My Life Outside of Design
A Quick Bio
I was born in Seattle, WA, but lived the first five years of my life in Hong Kong. After my family moved officially to Washington, they raised me and my brother in Renton, an adjacent Seattle suburb. I’ve been drawing and painting with whatever I can get my hands on, including dirt and rocks, for as long as I can remember. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I’m also a mover, playing a whole variety of sports and other physical activities that inform my creative process and add to my artistic personality. Also, I LOVE science, especially astronomy, biomechanics, and kinesiology, but alas, applied mathematics and physics were not my academic strengths. So, here I am designing things and then reading and discussing academic papers with friends.
Somes Words I Live By...
Kitty Cats!
Willow and Kowak’hoya, my two Siberian cats that are so spoiled they actually don’t like the wet and cold much. A contradiction considering their breed’s history and evolution. They are true little carnivores and love fresh meat!
Creative Explorations
My personal artwork explores the interrelationships between people, the non-human lifeforms around us, and the Earth. Most recently, I’ve allowed myself to start exploring patterns, colors, and textures without the limitations of realism or any other standard of what makes “good” art, letting me to just play and explore with my materials. I still enjoy creating artwork the old-fashioned way, like putting a worn-down brush soaked in pigment and water on paper. My favorite subjects include natural landscapes, animals, plants, and organic human forms. Since I was introduced to letterpress and printmaking, I’ve also enjoyed weaving text and pieces cut from past projects into a new work. I don’t have a favorite media as I enjoy experimenting with them all, especially with watercolor and its unpredictability.
I still enjoy my outdoor activities like climbing and backpacking, especially racing my friends going up the Manitou Incline. I’m no expert in these things by any means, but I don’t believe that should be the goal. The enjoyment and process of learning about myself and the floating space rock I live on. However, my favorite is taking a simple walk with my kitty cats in tow. Watching them take in the outside world in ways I can only imagine, with their heightened senses and close relationship with the ground.
I’m also a dancer (primarily ballet, modern/contemporary, jazz, and tap, with several years of performance experience. A bit of a late starter to the dance world, if you did the math. In many ways, I’m grateful for coming into dance with a sports background as my body can resist injury, allowing me more time to train and more strength to progress to more advanced steps. I also get to enjoy dance without any emotional and physical trauma that seems too often to be attached to the Western dance world.
(Boring) School Stuff
I received my BA in Integrated Design & Architecture at Colorado College in 2021, working as a letterpress studio student assistant for those four years. During my undergraduate years, I was fortunate enough to work on non-traditional design projects like ecological restoration along Monument Creek, a carbon-neutral proposal for Robson Arena, a sculptural intervention to promote free speech in public areas, broadsides and books for poets and writers tackling systemic racism, and a popup marketplace intervention in the center of Copenhagen.
After all that, I earned my Web Design Certificate from Pikes Peak State College in 2023 to round out my web design skills, as well as adding basic video editing and animating to my toolkit.
