eyes despite the sugared smile on my lips. “Thank you, kind sir – now hand it over!”
With a shake of his head, Toran relinquishes his prize. I take it gratefully, ripping open the brown paper and inhaling deeply. The sugared croccia is warm as I shove half inside my mouth, a sigh escaping my lips.
My eyes close as I tilt my head back. “It’s perfect.”
“I could’ve ordered you some at home, you know.”
“Not like this,” I say, opening my eyes as I take another bite. Toran folds my arm into his as he leads us from the piazza, one of seven in the capital of Bandona. The smallest square is my favorite, its teetering structures casting shadows like a tree canopy, the Sigil of the Above
brightly painted on the Treis at its end. Though it’s nothing like the Grand Treis in the Upper District, I’ve grown to admire its simple carvings of creatures both Above and Below on its façade. The croccia shop nearby makes up for its lack of gold.
But our destination is somewhere much finer.
Toran turns onto Strada Reale, the main throughfare stretching from the city’s center and down the Coda River, ending somewhere along to Scale Coast miles away.
“Any more stops before we head back?” Toran asks as the street starts to incline, curving into the higher reaches of the capital.
“The Grand Treis…did it have the answers we’re looking for?” I say the words casually but every syllable bears weight, heavy even after they leave my tongue.
Anyone with an origin such as mine – or lack thereof – would feel the same.
Toran shakes his head. “Nothing yet, but I pulled some strings. Their scribes are pulling birth records as we speak and will report their findings later.”
“That’s fine,” I reply lightly, licking sugar from my fingers to hide my frown. “Besides, I should get back.”
“Lots of work today?”
I scoff. “I can’t imagine the amount you’ve left behind.”
Toran bends close enough that I can feel his lips against my ear. “I don’t want to think about that, not yet.”
Excerpt: Ivory and Onyx, Chapter Two - Anodyne, Third Year
My smiling blade is a mercy; any less sharp and the job would’ve been a mess. I always notice the white first, the cord I’ve cut in two to secure the Above’s judgement. Mortality weeps along the sides of it, drips from the man’s shivering corpse, decorates my robes with a warm sheen like sweat. My black robes hide his blood but the bone is stark amongst the mess.
The sea of sickened silence and muffled cries reaches my ears. A punishment like this isn’t a common outcome of a case but often enough that I’m needed four times a year to rectify the Covenant’s judgement. That’s all I’m here for – sentencing at trials, securing justice for Destiny’s cause.
I’m a member of the Covenant, but they sit above and I’m in the yard, covered in blood.
“The One’s judgement is absolute, the One’s judgement is fair, the One’s judgement is final,” the Mediator says from her perch, the representation of the One in Reglos, in the Between. As close to the Above as possible.
Her and Destiny are almost synonymous with each other; her gaze holds the weight of two as she nods to me, a job well done. The only true punishment on this quarter’s docket.
The crowd knows of the One’s judgement, of course, but they only see my bloodied hands. In their faces I see how I should feel at the drying warmth on my hands.
I hand off the blade and crouch before Ryak’s head, now abandoned beside the block. I look into his tightly closed eyes, the last words frozen on his lips no doubt a prayer – but the One had no mercy on him today.
I scrounge in the depths of my heart for a reaction like those around me, for the slightest inkling of horror, of revulsion, of regret –
But there’s nothing.
Blood trails in my wake as I leave the courtyard, his name slipping from my mind like a whisper’s last syllable.
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