Woah, it’s been a really long time since I’ve updated this blog. Sorry tumblr! I’ve sort of neglected social media all together this summer.
So here’s a big update for all of you!
I finished my BFA thesis, successfully defended, and graduated! Yay! After months of worry and imagining the worst possible outcome, my thesis exhibit and defense were actually very well received and I was SO happy! I was even selected as one of the school’s top 20 graduating seniors! Woohoo! That award qualified me for a group of travel scholarships, which I did not end up winning, (sad face) but I was still super happy to get top 20.
Here is my whole exhibit! Yay! The center had a giant Photoshop painting of a healthy ecosystem on the left fading into an ecosystem overtaken by invasive plants on the right.
The left side of my exhibit had big printouts of all the spreads from the book.
The right side of my exhibit displayed all of the original drawings included in the book. Drawings on green backgrounds are invasive plants, and drawings on blue backgrounds are native plants. The book is color-coded in the same way.
This table had a few prints of the book for people to look through and some prints of the plants as a free take-away.
I made the top 20! Yeah! As a side note, you can see I have a pretty crappy little name plate for my exhibit as a last minute solution to a certain vinyl lettering debacle. I said my exhibit was well received, not that it was perfect. Lol.
As you can see in the pictures above, for my thesis, I wrote and illustrated a short field guide to invasive aquatic plants, which is now being used locally. I’d been consulting my local park system, the Cleveland Metroparks, on my thesis project, and two days after I defended my thesis, my contact there called to say they found funding for my project! Because of this funding, my summer has been filled with work to expand my aquatic plant field guide and designing a website about general invasive plant control. The project is funded by the National Park Service, and my book will soon be published and distributed to help invasive plant control everywhere! Woohoo! Additionally, this job has been a huge help in paying for my graduate school expenses, as I’ll be starting that new chapter of my life quite soon.
Here are a few spreads from the book:
Another big part of my summer has been getting ready and getting excited for grad school! I start my graduate education for Science Illustration at Cal State Monterey Bay in just a little under two months, and I am pumped! I’m also getting more nervous by the day… I’ll be moving across the country all by myself to a whole new place surrounded by all new people. I have no doubt that my Science Illustration classmates will be amazing! I just hope that I can measure up in such a talented bunch and that I fit in and am liked and all that jazz… I worry too much.
I guess that’s about it for now. To all of my followers: thanks for sticking with me in my absence. I hope you’ve all had an amazing summer!
