mixed media artist & illustrator
Home
Handmade Paper
Bloom, 2022
Illustration
About
CV
mixed media artist & illustrator
Home
Handmade Paper
Bloom, 2022
Illustration
About
CV
Bloom, 2022
colored pencil, water-based marker, wax pastel, acrylic, gel pen, gesso, collage, paper, thread4.25 x 5.5 x 1"
Bloom is a small book which I bound by hand. The pages are made up of various colored Canson Mi-Tientes paper and were bound with waxed thread.
Within this book, I created illustrations alongside prose and poems I wrote about my gender transition. In the first half, I explore intimacy, and the ways that insecurity manifests itself with another where confidence and joy are felt alone. The second half discusses the intersection of grief and transition. How do I reconcile the truth that I am more myself than ever, while accepting that I am forever frozen as a pre-transition version of myself in the minds of estranged and deceased loved ones?
Visually representing these coexisting truths in a sequential, book form allows the viewer to experience my thought process alongside me. The physicality of condensing so many of my thoughts and emotions into one object mirrors the vulnerability through which I am forced to navigate all of my interpersonal relationships as I change in a way that demands acknowledgement.