CONCEPTUAL SCULPTURE - Cradle to Grave

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In Latin, Memento Mori  means "remember we will die." 

With wood, a mirror, real dirt, and paint, I designed and built this full-sized crib sculpture as a way to reflect on the inevitability of death and the brevity of life. 

 I juxtapose birth and death by combining their quintessential resting places: the cradle and the grave. 

This sculpture appears to be a standard crib, but the interior represents one's perspective from the grave, as if they had just been buried. 

On Easter morning, I collected dirt from my family cemetery and sealed it to the inner panels of this sculpture to enhance its materiality and symbolize the burial ground. 

See the video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W8Qa8FrW48 

 Memento Mori, 2023

Dirt, wood, paint, mirror, glue

55 x 30 x 45 in.

Completed summer 2023, this vinyl installation was part of my Visual Communications internship for Hamilton College. 

My coworker Sawyer Kron and I designed this subway-map style permanent installation for the rebranding of Sadove Student Center's basement  to  "Sadove Underground." 

We went to the archives of Hamilton College, and scanned a campus map from 1901 in Adobe Illustrator. We collaged aspects of the vintage map to form the background, and replicated the original compass design as the focal point. 

With pen and paper, I  sketched various buildings on campus and brought them into Adobe Illustrator.  We overlaid the sketches on the collage of the old map to form a subway-style design for Sadove Underground that connects Hamilton College's history to the present day. 

This sewn textile piece was for a "100 of anything" project for my Introduction to Sculpture class in the fall of 2022. 

I decided to work with disposable facemasks, and designed this decorative quilt in the tradition of the Pennsylvania Amish folk quilts. 

Those quilts use geometric, solid shapes to tell stories and impart significant meaning. With needle and thread, I hand-sewed the black backdrop together, and then cut and collaged red, yellow, and green masks to form the design. 

I materialized Tao Te Ching's idea that the center of the wheel makes it useful - the four black pieces in the center appear to turn in a wheel-like fashion.  

The material of the quilt directly refers to the Coronavirus pandemic and the visual message encourages forward progress and continuous development into the future. 

This skateboard mock-up was created for Parsons School of Design Digital Illustration course in summer 2022. 

I conceptualized a skateboard by creating a literal skate -board.  The boardwalk-style planks on the deck replicate the experience of walking over water, and the underside reveals an under-the-sea design scene of various skates. 

With a black sharpie, I drew several skates and an elaborate water pattern, scanned them, and individually colored the elements in Adobe Illustrator. 

I brought a small piece of bamboo wood to a high-resolution scanner to create the boardwalk effect. 

 Red Wine Stains is a testament to religion, sculpture, and my cocurrent Medieval Architecture and Advanced 3D Sculpture courses during spring 2023 at Hamilton College.

This 7-foot, 30x30 interactive sculpture replicates the shape of a groin vault arch, a type of internal support used in medieval churches, dating back to 200 BC. 

With wood and steel, I created a structure sturdy enough to support passer-throughs. 

I dyed a white cloth with red wine to symbolize the blood of Christ, to represent the lasting impact of religion, and its capacity to "stain". 

Red Wine Stains, 2023

Wood, steel, cotton, red wine

84 x 30 x 30 in.

This series of three prints were hand-etched into copper plates in the printmaking lab at Parsons School of Design in New York during summer 2022.

This triptych depicts the before, during, and after of President Lincoln’s assassination in regards to his relationship with his mentally impaired son Thomas, “Tad” Lincoln, while maintaining historical accuracy through style. 

Assassination of President Lincoln and Tad and Dad are based off of official portrait photography, and they both contain design elements of the .44 caliber deringer pistol that killed Abraham Lincoln. 

Tad is Sad without Dad depicts an isolated grief shot from an aerial view, the striped wallpaper representing that in the Peterson Boarding house, where bedridden Lincoln took his final breath. The small space represents the confinement of fate, and the kneeling Tad's visible neck foreshadows his own death, which occurred only a few years after his father's.

(Top left) Assassination of President Lincoln

Copper plate drypoint etching print, 5” x 7”

(Bottom right) Tad and Dad

Copper plate intaglio print, 5” x 7”

(Bottom left) Tad is Sad without Dad

Copper plate intaglio print, 11” x 15”

I studied this experimental method of iPhone photography over the summer of 2022 in Rome, Italy.

Rome, the center of city history, has endured many rulers, settlers, and inhabitants, each bringing their own influence to the city. Amid centuries of transformation, the sole constant is the sky over Rome. 

I captured this feeling on my iPhone on the panorama feature in 0.5x zoom. I experimented with negative space, warped elements, street scenes, and roofs, an attempt to capture the presence of our era in the city that belongs to history. 

Minor Field At Night, March 2023. Colored pencil on paper. 11x14.

Valley View Drive, October 2022. Colored pencil on paper. 11x14.