Twelve Shillings 2023

CONTENTS 4 •------------------------• 7 •------------------------• 13 •------------------------• 27 •------------------------• 43 •------------------------• 49 •------------------------•

MY MAKING HISTORY

VR ART

PHOTOGRAPHY

GRAPHIC DESIGN

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•------------------------• ILLUSTRATION •------------------------• MIXEDMEDIA •------------------------•

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MY MAKING

Early Life

Making is a constant in my life. I can’t remember not being in the middle of a project. Having a poet and photographer mum and a software engineer dad with a love of painting meant creativity was everywhere. So, it was only natural for it to be a big part of my life. My early artwork consisted of doodling and attempting time and time again to make a comic book or online video game on Microsoft Front Page. I dream big.

School

In my adolescence, I got addicted to fashion design. I learned to sew and make patterns, the whole shebang. It was going great, but my ideas were too big to be contained in a garment. So, I had to move on to other fields. Around this time, I was introduced to coding, web design, and program development. It’s addictive. I made websites and Nyan Cat clones in “Scratch” when asked to do PowerPoint presentations. Generally, I just coded my heart out.

I picked up Graphic design to communicate some of my overflow ideas. And fell in love with poetry. I took up traditional printmaking, which sucked me into the tactile ways of making that I had missed in graphic design and coding. All these skills I learned were piling up and adding to each other. I felt my ideas flowing out of me and made art I’m still proud of.

HISTORY

University

Elam Art School helped expand my brain. I learned how to make art that isn’t meaningful just for me but references others’ work, adding to the meaning and depth. I find it fascinating. I wrote a lot, mostly about art, connecting words to ideas I struggled to communicate otherwise. I learned about installation-based artworks and how site, placing, and angle can say so much, sometimes even more than the art itself. I learned how even the passage of time can speak volumes. My worlds evolved from reality-bending VR Experiences to poems on tule hung in trees. So, art school was art school.

Currently

Since graduating, I’ve worked in graphic design while keeping all my extra tools sharp. My heart longs to bring wonder and joy to people, to inspire and communicate what I see. I’ve taught myself a lot and am so proud of how far I’ve come and what I’ve made. Currently, I live with my husband, two dogs, a Tortoise, and a gecko. We are a strange family, but we have fun.

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VR ART

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VR

As part of my degree, I worked on VR projects. I find VR enjoyable and immersive. To be able to take a viewer directly into a mood is extremely powerful. For example, when a viewer sees a painting, you can’t control how they react or feel it’s personal to them. With VR, you can put them in a new and unexpected environment, often making the sensation the art itself. Having this ability to invoke a feeling so strongly is why I like VR.

The Creature

In The Creature, the viewer enters a forest with an ambient hum combined with normal forest sounds. It feels uneasy, just a little off. The viewer goes through the forest towards a hill that the forest surrounds. On top is a monolith above an eyeball that tracks the viewer.

The Bus

The bus was a group project, where you sit in a bus and drive around this strange landscape.

All the models used were randomly selected from a free site, and each group member collected the textures. Some members also provided sound clips, which I attached to individual models, so as the bus approached, these sound clips would get louder and louder.

The whole work was meant to evoke familiarity while being heavily surreal and unknown.

ILLUST RATION

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I’ve been drawing most of my life and love making little characters. Much of my work focuses on video games and fantasy worlds with a good helping of animals.

I often work in a digital cartoon style or stroke and colorbased painting. Recently, I have been pushing out the boat and experimenting with black-and-white vector illustrations, which I have become quite fond of.

You’ll find a few commissions, gifts, and personal works here.

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MIXED MEDIA

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Mixed media, especially Moving image work, is a big part of my work at uni This one is called Spindlings Alive.

With this project, I was fascinated by the idea of virtual worlds and souls. Heavily inspired by online doll dress-up games and MMOs. What if the characters we play in games and online are more true to the body or soul? What if the bodies we wear are our soul’s current outfit?

The end result was glitching portraits of my husband and me on our wedding day, with the second reality coming through representing the ideas of a digital identity.

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My final honors year project.

This work is based on the idea of liminal spaces. It featured glitched photographs of my everyday environment projected on two opposite walls. Inside the room was a diffuser filled with Elizabeth Arden Red Door perfume and the essential oils of old English rose, sandalwood, and patchouli in an attempt to replicate the smells of an old ballroom or your grandma.

On a plinth in the middle of the room was a holo lens (and augmented reality headset), which works like a private interactable projector. The headset projected a filter-like video to the wearer, making their reality appear like the photos projected.

The headset also played a song by the artist, the caretaker, meant to simulate the feeling of Alzheimer’s, which I find in itself is a liminal existence/disease. And the music itself is quite haunting and transporting.

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PHOTO GRAPHY

GRAPHIC DESIGN

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Graphic design is my passion......

While working for Belly Gully as a design assistant, I was tasked with designing all the stationery for the midwinter ball.

The theme was ‘a night under the stars’. I had a blast doing this work, and it was amazing seeing a digital design transition to the final project.

For Belly Gully, I have also led a few other design projects, like posters for different charity events held by the firm and Maori language week posters, which are still up around the office today!

Sometimes, I also use my graphic design skills in my art to help display poetry that either my mother or I have written.