Design / STAY CURIOUS! MFA Thesis Exhibit
STAY CURIOUS! MFA Thesis Exhibit
More than just an exploration of authentic creativity, 'STAY CURIOUS!" is a call to engage in conversations, critical thinking, and wonder surrounding design artifacts, practices, concepts, and themes related to creativity. It emphasizes individuality, human agency, and critical thinking as catalysts for authentic creative practices rooted in personal perspectives and experiences.
XD, Figma, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Type, Adobe AfterEffects, IxD, UX, UI, Prototyping, Wireframing, User Testing, Research, Personas, Branding, Brand Guidelines, Affinity Mapping, App Design
A Heart-To-Heart Conversation
—Data Visualization Kinetic Mobile
Crafted from overlapping acrylic hearts adorned with carved-out keywords, this data visualization kinetic mobile poignantly reminds us to embrace authenticity, nurture exploration, and let go of the fear of imperfection in creative endeavors.
Derived from a comprehensive survey, the words and colors reflect insights from a diverse demographic, revealing the intricate interplay between language, color, and creativity.
Creativity Is A Muscle
—Art Postcards
This design artifact showcases my daily commitment to creative expression, emphasizing the importance of consistent practice in nurturing intuition and solidifying creative authenticity.
It is a call to action for fellow creatives to prioritize their craft by embracing imperfection and focusing on personal growth instead of deliverables and external validation. Encouraging a reflection on creative practices, the cultivation of authenticity, and self-compassion in creative pursuits.
Practical Creativity
—Designed Merchandise
Practical creativity involves applying inventive thinking and problem-solving skills in real-world scenarios to achieve tangible outcomes or solutions. It leverages imagination and innovative approaches to address everyday challenges, streamline processes, or develop useful products and services.
In this context, creativity is tasked with producing design merchandise inspired by the components of this thesis and exhibition. It prioritizes functionality, efficiency, and effectiveness while also integrating elements of originality and imagination.
Imperfection is Perfectly Beautiful
—Handmade Notebooks
Crafted from discarded prints and repurposed into beautiful design artifacts, these unique handmade notebooks celebrate the combinatorial nature of creativity, authenticity, and human agency.
Each notebook serves as a microcosm, challenging the subjective nature of perfection and beauty by embracing exploration, experimentation, and imperfection as integral elements of the creative journey.
We Combine All We Are All + All We Experience Into What We Create
—Found Screens Serigraphy Mashup (Thiffany Belda, and contributing artist screens: Deb Oden, Caitlyn Stupi, Ryunika, Unknown)
This project explores creativity as a human-driven act of synthesis. Using found screenprints from multiple artists alongside my own, I approached screenprinting as a combinatorial process guided by intuition, material experimentation, and personal agency. Acting as the algorithm, I blended images through manual decision-making rather than automation. The work later expanded through collaboration and added layers of materiality, reinforcing creativity as an evolving dialogue shaped by experience, connection, and play.
Blooming Relationships
—Data Visualization Mobile
This data visualization explores how our personal experiences play into and contribute to our sense of self and our creativity.
The resulting kinetic mobile represents three weeks of interaction data collected from four personal interactions. It invites viewers to contemplate the interplay between personal experiences and creative expression.
We Are + Than
—Invitation Intervention
Part of being creatively authentic is understanding how external structures consciously and subconsciously impact and shape our creative expressions.
This intervention adds another layer of meaning to the exhibit invitation by screenprinting the themes of the individual theses showcased over them. On one end, it recognizes the unity of the journey and diversity of concepts; on the other, it serves as a call to reject conformity and break free from imposed limits, parameters, and structures, urging us to embrace and guard our creative authenticity.
