SLT Mega Moves print

SLT NoHo - 65 E 8th Street New York, NY

November 2023

Skillman Avenue

October 2023

Acrylic on canvas

36” x 48”

powder room wallpaper

May 2022

Various invitations

2024

Special Guest Dinner

36 x 48

Spring Term Class taught by W&L Professor Leigh Ann Beavers
April-May 2022
Nature Camp, Virginia

various acrylic, oil, and watercolor commissions from 2018-present

“Around the Table”
Senior Theses Show
Staniar Gallery, W&L University, Lexington, VA
March 28-April 8, 2022
I can still remember the patterns covering the wooden table. They seemed to tell a story with the swirling imagery and intricate details that made them come to life. Many of my childhood memories involve sitting around this same table with my family and friends for dinner. While the people around the table changed, a couple things remained the same: the simple, white plates and the Persian block-printed tablecloth from my dad’s travels years ago. I remember my fascination with the ornate patterns and the collective designs they created on the tablecloth. These memories stuck with me and inspired me to host dinner parties with my own block-printed tablecloth.

My work is a representation of my love for patterns, building community, and creating shared experiences. Using linoleum block printing, film, and pattern design, I specifically explore how a shared meal can further guests’ appreciation of being able to gather. I also investigate the role Covid-19 played and continues to play in our lives through colorful and alluring pattern work on the tablecloth. This Covid imagery that I became desensitized to from the exhaustive use of it in our world, I then transferred in the form of pattern on the repeated tablecloth. I chose warm yellows, oranges, reds, and a cool, deep purple to emulate the warmth felt around a table with those you love. The symbols that once kept family and friends apart now unite strangers and friends for a shared meal.

I film both dinner parties as a form of documentation of the shared experience. Documentation continues throughout my work in the form of saved-grocery-receipt patterns, collected guest reflection cards, and a short film with footage from the dinner parties. I document these moments so that others can reflect on what it means to them to gather.

I see my work fitting into the broader art world through relational aesthetics, which encapsulates this human connection in the context of art. At each dinner party, the table is not necessarily crowded with tons of people, but instead filled with conversation, personalities, and even a sigh of relief because we can start to gather again.

A weekend ritual: watercoloring in the park.

August ‘22 - present

Thoughts on this exhibit:

We, humans, are known for disrupting habitats, not necessarily for the good of that habitat and usually for our own benefit.

Patterns and their repeats attract me, specifically in the form of wallpaper. I am always on the lookout for subject matter that will inspire a narrative pattern. I have been aware of dams and their negative ecological affect for a while, but it wasn’t until I heard the phrase “dam displacement” in Professor Hinkle’s Water Resources course that I felt compelled to make work about dams.

As you can see in my brainstorming materials, I was particularly drawn to the colors of algal blooms, the scales of the native fish and the growing aquatic roots. When creating the pattern, I went through various iterations of the design and finally settled on extracting the aerial watercolor/color pencil renderings of algal blooms and pairing them with pen drawings of fish and sprouting plants. While algae sucks the literal life out of our rivers (in the form of oxygen), plants and fish bring the life back into our rivers. I settled on combining the contrasting imagery of life-giving organisms and a life-depleting organism for my pattern and titled it “Life in Bloom: A Look at the Environmental Consequences of Dam Displacement.”

This exhibit was made possible by the Small Endowment.

Many thanks to Professor Beavers for her guidance and help with this project.

Thoughts on Transformation of Wood + Spirit Animal

In retrospect, I realize I was drawn to the segmentation of the form of the beetle. The “z” form in cherry that I incorporated in the top of the shelf is reminiscent of the beetle’s legs. The triangular windows take from the vaulted wings in flight in both the cardboard and ceramic pieces. This idea of letting light and negative space into the shelf kept me interested in the piece. I didn’t necessarily think about directly about the beetles I created while designing and making the shelf. However, because I had spent so much time with the form in three different mediums, the shelf subconsciously reflects the familiar form. Shaping the ash into a piece that was functional and had formal qualities was intimidating. I thought of the assignment too literally and ended up with a complete four-post shelf. I could’ve worked larger in scale too. This isn’t to say that I’m not pleased with my project, but I underestimated the tools and how much I could alter the six-foot piece of ash. I do like how the smaller scale allowed me to focus more on perfecting the tiny details such as sanding and adding the cherry wood.

I tried to be more ambitious in this project and gave myself more time within and out of the woodshop hours. I stuck to my design for the most part, although the Friday before ran into issues with fitting the top. Using the table-saw without the safety, I trimmed the piece to make it more precise. Underneath, I added the cherry support “beams”. I ended up really liking these unexpected pops of color. I came to understand how helpful precision can be, yet you must plan as if the cuts won’t be perfect in the beginning to achieve this precision. This lesson of leaving room for mistakes to achieve this “practiced-perfectionism” is worth thinking about applying to other facets of life.

Thoughts on Assisi from Memory
I created this Italian passageway based entirely from my 12-year-old memory. I remember the feeling of walking through history from my trip and wanted to evoke this same sense of history with the cobblestone-like walkway. I remember the way light dipped in through the archways. I particularly recall the sunrises and sunsets over the countryside. I knew the warm glow would have to become a part of this sculpture model for it to conjure the same feelings. I created the warmth through the colors painted on the butter board. I built the walk of history through the “rocky” wooden-sculptamold cobblestone. Lastly, the perspective and shift of inside-out is represented with a focal point that leads to nowhere. Or is it just somewhere we haven’t arrived at yet?

Summer 2021 in Colorado at Anderson Ranch

Silk screen printing, block printing with lino

Work from Design 1 during Fall 2021

Self in Altered Space

In the old relic of a building, I placed myself in this deconstructed, surreal doll house at three different scales. I can’t remember which of my classmates said it reminded them of a dollhouse, but I loved this idea and how it reminded me of childhood toys and forts. In my magical world, the ice creeps from the background into the foreground in the form a large iceberg. Like the Disney kid-favorite Frozen movie scene where one character turns everything to ice, I imagine that is what is happening to the steps and large landings. The sun sets, yet the ice still reflects the day’s sun. It is unclear whether I am in running around in these glacial locations, sunset over the Adirondack Mountains, or if I am simply stuck behind the windows with nowhere to go. If you think to read the plaque, you discover that this is indeed “Ruth Dibble’s Self in Place.”

Mock Up of a Proposed Beer Can Design

The first part of my proposed action plan involved designing a beer can label that emphasizes these water issues in the context of DBB. As simple as it sounds, this finding is worth restating: the less water a brewery uses, the less effluent discharge they have. Therefore, the primary focus of the hypothetical design for DBB was grounded in it not only being aesthetically pleasing, but also a design that would make consumers think more critically about DBB’s water usage as well as their own. The name, “𝐻2𝑂 Conscious” is meant to lead people to think that they could be conscious of their water footprint, even if they are not already thinking about it.

Two Hydrogen atoms combine with one Oxygen atom to form a water molecule. I decided to use a big watercolor of the molecules repeated as different sizes with the chemical formula, 𝐻2𝑂, repeated as well in the background. I especially liked the coincidence of my handwritten O’s looking like water droplets or even tears. The design overall, reminds us that water cannot be recreated. In other words, our supply is limited. Some of the language included like, “A Chesapeake Watershed Classic” remind the local consumers why DBB’s problems are their problems too: they share a watershed.

Overall, I used my own artwork and practice with graphic design to create this beer can label. While it would also work on a bottle, glass requires more water to produce, so I decided on the easily recyclable beer can. My hope for the design is that it follows suit with modern, yet retro lettering, fun pops of color, and a somewhat absurd pattern that many other craft beer companies employ for their labels too.

Final series for painting II class in November 2020. All of the original scenes are from Belfield House in Lexington, Virginia.

18 x 24 oil on canvas

“The Staircase” is a silhouette self-portrait 30 x 40 acrylic and collage on canvas.

October 2020

36 x 36 in.

acrylic + gloss varnish on canvas

May 2020

Inspired by fashion illustrations and my travels

watercolor and pen on paper

2019-present

9 x 12

acrylic on canvas

2018

mixed media marsh scenes from 2017-present

various figure drawings and paintings from 2017-present

chalk pastel on paper

July 2020