Throughout my years making art, I had always assumed the process stopped when my hand left the paper. But creating a portfolio has shown me that curating and presenting my work is half the effort. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to emphasize my photography, so I selected my best photos and tested various ways to showcase them—arranging them on a wall, framing each with borders to mimic a camera view, and ultimately settling on a photobook, framing each photo uniquely on its own page. When it came time to arrange the rest of my pieces, I faced the challenge of integrating them with the photobook. After hours of brainstorming, I looked again at the book and considered how much my work differs from typical student projects. If my art is unique, shouldn’t my presentation be unique too? This led me to use the photobook as the backbone of my portfolio, integrating all my other pieces between the photos and connecting them thematically. I feel this presentation shows how I see my art and highlights the contrast between my perspective and the world’s.
. I’ve always felt that my approach to art differed from those around me. Ever since I was young I had a fascination with comic books, especially the structure of panels and dialogue. Every piece I created had a visual structure with multiple focal points, rather than a single one. Yet, whenever I shared my work, people often described it as cluttered and distracting. For a long time, I lived with the mindset there was something fundamental I needed to fix. This changed when I started high school at the Boston Arts Academy. Although I initially wanted to join the studio art department, I was placed in Graphic Design. Frustrated at first, I soon realized that my style was actually well-suited to graphic design principles like visual hierarchy, mass appeal, and text placement. This art form helped me discover my voice as an artist. When crafting my portfolio, I leaned on the knowledge I’d amassed from my time at high school to make a collection that, above all else, shows who I am.
