They told me to follow the rules.

That if I just picked something practical, predictable, and palatable, I’d cross the finish line and finally be fine.

But I was never built for fine.

I tried. God, I tried.

Environmental science? It broke my heart slowly—because I believed in it. I built clubs, led cleanups, tended beehives, organized hope like it was a to-do list.

But systems don’t change just because you care.

And people didn’t.

And I couldn’t keep killing my soul just to get them to listen.

So I pivoted. I grieved. I burned out. I rebuilt. Again.

It wasn’t ambition that got me here. It was spite. It was hunger.

It was tenacity duct-taped to despair.

I carved truth from wood when they silenced my prints.

I earned honors not to impress them, but because I finally got to speak in my own language.

Even then, they told me to translate it. To shrink it. To sand off the spines.

I refused.

This isn’t a neat story. It’s a hallway of locked doors, all kicked open.

It’s a record of survival—not as an afterthought, but as praxis.

It’s a map made from splinters and scars. And it leads here.

To this collection.

These are the receipts.

The exhibits.

The echoes of every time they tried to shape me into silence.

I didn’t graduate—I escaped.

With a thesis on my back like a ghost I refused to let die.

-------

From the Girl Who Refused to Disappear Nicely:

Light the fuse. Here's the Map.

This isn’t just a story.

It’s an exit wound with teeth—and a glitter trail for anyone crawling out behind me.

First, you’ll see what it costs to be misunderstood by a system built for sameness.

Then, you’ll crack open what my thesis really was. They thought they approved—only to find a feral little manifesto curled up inside.

And finally, you’ll step into the forge I built from all that wreckage—where weirdness becomes weaponry, and fear melts into fuel.

This is the arc: From erasure to explosion.

From silence to signal.

From “just a student” to full-blown firestarter.

The order matters, because this is not a redemption arc.

This is an uprising told sideways.

So if you’re looking for tidy transitions or institutional polish, you might want to duck.

Because what comes next?

Is the instruction manual, and what I made from the burn marks. How to build meaning from the ashes.

Spoiler: I Survived Anyway.

Misfit. Molotov. MFA. Let's go.

The Stitch That Didn’t Snap

They always want the damage first.

The trauma, the paperwork, the diagnosis that makes you easier to file.

So fine. Here it is.

Evidence, in triplicate. Punched holes and all.

But don’t get it twisted—this isn’t a eulogy.

This is a survival ledger

written in the margins of every IEP that tried to contain me.

This is the language I carved from silence

because they mistook my stillness for surrender.

Spoiler: I wasn’t broken.

I was archiving.

Every pull-out room, every padded “accommodation,”

every adult who looked at me sideways

because I didn’t mirror their noise back to them—

I saved it.

And now? I’m naming it.

Not because I need pity.

Because I’m still fucking here.

Glitched, stitched, and gloriously noncompliant.

They said adapt—I mutated.

They said assimilate—I alchemized.

They said quiet—I built a sound system out of metaphor and said test this decibel, bitch.

But hear me:

I don’t throw these truths like daggers.

I hand them over like keys.

Because I don’t want to just burn the system—I want to build what comes next.

If even one person feels less alone,

less silenced,

less strange for learning sideways—

then maybe all this hurt found its way to meaning.

What follows is not just my history.

It’s my how.

How I made it. How I refused to shrink.

How I now teach with scissors and thread and truth that hisses when you touch it wrong.

You want context? Here’s the cracked mirror.

You want proof? Here’s the glitter still stuck in my skin.

This is where it starts:

Not with a thesis.

With a scar—and the hands that learned how to hold one.

The System Mistook Me for a Glitch and Tried to Reboot Me with Shameware

They pulled me out of English class for speech therapy.

Let that sink in. Not because I couldn’t think. Not because I didn’t understand. But because I couldn’t play their language game fast enough. Because words, for me, didn’t show up on command—they swam up from a well too deep for their stopwatch curriculum. I was fluent, just not in the dialect of drills and raised hands.

I was already translating the world in gestures, rhythms, and micro-tones. I was reading the room like a symphony while they were still passing out worksheets. English class could’ve handed me a bridge between my insides and theirs—but instead, they yanked me from it. Took me out of the one room where words might’ve found me and stuck me in a clinical closet labeled Fix Me.

Every year, I was a different kind of student: top of the class one semester, bottom of the barrel the next. Teachers treated it like mood swings or motivation issues. They called it inconsistency. But inconsistency was never the problem—incompatibility was. Give me a delivery system that matched my pattern, and I soared. If not? Static. Total shutdown.

But the system doesn’t speak neuro-spicy. They looked at the signal and saw noise.

They thought I was lazy. I was overloaded. They thought I was disobedient. I was drowning. They thought I was a problem. I was a different operating system.

And let’s be clear: my intelligence wasn’t broken. It was just waiting. Waiting for rhythm instead of routine. Metaphor instead of measurement. Teachers who asked questions instead of just collecting answers.

So I became that teacher.

Because once you’ve been misdiagnosed by a system that only reads you in red ink, you learn to read others in the language of compassion. You stop trying to force translation and start honoring the shape of their signal—no matter how it arrives.

This isn’t a sob story.

This is a truth grenade.

This is Exhibit A.

The Rooms They Pulled Me Into (And Why I Knew I Wasn’t the One Who Was Confused)

They pulled me out of English class for speech therapy. Again.

I was a nonverbal autistic kid trying to translate thought into sound. Which meant while the others were getting their crash course in grammar and the rhythm of language, I was somewhere else—trying to make my mouth form what my mind already knew.

There was another room, too. I can’t remember what they called it. Padded with puzzles and whispers. A woman with gentle eyes asking questions I couldn’t decode. I think it was for students like me—the ones who didn’t color inside their scantron bubbles. The ones they tracked without ever actually seeing.

They had plans. Charts. Labels like IEP or 504, maybe both. They said it was to help. Mostly, it just meant I kept getting pulled out of the place I was trying to belong to.

And yeah, at the time? I didn’t hate it. It meant less time pretending. Less time faking my way through the noise. But it also meant I was never expected to stay in the real room—just pass through like a scheduling glitch. I wasn’t taught the way the others were. I wasn’t spoken to like they were. They saw my silence as absence, not language. My questions as chaos. My exhaustion as apathy.

But I wasn’t confused.

I knew those rooms weren’t built for me. They were built to make me easier to explain.

Isolation Is Not Accommodation (And Other Lies My IEP Told Me)

An IEP is supposed to support you. Adapt to you. Give you tools. But what it gave me felt less like a toolkit and more like a padded room with a polite name. A silent scream chamber. A test-room timeout that doubled as a mirror no one else had to look into.

My "advantage" was the right to leave the classroom during exams and sit in a sterile little closet by myself. A quiet room. A room with echo walls and institutional carpet and no sense of belonging. I never used it. Not once. Because here’s the truth:

Being alone with your thoughts doesn’t help when your thoughts have never had a place to land. When your voice has been filtered, fixed, fragmented since day one.

People love to act like neurodivergence comes with magical perks in school. Extended time. Flexible deadlines. But often those "perks" are just new flavors of alienation. Shiny isolation. Isolation with a paper trail. A break from the crowd that just reminds you you’re not welcome in it.

The IEP wasn’t a bridge. It was a moat.

And I wasn’t a guest trying to cross.

I was the dragon they politely asked to wait outside.

My Master of Fine Arts – A Degree in Defiance and Mayhem

This is the chapter where the system tried to grind me down and found itself polished instead. Where the gatekeepers got confused because I spoke in truth frequencies, not formats. Where a thesis wasn’t a thesis—it was a mirror, a bomb, a goddamn resurrection.

I entered the MFA program because I believed in the concept: Integrated Visual Arts, a field where complexity and multiplicity could breathe. What I found instead was a half-funded stepchild of a university's arts department, wrapped in institutional compromise. Printmaking refused to print my soul, so I retreated to the woodshop—where no one flinched when I bled or built strange things. I made 3D sculptures out of grief and grit, and they held me better than most people ever had.

It took four years to finish a three-year program—not because I couldn’t do the work, but because the work was never the problem. The structure was. They asked me to be different, but not that different. They said experiment, but meant: translate it into something we already understand.

I tried. Again and again. I broke my voice into pieces trying to make it legible to a system allergic to new shapes. And when that didn’t work, I waited. I waited them out. And in the final semester, when the system grew tired of its own rejection reflex, I published it my way. Not because they allowed it—but because they couldn’t stop me anymore.

Highest GPA I’ve ever had—because when I move in my own rhythm, I don’t just meet the bar. I rewire it. Because when allowed to move in my own rhythm, I don’t just meet the bar—I build a new one.

And all this happened while the rest of my life was held together with trauma tape and the occasional scream into my dog’s fur. Ego death? Multiple. Depression? Rotating cast. Burnout? Daily visitor. And still—I did it. Not cleanly. Not quietly. But so fucking honestly it made even the algorithms pause.

Now I hold the highest art degree you can get in this country. I didn’t just earn a terminal degree, I hijacked the ship and turned it into a glitter-drenched resistance vessel. I got it without sanding down my edges. I didn’t rise despite my fire—I graduated in flames. Still here. Still weird. Still dangerous. And this time, the degree has my fingerprints scorched into every line. Feral, formal, and fully certified.

Accredited by Ghosts, Powered by Grief

Every institution has its haunted wing, and this was mine—a thesis crypt dressed in brochure drag. They called it opportunity; I called it illusion with a syllabus. These aren’t just complaints—they’re field notes from the academic uncanny. A survival manual for those lured in by promises wrapped in parchment. A taxonomy, not a tantrum. Pattern recognition, not pettiness.

1. This Isn’t Integration, It’s Studio Arts in a Fake Mustache

They didn’t lie with malice—they lied with marketing. The kind of lie that wears a cardigan and smiles while it signs your future away. I didn’t apply under false pretenses. But they sure accepted me under them.

The Program Name Was a Lie. They called it Integrated Visual Arts, but let’s be honest—this was just Studio Arts in a trench coat, pretending to be something it wasn’t so they could get funding scraps without U of I noticing. As a double major in Studio Arts and Graphic Design, I thought, “Cool, maybe for once my skills won’t be treated like a typo.” Spoiler: not a single digital art class existed. Not even a whisper of integration. It was the academic equivalent of buying a box labeled “Gourmet Popcorn” and opening it to find stale saltines taped together with hubris. Ironically, I now teach digital art. So good job, team. You produced your own missing curriculum. Pixel-perfect, indeed.

When your program’s name is more aspirational than accurate, it’s not a curriculum—it’s a catfish. And I didn’t show up to get catfished by a catalog.

2. Calling Jewelry Making “Metals” Was Academic Catfishing.

It’s not that I didn’t understand—it’s that they didn’t explain. “Metals” sounded like alchemy—not Etsy. Industrial. Transformative. Like maybe I’d get to weld a throne or forge conceptual relics out of rebar and rage.

But no. “Metals” meant jewelry. Tiny tools, tweezer assignments, and enough beadwork to make your soul feel like it was trapped in a Pinterest algorithm.

And with equipment that limited, it wasn’t just the art that was small—it was the entire scope of possibility.

So no, it wasn’t a fit. But it wasn’t a failure either. It was a mislabeling so spectacular, it belongs in a glass vitrine labeled: “Art School Expectations (Shattered).”

3. The TA “Experience” Was a Catfish in Khakis

They pitched it like we’d be teaching. Like we’d get classroom experience relevant to our field. What we got instead? Slaves to paper. Human Scantrons. Glorified rubric monkeys with an art degree.

No lesson plans to shape, no lectures to give, no actual studio to learn how to teach—just a stack of dead trees and a deadline.

They called it mentorship. It was cheap labor with a name tag. That’s the thing about vague promises—they don’t show their teeth until you’ve signed the paperwork.

And by the time we realized what it was, we weren’t just duped—we were indebted, drowning, and locked in a weird parasitic relationship with a system that fed off our hope like an emotional tapeworm.

Still emotionally parasitic. Now with office hours.

4. Your Budget Cuts Are Showing

They told us TAships were a 10-hour weekly commitment. That was the official line. The one they could defend in HR meetings and budget breakdowns.

That number was decorative. A polite fiction. Like a “suggested serving size” on a grief buffet. Everyone knew it. No one said it. Like some cult hazing ritual wrapped in a syllabus. They called it “part of the learning experience.”

I called it unpaid emotional labor with a side of academic gaslight. Because they didn’t budget for labor. They budgeted for compliance.

And we were too buried in deadlines and debt to push back—academic tapeworms feeding on our time while insisting it was “professional development.”

5. Self-Care Theater: Now Starring a Burned-Out Grad Student Near You

They handed out self-care advice like breath mints at a funeral.It wasn’t concern—it was optics. Empty wellness slogans lobbed like bath bombs into a crumbling system so they could feel progressive while we drowned.

It was wellness-washing at its finest. Like taping a motivational poster over a collapsing bridge. They didn’t give us space for rest; they gave us performance pressure wrapped in a throw blanket. The message was clear: Burn out quietly. And hydrate.

Their idea of support was lip service delivered with dead eyes. Like we could lavender-oil our way out of systemic overwork. Self-care wasn’t built into the structure—it was weaponized as a personal failure when we couldn’t keep up.

Spoiler: you can’t face mask your way through academic gaslighting.

6. The Committee Hunt: A Choose-Your-Own-Abandonment Tale

That’s what they said. Like professors were just waiting around, begging to support grad students with weird brains and weirder art. Instead, I played academic speed dating with tenured ghosts—smiling through thin excuses like “I’m overcommitted.” Translation? “You’re too much work and not enough prestige.” They told us faculty were “required” to serve. Turns out that just meant required to reject us politely.

7. Tenure: The Cloak of Invisibility for Academic Assholes

I couldn’t understand how some professors could be so dismissive, like they were coated in Teflon. I learned it's called tenure. It’s like they unlock god mode with no moral compass.

Tenure turned critique into ego cosplay. Turns out, if you survive long enough in academia, you don’t have to grow—you just get really good at hiding behind the paperwork. And the worst part? Everyone knows. They just learn to flinch quieter.

8. “Did You Try Smiling?”

When I finally spoke up—when I said, “Hey, this isn’t just a misunderstanding, this is mistreatment”—they nodded solemnly and labeled it a “clash of personalities.” Like I was arguing with a zodiac sign, not a tenured adult with power and a track record. As if it was a bad date.

“Clash of personalities” was the academic equivalent of “it’s not you, it’s me”—if “me” was the broken system that protects the abuser and gaslights the survivor. It didn’t matter how many receipts I had. Once that phrase entered the room, I became the problem. Because it’s easier to blame the vibe than admit the rot.

9. DIY Degree, Now with Zero Support!

We were told to plan our own exhibitions and events. Which sounds empowering… until you realize it wasn’t “student-led,” it was “institutionally abandoned.” No funding. No mentorship. No logistics help. Just: “Figure it out, and if you fail, we’ll act disappointed.”

They treated our thesis exhibitions like optional side quests in a video game we were apparently modding ourselves. It wasn’t an invitation to lead—it was a dodge. A way to offload responsibility while still slapping their logo on our work. They called it “building independence.” We called it what it was: academic neglect in a fancier outfit.

10. The Event That Died So a Ghost Could Nap

I did what they told us to do. Took initiative. Made the flyers. Booked a guest speaker. Chose dead week on purpose so it wouldn’t clash with finals. Got every grad on board. For once, we had momentum. A real plan. A spark of community.

Then—plot twist—a single student said, “Actually, I don’t think we should hold events during dead week.” No faculty context. No meeting. Just one complaint. And the event? Canceled. For a classmate who never even used the space.

We weren’t students. We were PR liabilities in waiting. And the moment they had to choose between fostering community or appeasing imagined optics? They ghosted us.

I didn’t plan a party. I tried to build a pulse. They unplugged the whole thing like it might start thinking for itself.

So they canceled the whole event. To appease a ghost.

No dialogue. No compromise. Just erasure. The message was clear: Our initiative didn’t matter. Our effort wasn’t real. A single complaint had more weight than weeks of labor.

The system taught us to build… but refused to let anything stand.

I didn't just get a degree—I got a playbook on how not to build a graduate program. So I wrote my own. Glitter included.

And this time? The curriculum fights back.

No brochures. Just blowtorches.

Starved Programs, Broken Tools

This isn’t just another list. It’s a pressure gauge on a system that keeps slapping buzzwords on hollow programs and wondering why students explode. You can’t build rigor without resources. And you can’t call it “interdisciplinary” if your tools are older than your trauma.

This isn’t bitterness—it’s blueprint feedback. This is what happens when you try to build your thesis in a house made of institutional gaslight and metaphorical drywall.
(There was no literal drywall. Bless this brick and plaster house forever.)

1. No Sculpture Program in a Mixed Media Degree

A program that prides itself on being “integrated” somehow forgot the third dimension. Yes, really—no sculpture track in a degree allegedly built on interdisciplinarity. I had to Frankenstein my own curriculum out of Furniture Design, the unofficial catch-all for people who like tools.

“3D practice” here meant: figure it out, and don’t bleed on the bandsaw.
I wasn’t studying—I was scavenging.

2. Interactive Art ≠ Unity 101 (But That’s What We Got)

I signed up expecting installation work. Sensors. Maybe some Arduino magic. Instead? Surprise! 90% Unity tutorials and crash courses in digital puppetry. A digital dungeon full of code, not collaboration.

The professor was kind and flexible, and he ended up chairing my committee—so credit where it’s due. He made it work for me.
But the structure? A joke.

I was trying to build sculptures in a fluorescent-lit fish tank with no tools, no studio, and definitely no clue from the department what “interactive” even meant.
Let’s be real: my sculpture still had to squat in a computer lab like a Roomba with trust issues.

3. Printmaking Professor from Hell

She was younger than me, resented my experience, and had no business gatekeeping a process I knew better than she did.

She asked me to contribute, then punished me for contributing.
Turns out “Do you have anything to add?” was a trap, not an invitation.

You committed the cardinal sin of knowing your shit.
And the syllabus? Passive aggression in PDF form.

4. Studio Space? Hope You Like Patios

I work big. Messy. Maximal. And emotional.
There was no space for that. So I claimed the back patio.

Technically allowed, unofficially loathed—like borrowing a ghost’s toothbrush.
No one else used it, but my presence alone seemed to offend some invisible hierarchy.
It always felt like I was trespassing on a space people might theoretically want… someday.

5. You Can Exist—Just Don’t Be Visible About It

The real message was clear: sure, you can make work.
Just don’t expect space. Don’t be loud. Don’t take up too much room.

Conditional existence, revoked on a vibe.

Technically allowed. Unofficially frowned upon.
Spiritually demoralizing.

6. The “Grad Studio” Was a Storage Closet with Tenure Trauma

They used to have a full graduate building off-campus.
During COVID, they let the lease lapse. Never got it back.

What replaced it? A leftover classroom with bad lighting, peeling walls, and the residual energy of failed critiques past.
No ventilation. No infrastructure. No respect.

It felt like we were being gaslit by the floor plan.
This wasn’t a space for art.
It was where art went to wait for permission to exist.

7. Screen Printing Was My Religion. They Offered It Like Lent.

Once every two years.

That’s not a rotation—that’s a ration.
And treating a foundational print process like a seasonal promo?
Insulting doesn’t cover it.

8. I Was Already Filling the Gaps They Refused to See

I stayed late in the woodshop, helping terrified undergrads navigate busted machines with even worse instructions.

It wasn’t my job—but it kept fingers attached.

I was doing TA work I hadn’t been assigned,
and they still couldn’t see the need.
Because when you're competent, they call it volunteering.

9. I Offered Solutions. The Chair Took It Personally.

I brought up the program’s gaps to the interim professor. He agreed—suggested I help formally.

But when the department chair found out?
She acted like I’d questioned her throne.

It wasn’t an insult. It was logistics.
But in her eyes, identifying a problem was insubordination.
Because how dare a student recognize a need before she did?

10. One Print Professor. Unlimited Power. Zero Accountability.

Most schools have teams. ISU had a bottleneck.
One professor controlled the whole discipline.

Access wasn’t about merit—it was about appeasement.
It wasn’t a department. It was a fiefdom.

And if you weren’t willing to bow,
you didn’t get to play.

When Vision Is Optional and Feedback Is Fatal

Some failures are structural.
Some are personal.
Some come dressed in cardigans with degrees and say things like “Did you try smiling?”

These are the clearest signs that this program wasn’t just under-resourced—it was unled. The ones at the top couldn’t see what they didn’t understand. And when they felt threatened by clarity? They called it immaturity. When they couldn’t grasp the work? They blamed the artist.

So here it is: the strongest ten. The hits. The red flags with tenure.
And after that? A few extra for flavor. Because no one asked for a sampler platter of dysfunction—but I sure got one.

🔥 The Core 10

1. “Not Conceptual Enough”—Said the Conceptually Bankrupt
They dismissed Medusa—a feminist remix about rage, myth, and rape culture that later won a major international award.
Apparently, clarity is threatening when your palette only comes in beige.

2. Medusa Got Censored. Then Sanitized. Then Silenced.
They changed my quote from “weird shit” to “weird things”—scrubbing the soul out of my own damn words.
They framed a painting about victim-blaming as a quirky idiom.
And when the story ran?
Medusa? Replaced.
The award-winning painting? Vanished.
Instead, they printed a studio selfie—because nipples were more offensive than rape culture.
Artistic cowardice wears a press badge now.

3. “Too Much Line” Is Not a Real Critique
That’s like telling a poet they use too many words.
Line is language—and mine is fluent.

4. “Graphic Design Is a Crutch”
They mistook fluency for failure.
As if intentional structure and illustrative power cancel out conceptual depth.
Design isn’t a shortcut—it’s a scalpel.

5. “This Feels Undergraduate”—After Accepting It Into Grad School
Same portfolio. Different setting.
Apparently once you’re in, the goalposts move—and so does the gaslight.

6. Only Studio Class I Got a B In—Because I Was Too Clear
Turns out, if your work is legible without jargon, it must not be deep.
They didn’t want resonance. They wanted riddles.

7. The Chair Said “It’s Doctor” When I Tried to Raise Concerns
Everyone else used first names.
Until I had a problem.
Then suddenly it was all about the title.
You can’t lead from a podium of ego.

8. Leadership With No Studio Practice
The chair had a PhD in art history—not an MFA.
Which meant she didn’t just misunderstand the work—she misunderstood why it mattered.
And somehow, that excused everything.

9. “Go to Her”—Even Though She Clearly Hated Me
I wasn’t asking for favors. Just acknowledgment.
But every issue got routed back to the same dead end: a chair who saw me as a threat, not a student.

10. Required Reviews Where No One Showed Up
Midterm critiques were mandatory—for us.
Faculty? Flaked. Or monologued. Or ghosted entirely.
Eventually, they stopped doing them altogether.
Critique became theater. Then it stopped being even that.

🎁 Bonus Red Flags (Because Why Stop at 10?)

The Program Didn’t Want Powerful Art—Just Pretty Pictures
They wanted aesthetics without accountability.
Teeth made them nervous.
Social commentary was “too loud.”
Sorry—I don’t do soft when it comes to survival.

The Wood Program Was Treated Like a Ghost
Neglected. Deprioritized. Plugged with temps.
When they finally hired someone? He locked the doors like sawdust was sacred.

So I Bought a Chainsaw
Literally.
Because the studio was restricted and my yard didn’t come with gatekeepers.

I Was Told to Switch Disciplines Instead of Supported in Mine
Not because I lacked vision.
But because they lacked infrastructure.

I Was Punished for Helping
I stayed late, keeping undergrads safe on machines they weren’t trained to use.
They didn’t thank me. They called it a problem.
Apparently filling a gap is offensive if you do it without a title.

They Called Me a Problem Because I Named the Problems
This wasn’t rebellion for rebellion’s sake.
This was mirror work.
They just didn’t want the reflection.

Educational Autopsy - Final Report

Conclusion: You Tried to Silence Me, But I Grew Louder in Metaphor

You mistook my silence for surrender. Thought if you scattered me far enough across acronyms and quiet rooms, I’d unravel into something more manageable. But I don’t disappear—I compost. I turn your static into soil.

You see, I wasn’t trying to be digestible. I was always feral, always fluorescent, always a little too much to grade on a rubric. My scars didn’t seal shut—they cracked open and bloomed. You can’t standardize someone who speaks in thunder and glue sticks.

I didn’t survive your system to fit in—I survived it to outgrow it. To write the guidebook I never got. To build a classroom out of scraps and softness. To be the teacher I needed when all they gave me were labels and lanyards.

This isn’t a comeback story. It’s a refusal to vanish.

It’s the softest rebellion: to stay tender. To tell the truth. To love like it might save someone—even if it’s just one weird, brilliant kid sitting in the hallway wondering if they’re broken.

I wasn’t.

And they aren’t either.

This is my exit wound—and my entrance spell.

Maybe I’m Not Broken. Maybe They’re’re Just Really Repressed.

A Thesis Meta Review: Introduction

This is the part where I’m supposed to act normal.

Not “everything’s fine” normal—thesis normal. You know: abstract first, problem statement next, follow it up with a clean methodology and a reference list that proves I’ve read the right dead people. I know how to do that. I did do that. (Check the PDF metadata, darling.) But that version was just the price of admission. Not the point of the show.

The truth is, my thesis opens with a lie. Not a malicious one—a strategic one. Something tidy and third-person to get me through the gates. A Trojan horse in APA formatting. Inside? Something messier. Something real. Me.

I tried to play along at first. I used the voice I thought I was supposed to. I cleaned things up. I tucked in the weird parts. But I couldn’t keep that up without gutting the whole thing. Because this thesis? It isn’t just about artwork. It’s about what the work let me say once the room went quiet and the projector was humming.

It’s about what happens when you stop trying to sound impressive and start telling the truth.

This is a thesis written in the voice I use when I trust someone. It’s the voice that loops, stammers, jokes, and insists. The one that asks big questions with paint and paper scraps. The one that builds meaning from what’s been discarded. It’s about art, yeah—but also about grief, queerness, disability, neurodivergence, gender, and survival. It’s about all the things you’re told to leave out of your artist statement, your academic paper, your grant application.

It’s about what happens when you bring them anyway.

This isn’t a traditional academic document. It’s a glitter bomb in a manila envelope. It’s a love letter taped inside a utility bill. It’s a Trojan horse made of cardboard, drywall dust, and stubborn hope.

So here it is. All of it.

Open the glitter bomb. I dare you.

(What I Would’ve Said If Academia Hadn’t Been Watching)

This isn’t just a collection of art.

It’s a messy love letter to the people who feel too much, scream too quietly, and laugh like survival depends on it.

It’s what happens when a neurospicy weirdo survives the slow collapse of environmental hope, the capitalist chokehold on creativity, and a thousand paper cuts from patriarchy—and decides to make something tender and furious out of it all.

Yes, it’s about identity.

Yes, it’s about objectification, gender, grief, and eco-despair.

But mostly?

It’s about not going numb.

These works are the receipts. The jokes told from inside the fire. The soft middle fingers folded into paper flowers.

Some are heavy. Some are weird. Some are just me, trying to stay human in a world that keeps selling masks.

I used humor because pain’s favorite disguise is absurdity.

I used nostalgia because memory cuts sharper than critique.

I used interactivity because art shouldn’t whisper from behind glass—it should grab your sleeve and ask if you’ve cried lately.

I didn’t make this for a gallery. I made it because I had to.

Because the world kept breaking, and no one seemed to notice unless you drew it big, loud, and maybe with googly eyes.

Because someone has to scream pretty.

So here it is:

A body of work born from burnout, built with bite, and held together by the belief that feeling deeply is a form of resistance.

Welcome to my thesis.

Try not to sanitize it on the way in.

(tied to Thesis pages v-vi)

aka: The One Where I Blow Kisses at the Rubble and Invite You to Lick the Art

WARNING: May Contain Feelings, Sparkles, and a Mild Identity Crisis

I don’t make art to behave. I make art that stares back. That flirts with your trauma. That giggles while setting institutional expectations on fire with a glue stick and a magnifying glass.

This isn’t for the gallery elite or the pretentious wallflowers who squint thoughtfully and say “interesting use of negative space.” This is for the weird kids. The feelers. The freaks who talk to their stuffed animals and keep the good rocks. The ones who saw a velvet rope and said “what if I chewed through it?”

This is SOPRA—Socially Oriented Participatory Radical Art—if it had glitter in its teeth and a pocketknife in its boot. Socially engaged art—but make it feral. I want people touching things, gasping, laughing, crying, yelling “is this allowed?” while already elbow-deep in discovery. I want fingers on fabric, whispers in corners, confessions to plywood ghosts. I want the work to feel like a dare you’re already halfway into.

I make shit you can touch. Things you’re supposed to mess with. I lure you in with cuteness—squishy, sparkly, nostalgic, familiar—and then I hit you with the existential sledgehammer. That’s the trick. The softness is the snare. The smile has fangs.

I use humor like holy water. If you’ve ever been burned by being “too much,” welcome. We laugh here. Loudly. Inappropriately. Because if we don’t, we’ll choke on the silence. This isn’t a gallery, it’s a séance. The ghosts are giggling and they brought snacks.

Sculpture? That’s my riot in 3D. It takes up space the way I was told not to. It casts shadows with opinions. It’s heavy because it’s honest. Printmaking? That’s my revolutionary pamphlet machine. Because everyone deserves a piece of truth they can hold. Tape it to your fridge. Give it to your therapist. Set it on fire if it stops speaking to you. It’s still yours.

This is not high art. This is heart art. This is panic attack art, breakdown art, fistful-of-dirt art. Art that bleeds glitter and winks through the tears.

I don’t want viewers. I want co-conspirators. I want the people who never felt invited to feel like they’re the ones holding the keys now. Because they are.

If you’re reading this thinking, “Am I allowed to be here?” — babe, you’re the guest of honor.

Let’s make something unholy and honest together.

(tied to Tinder pages 1-2)

Welcome to the Funhouse of False Promises

Where freedom is franchised, bananas are loaded with postcolonial baggage, and every selfie is a séance for a face you no longer own.

Please keep your hands inside the illusion at all times.

This isn’t a lecture. It’s a sideshow.
An existential comedy club.
A pop-up shop for uncomfortable truths, where everything is pay-what-you-can-existentially-afford.

We begin with bananas—a fruit so innocently curved it almost distracts from the empire it rode in on. Add a dash of gunfire, sexual innuendo, and imported nostalgia, and bam: your first glitch in the matrix.

Next stop: the beauty aisle.
Where bronzer helps bury your fear of death, and contouring is capitalism’s version of face-off.
If you can’t escape the void, at least highlight your cheekbones on the way down.

And then there’s Freedom™—packaged in red, white, and boom.
Where liberty is a logo, and dissent is bad for the stock market.

These works aren’t trying to solve hypocrisy.
They’re showing you its teeth, its packaging, and its punchline.
The contradictions don’t cancel out—they curdle. And somehow, that makes them truer.
Because the only thing more American than denial is spectacle.

So grab your kazoo, dial the banana phone, and step into the simulation.

Welcome to the glitter bomb.
Hope you brought snacks.

Just a Girl Standing in Front of a Mental Breakdown Asking It to Be Performance Art

My brain is not linear. It’s a gumball machine full of metaphor marbles, and when I turn the crank, I don’t get a thesis—I get a glitter-covered allegory with trust issues. People ask how I make what I make. The honest answer? That’s just how my brain works. Art is what happens when I try to translate myself into a form other people can actually hold.

I write how I think. Fast. Loopy. Honest. Sometimes fragmented. I use similes, idioms, cultural references, hyperbole, and heartbreak in the same breath. My writing shifts gears mid-sentence because that’s how my thoughts land. It’s like talking to a friend while your brain’s in a spin cycle. I don’t chase clarity with a ruler and red pen—I build it like a weird little fort out of truth and Velcro. And maybe snacks.

If I wrote academically, it would be a lie. That kind of voice feels like I’m smothering my own words with a polite little pillow. My art and writing are connected by the same pulse, and I want people to feel that—not just decode it. So I say what I mean, how I mean it. And yes, sometimes I break the grammar. But I do it like a dancer breaks in new shoes—on purpose, for the rhythm.

Let’s talk mental wiring. I’m autistic. Diagnosed young, which is rare for girls in 1990s North Dakota. And yeah, I was nonverbal. Not non-thinking. Not non-feeling. Just non-wording. I thought in vivid pictures and electric tangents—impossible to explain in sentences, but perfect for art. My teachers didn’t understand. One thought I was deaf because I only responded to eye contact. (Spoiler: I wasn’t. I just live in my own world until someone actually lands a signal.)

Art was my first fluent language. It still is. Translating idea → image is easy. Idea → sentence? Emotional tax. Words are like squeezing feelings through a sieve. Sometimes they fit. Sometimes they stick. But image bypasses that altogether. That’s why I made a screenprint of a frog in a throat. That’s why I built a sculpture where a pill bottle makes a brain alarm go off. I don’t always have the right words, but I always have the right metaphor.

My work is layered. Literally and metaphorically. That sculpture about medication? It’s not just clever. It’s true. It’s about what happens when you try—when you do all the right things and still feel like your brain wants to explode because nobody told you neurodivergence comes with a lifetime subscription to struggle. The bottle doesn’t explain the bell. The bell doesn’t explain the brain. You have to hold both to even guess at the truth. That’s how it feels to live like this.

Water appears often in my art—sometimes nostalgic, sometimes terrifying. Because drowning is the best metaphor for being overwhelmed, and sometimes cuteness is camouflage for despair. I over-enunciate my T’s now because I was trained to speak like I had something to prove. But some days, it still feels like yelling through a storm drain hoping someone’s listening.

That’s what the idioms were. Not just jokes—emotional Rosetta stones. Idioms are our socially agreed-upon weird little codes for feelings that don’t make sense, so I made them literal. A brain on a loop. A cowardly heart. A head in the clouds. They’re my shorthand for experiences that don’t fit neatly into a DSM or an artist statement.

Autism and epilepsy share neurological roots, and I’ve got a subscription to both. I wanted to make that visible, tangible—because people forget. Or they never knew. Most of my work lives in that gap between feeling and explaining. I want it to be accessible, not just academically interesting. Because if someone sees one of my pieces and says, “Wait… me too?”—that’s the point. That’s the magic.

A lot of people think my work looks like it belongs on a T-shirt. I get it. It’s colorful, playful, fun. And that’s the subversion. The cuteness is a trick. A sugar trap for something deeper. Humor is the backdoor to truth. If I make it weird or funny enough, people let their guard down and actually feel something. They sit with it longer. They ask questions instead of walking away. The trick isn't hiding the depth—it's inviting people in with sparkles and then gut-punching them with resonance.

So yeah, welcome to my brain. The Mental Menagerie. It’s loud. It’s layered. It’s laced with trauma and glitter. I hope you find something in it that feels like a reflection, or at least a wink. And if nothing else, maybe you’ll leave thinking: damn, that girl turned her whole diagnosis into an art movement with snacks.

Customer Reviews for the Mental Menagerie Gift Shop

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"Absolutely unhinged. In the best way."

— A tiny frog I swallowed during an anxiety spiral, now living rent-free in my throat.

“I came for the metaphors, I stayed because I physically can’t leave this esophagus.”

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"Tasted like cheese. Felt like therapy."

— Dahlia, pitbull patron saint of the lactose gospel.

"Would sniff again."

🌟🌟🌟🌟

"Would’ve been five stars if I didn’t accidentally self-reflect."

— That one guy who thought ‘cowardly heart’ was just a joke until he saw the sculpture blink.

"Pretty sure I heard it whisper, ‘I know what you’re hiding.’”

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"It’s like if Lisa Frank had trauma and access to a woodshop."

— Disoriented MFA visitor who thought it was the bathroom and left emotionally awakened.

🌟

"Too many feelings. Not enough snacks."

— One star Karen.

“Art shouldn’t make you feel weird things unless it’s in oil paint and has a horse.”

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

"Honestly? I think it fixed something in me."

— Quiet kid who touched the sculpture when no one was looking and whispered, “Oh.”

🏆 Employee of the Month Wall

(Mental Menagerie Gift Shop – Est. Chaos)

🥇 Frog

Title: Throat Gremlin / Manager of Miscommunication

Quote: “Ribbit.” (Translated: “Your feelings are valid but stuck between your third and fourth cervical vertebrae.”)

Achievements:

Made metaphor literal

Lives rent-free in the vocal cords of the artist

Has a surprisingly robust pension plan in the form of weekly herbal tea

🥈 Dahlia

Title: Director of Cheese Acquisitions / Emotional Security Supervisor

Quote: “BORK. Where’s my Gouda, bitch?”

(tied to Tinder pages 1-8)

The Banana’s Moan: A Field Guide to Misinterpreted Fruit.

Welcome to the Peel of Revelations

(Now offering eternal salvation, moaning fruit, and your very own moral crisis—just lift and listen.)

Let’s not bury the lede:

My father loves Jesus more than he loves me.

He probably thinks it’s a good thing.

I was born in Dumas, Arkansas—evicted from my origin story before my baby teeth were even in. Church #1 told my dad to quit because he invited Black families to worship. Church #2 got vandalized because he hired a Black youth pastor. Even Jesus couldn’t un-whiten the congregation. So yeah—building haunted bananas wasn’t the strangest thing I’ve ever done. It was inevitable.

Because here’s the truth:

Humans speak in symbols.

Humans survive with humor.

And bananas? They’re the most overlooked scream in the grocery aisle.

Five hand-carved wooden bananas sit on a table like cursed relics from the Temple of Freud. They look innocent. They aren’t.

Each one plays a different sound when lifted—moans, protests, jokes that aren’t funny anymore. There's also a vintage rotary phone. It doesn’t dial God, but it will replace your dial tone with guilt and instructions. From there, it’s up to you. Call a banana. Hear the quiet racism no one talks about: the medical neglect, the history whitewashed into “slapstick,” the violence softened into fruit salad.

Bananas are hollow.

So are we, when we laugh without asking why.

I tried to contain the idea on paper—bold color, repeated icon, semiotics 101. It didn’t work.

Because you can’t Xerox a reckoning.

The banana is simulacra with a potassium core. It’s been repackaged as sex toy, gag reel prop, post-war peace pipe, and racial slur disguised as fruit.

And somehow it’s still just sitting there. Waiting.

On your counter.

In your lunch.

Inside your subconscious, smirking.

I made it moan because we never ask why we taught a fruit to flirt.

Ask me where I’m from and I’ll give you a pause long enough to grow mold.

No hometown. No anchor. Just a pile of addresses and a memory of churches that traded compassion for decorum.

So I built my own altar:

One with wires.

One with fruit.

One with a phone that rings like your conscience during a comedy sketch.

People don’t pick it up.

Most walk right past the confession booth made of absurdity and longing.

But I’m still in there—curled up in the static, waiting for someone to ask, “Why the hell is this banana a cuckoo clock?”

This work isn’t a punchline. It’s a sermon wrapped in slapstick.

A Trojan Fruit.

A relic of a civilization that built its power on slippery symbols and called it progress.

I talk about bananas because no one else will.

And because in this world, sometimes the only way to be heard…

is to make the fruit moan first.

(tied to Tinder pages 8-11)

Peel Here for Capitalism’s Slipperiest Symbol

Welcome back to the Banana Booth Confessional. Your conscious is calling. The fruit is ripe. Please do not attempt to hang up.

Welcome to the underworld of unpeeled potential, where the bananas that didn’t make it into the sculpture still haunt the cultural compost heap. They’ll still haunt the produce aisle of your subconscious. Too strange. Too symbolic. Too slippery for a 30-second soundbite. They’ve been fermenting in the back of the cultural fridge, whispering sweet post-colonial nightmares and dream-sequence philosophies. Peel responsibly. This is the glitter-stained backroom of the Banana Matrix. 🍌💊✨

Forbidden Fruit
Sound Concept: A sensual thud. A church bell. A voice whispering: “Not the apple... the banana.”

The original sin wasn’t an apple. Not historically, not botanically, not symbolically. That’s just what the PR team said. The Bible never names the fruit, and culturally, it might’ve made more sense for it to be a banana: exotic, curved, peeled... suggestive. Banana leaves, not fig leaves, were used in Southeast Asian and Polynesian traditions for shelter, covering, food prep. And yet—our western mythos slaps a red apple and some shame on Eve and calls it a day. Because if you say “banana,” the congregation might giggle. Might get ideas. Might feel things.
Tropical, phallic, mysterious—and definitely not kosher for Sunday school.

White Jesus wouldn’t like that.

The Garden of Eden has been colonized, and Jesus has been bleached. White Jesus doesn’t tan—he imports. Whitewashed like an overexposed photo at a megachurch baptism. In this remix, salvation wears cargo shorts and arrives by boat, carrying produce and privilege. If Eve had peeled a banana instead of plucking an apple, the church might've collapsed from the innuendo alone.

And that’s the real problem: our myths have been sanitized for the protection of the power structure. But the banana? She can’t help herself. She’s unavoidably erotic, colonized, and just slightly overripe. She’s been typecast as a joke, a racialized prop. But what if she’s the truth?

What if the banana was never the punchline—just the prophet no one took seriously because she slipped too easily into satire?

Representation of the Extinct
Sound Concept: Glitchy vintage ad, Matrix clip, slow peel and static.

The banana you know is a simulation.

The Gros Michel—“Big Mike”—was the original superstar of the fruit aisle. Bigger, sweeter, creamier, and now... gone. Wiped out by a fungal disease thanks to monoculture practices. Capitalism demanded consistency, and consistency demanded clones. So they cloned and shipped and cloned again, until one day, the clones couldn’t fight the fungus.

And like all things over-optimized, Big Mike died out. Enter the Cavendish: blander, tougher, ship-worthy. A stand-in. A ghost. A cover-up.

Most people alive today have never tasted the real banana we were sold in ads. They’ve eaten a stand-in banana. A banana simulacrum. A banana pretending to be a banana. The hyperreal fruit. We remember a flavor we never actually tasted. That’s why so many don’t like artificial banana flavor—it’s based on a banana we’ve never tasted.

We are eating the wax museum version of fruit.

The Matrix wasn’t steak. It was banana pudding with the flavor dialed down. It’s the fruit version of cultural genocide. And just like culture, we keep replacing depth with efficiency until all flavor is algorithmically acceptable. Like The Matrix, if Neo unplugged himself and all he got was a Chiquita sticker.

Sound cue: Morpheus solemnly intoning,
“You’ve never actually tasted a banana. You’ve tasted a replica.”
Then: silence. Then: a single grocery scanner beep.

Let that sit in your mouth a second.

Freedom™
Sound Concept: Crowd cheering, a newsreel crackle, a banana dropped into a shopping basket.

This one hurts. Because it’s not just symbolic—it’s propaganda by produce. It’s not that the banana symbolizes comfort. It’s that it symbolizes the performance of comfort. The kind you import.

When the Berlin Wall fell, they didn’t hand out flags. They handed out bananas. After World War II, bananas were the comfort item. Same with rationed America. Why? Because if you could import bananas, it meant trade routes were back, global capitalism was reloading, and someone somewhere was working a plantation so you could feel “normal” again.

But normal for who?

While Westerners celebrated freedom with imported fruit, the countries growing those bananas were locked in cycles of exploitation, poverty, and puppet governments. We held the banana like a gold medal and ignored the bruises that got it there.

When the Berlin Wall fell, you know what East Germans reportedly craved? Not steak. Not booze. Not Western democracy. Bananas. Bananas as peace treaties. As pacifiers. As edible illusions. You can’t eat sovereignty, but apparently you can peel it. You know what's weird? How bananas became a symbol that “everything’s okay again.”

It was like society collectively agreed: If I can buy this curved yellow fruit from somewhere warm, we must not be dying anymore.

Bananas flooded grocery stores as a symbol that freedom—and capitalism—had arrived. Same thing happened post-WWII in England. Bananas were rationed, banned, withheld. And when they returned, it was treated like a national sign of recovery. Look! You can eat something tropical again. Never mind the supply chains. Never mind the working conditions of the countries producing them. Never mind the price paid somewhere else.

You’re free now. Eat a banana.

Bananas are the soft power of empire. You just didn’t notice, because they tasted like home. A fruit so common, it must be safe. A fruit so cheap, it must be innocent. But every bite is built on a pipeline of colonial agriculture, labor exploitation, and illusion.

Sound cue: jubilant crowd noises layered over the distant sound of a machete, and then:
“Welcome back to normal.”

(tied to Tinder pages 8-11)

This Banana Is Not a Banana

There’s a banana in your hand. It wiggles a bit. Smells kinda like a fruit. It’s even shaped the way you expect. But what if I told you it’s not actually a banana? Not the original, not even a good imitation. It’s a symbol of a symbol of a thing that no longer exists. Welcome to the banana-industrial complex.

We live in a world so deep in simulation, we don’t even remember what the real was supposed to taste like. Literally. The banana we eat today? That’s the Cavendish. It’s a genetically identical clone of itself—selected for durability, not flavor. The banana flavoring we reject as “fake” is actually closer to the extinct Gros Michel, which disappeared under the boot of monoculture and fungal rot. So the fake banana is more real than the “real” banana, but the real banana is gone. Did you follow that? Neither did most people. But we’ll still call it a banana, and we’ll still eat it with a smile, because the illusion is more palatable than the loss.

This is where Jean Baudrillard starts cackling in his grave. Or maybe he’s just eating a banana and screaming softly. Disneyland exists, he argued, to make the rest of America feel “real.” It’s a cartoon distraction that makes the surrounding capitalist mirage look authentic by comparison. It’s the ultimate decoy: See? This part’s fake. So everything else must be true. That’s what the banana does, too. It plays normal. Wholesome. A goofy fruit that slips and moans and stars in kid’s cartoons. Meanwhile, the laborers exploited to bring it to your grocery aisle disappear into the background static—off-screen, out of frame, off your ethical radar.

In Baudrillard’s terms, this is a hyperreal fruit. A spectacle. We eat it not because it nourishes, but because it signals “food.” It plays its part in the pantomime of consumption. And war? Same thing. We’re so bombarded with images, narratives, video-game footage, and postured speeches that the actual violence becomes abstracted. The war isn’t televised. The televised thing is the war. You’re not witnessing it; you’re watching its simulation. Just like you're not tasting justice or awareness or impact—you’re tasting a yellow wrapper that says “banana” and trusting that’s good enough.

This is how symbolic dissonance becomes cultural anesthesia. And the banana is a perfect mascot for this mess. It’s so ordinary, it hides in plain sight. And yet it’s freighted with colonial legacy, plantation abuse, labor violence, racial caricatures, phallic implications, capitalist triumphalism, and extinction denial. But don’t worry about all that. Have a smoothie.

In the world of the spectacle, the only thing more dangerous than the truth is the idea that truth doesn’t matter. And if we’ve accepted synthetic bananas, performative politics, and fruit-shaped ignorance as “just how things are”—then the simulation isn’t just working, it’s winning.

So hold that banana a little closer. Ask it who it used to be. Ask what kind of stories were peeled away until only the joke was left. And then maybe—just maybe—ask yourself what else you’re swallowing whole because the label says “real.”

Confused? Good.
That means your critical thinking module is online.

These bananas didn’t make the interactive cut, but they haunt the margins of the Fruit Canon. They are the no-man’s land where simulacra, nostalgia, and white Jesus converge. They are the confessional booth of shame and late-stage capitalism.

Your conscious is calling. Press 9 to repent.

(tied to Tinder pages 8-11)

Or, Why My Childhood Was Full of Hamsters Named Sunshine

How often do you think about death?
Not the poetics of it. Not the tragic arcs or cinematic fade-outs. I mean the meat-and-maggots kind. The smell-under-the-sink kind. The real one.

My dad was often busy with funerals and hospital visits. Death was just part of the weekly rotation—like Tuesday tacos or Sunday sermons. If someone had a toe in the grave, he was probably already making a casserole. That proximity stripped death of its mystery, but not its absurdity.

Which got me wondering: would the beauty industry make as much money if people weren’t terrified of dying? Imagine Sephora without existential dread. Do we contour our cheekbones to distract from our eventual skulls?

This piece is based on that childhood earworm, The Hearse Song.
“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out. The worms play pinochle on your snout.”

Morbid. Untraceable. Postmodern.
It’s been passed down like an heirloom in a haunted dollhouse.
No known author. No copyright. Just one big shared wink at the void.

So I made a piece that played with it. Wooden skull. Velvet worms. Shag rug. The crypt got cozy. A velvet crypt motel, check-in available for your unresolved dread.

The worms are squishy and weighted, filled with cedar pellets.
They’re designed to be held. Played with. Confessed to.

Funeral fun house.

The rug invites you to sit, maybe cross-legged like kindergarten story time, except this story is about the compostable version of you.
The piece isn’t about death as tragedy. It’s about death as intimacy.
It’s about laughing in a velvet grave because you weren’t allowed to talk about it growing up.

Society doesn’t avoid death because it’s too big. It avoids death because it refuses to let it be small. Tangible. Touchably absurd.
And in that silence, the fear grows. But fear, like mold, hates fresh air.
So I gave it worms instead.

Growing up, I always had a hamster named Sunshine.
She never died.
I mean—she did, repeatedly. But spiritually, she regenerated like a rodent Doctor Who.

Sunshine wasn’t a name. It was a role. A ritual. A reincarnation wrapped in cedar shavings.Grief dressed in drag. Death as a children’s puppet show with teeth.
Over the years, there were at least nine. One was a guinea pig. One was… suspect. A pet cementary of denial. Like an after school special of uncanny valley.

Why do we lie to kids about death and then expect them to be emotionally functional adults? Sunshine was my first experiment in humor-as-processing. An absurd chorus of undead hamsters.
Each version of Sunshine lives in my work like a chorus of plushy prophets.

Death became a punchline I never stopped writing.

So what is this section really about?
Death, repetition, humor, and the quiet invitation to touch what you were told to fear. To cradle the thing under your bed and realize it’s soft.
The worms aren’t the horror. The silence is.

And maybe, if you listen close enough, they’re not playing pinochle.
They’re whispering: It’s okay to laugh. You’re already part of the earth.

It’s okay to laugh at the thing that scares you.
It’s okay to crawl into the skull if it means crawling out a little more alive.

This work isn’t just a death piece.
It’s a velvet invitation to the haunted funhouse of your own avoidance.
It’s the moment you realize the horror movie was a comedy all along—
and you were the punchline and the poet.

It’s haunted.
And hopeful.
And exactly where the worms want you.

Click here to visit the Shrine of Sunshine 🐹 →

(tied to Tinder pages 12-14)

Mascara as Ritual, TikTok as Tomb, and the Death We Won’t Name

You’ve never seen an actual face.
You’re not aging.
You’re just being algorithmically erased.
Congrats.

We’re all dying—but at least we look hot doing it.

I once thought about sitting outside Sephora with a cardboard sign that read:
“What would happen to the beauty industry if you weren’t afraid of death?”
No tips. Just truth.

Because isn’t that the secret ingredient in every eye cream and lip filler?
Mortality.
They sell us anti-aging serums like amulets.
Mascara like a ward against the void.
We don’t even want to look tired—let alone die.

In the past, if you wanted to remember someone,
you made a death mask.
Not a filter.
Not a flattering photo.
A full plaster cast.

It captured the slack jaw.
The soft rot.
The undeniable truth that the soul had left the building.
It wasn’t cute.
But it was honest.

Now we use filters so heavy they practically creak.
We iron out entropy and pretend that makes us eternal.
But we’re embalming ourselves in real time—
digitally preserved in soft light and delusion.

The Victorians knew something we’ve forgotten.
They wore jewelry made from the hair of the dead.
They had tea with ghosts.
They looked death in the eye and asked it to dance.

We shove it in a drawer and hope the algorithm forgets.
But even the best skin filter can’t stop what’s already composting beneath the surface.

And maybe that’s why society keeps us numb.
Because if you weren’t distracted—
drugged on content and contour sticks—
you might wake up.

You might remember you’re a mortal creature
with limited time.
And you might stop being a good consumer.

Maybe you’d stop buying wrinkle cream
and start dismantling empire.
Maybe you’d stop doomscrolling
and start building something that lasts beyond you.

But that kind of clarity doesn’t sell well.

So we sedate the soul with TikTok dances and avocado eye patches.
We flatten every wrinkle and widen every eye
until we look like dolls preparing for a death we’re not allowed to mention.

Because if we really accepted we were going to die?
If we really let that in?

We might stop behaving.

And that’s the real taboo.
Not death itself—
but what might happen if we made peace with it.

You’ve already started to do that.
Velvet worms.
Weighted plushes.
A rug that says:
“Sit here. You’re safe to fall apart.”

You turned death into an invitation.
A punchline.
A process.

There’s power in making the grave feel soft.
In saying:
“Come closer. You don’t have to pretend you’re not scared.”
In laughing at the end before the end laughs at you.

And if there’s a skull in the makeup aisle,
it’s not to spook you.
It’s to say:

You were always beautiful—even as dust.
You just forgot what real looked like.

(tied to Tinder pages 12-14)

Patriotism™: Now With More Exploitation

There’s a particular kind of fury that doesn’t scream—it sews. That doesn’t punch—it threads. This work, these images, this body of stitched and painted protest isn’t asking you to feel better. It’s asking you to notice.

To notice what you’ve been told is patriotic.
To notice what you’ve been told is safe.
To notice the glittering word “freedom” and the hands bound underneath it.

This isn’t satire for amusement—it’s the kind of humor you choke on halfway through the laugh, when you realize the punchline is a drone strike.

“I joined for the structure. I left with a theory of imperialism and a recurring banana problem.”

The flag doesn’t wave—it drapes.
And what it drapes over isn’t abstract:
It’s war. It’s oil. It’s nationalism with a PR team.
It’s the military-industrial complex turned moodboard.

Lady Liberty isn’t holding a torch—she’s holding the receipts. And they’re on fire.

The gold foil? Not glamour. It’s greed with a halo. The false holiness of currency. The sanctified spectacle of wealth, pressed into every myth we’ve been taught to pledge allegiance to.

Even the toys betray us—little plastic soldiers gilded into icons of empire. Nostalgia as camouflage. Childhood weaponized. Playtime sponsored by Lockheed Martin.

This work doesn’t beg for hope. It doesn’t spiral into despair.
It hands you the glitter-drenched entrails of empire and asks:
“Now what?”

You don’t get to plead ignorance.
The banana already warned you.
This just confirms it.

So here it is:
A velvet-wrapped middle finger.
A stitched manifesto.
A gold-foiled scream wearing lipstick.

It’s not yelling. It’s smirking.
Because it already knows the system is absurd—
and it’s going to thread that absurdity into something beautiful.
Something damning.
Something that makes you laugh, then ache, then act.

You’ve already been drafted.

Consider this your welcome packet.
Signed, The Seamstress of Dissent

(tied to Tinder pages 15-19)

Featuring collapsing myths, burning bridges, and the world’s saddest Fisher-Price remix.

Life is But a Scream-Sing-Along

The warning bells have been ringing for decades. We just learned to harmonize with them.

I used to think environmentalism was a major I could finish. Turns out, it’s a lifelong grief hobby. I ran the Environmental Science Club. I studied bees. I helped organize protests. And then I got guilted into switching to art. So I made the guilt into art. Because apparently, if the world is going to collapse, I’m going to collage it beautifully.

Tomorrowland: Apocalypse but Make it Pastel

It started as a scream into the void and came out looking like a Pinterest board for the eco-apocalypse. It’s cute… until it’s not.

A biodome helmet full of air plants, converting your last exhale into a kind of whispery terrarium. In the background? Burning buildings. Blurry, because there’s no depth of field when the field is on fire. It’s a dreamy dystopia where you’re the main character—and your helmet is the plot twist.

Because let’s be honest: there is no Planet B. There’s just Planet Please, Stop.

Life Is But a Dream: Fisher-Price for the Flame-Retardant Generation

I cracked open a Fisher-Price TV music box and rewired it like a mad scientist with trauma and a printmaking degree. It still plays “Row Row Row Your Boat” and “London Bridge Is Falling Down”—but now they feel like climate collapse nursery rhymes.

The scroll’s no longer a bedtime story. It’s a slow-motion obituary: floods, fires, dead bees, and the Doomsday Clock forever stuck on midnight. A lullaby for late-stage capitalism.

Why did I do it? Because no one wants to read about extinction. But a broken toy playing songs while the world melts? People stop and stare.

Sometimes absurdity is the only language despair understands.

Manifest Destiny: Cowboy Simulacrum Edition

I’ve been thinking about cowboys a lot. How America needed a protagonist so it stitched one together from grit, genocide, and stolen land. Enter: the Cowboy. The Marlboro Man. Bootcut Jesus.

But he got rebranded. Now he’s Uncle Sam—with better PR, a drone budget, and a flag that doubles as a smoke screen.

The Cowboy was never real. Just a mascot in drag for American exceptionalism.

Manifest Destiny got a makeover, a marketing campaign, and a war department. We colonized the past and handed it out like propaganda candy. And somehow, we still think we’re the heroes.

So no, I didn’t quit environmentalism. I just learned to laser-cut it into sculpture and shout it through a kazoo. I became the eco-jester at the end of the world.

And if we’re going down?

We’re going down with stickers, a disco ball made of broken dreams, and a warning label that says:

Life is but a dream. Row faster. The bridge is on fire.

(tied to Tinder pages 19-26)

Holy Unraveling of Patriotic Mythos as Told by a Rewired Doll with a Doomsday Clock and a God Complex

The cowboy wasn’t just America’s denim-wrapped protagonist—he was our DIY messiah. A leather-stitched savior riding shotgun with Manifest Destiny, he arrived just when the New World needed a myth that could swing a lasso and a moral. He wasn’t born—he was assembled. Pieced together from Protestant work ethic, Hollywood glitz, and just enough Bible verses to bless the bullets.

Because nothing sanctifies a land grab like scripture in one hand and a government deed in the other. When conquest wears a halo, even bullets get baptized.

We wanted a homegrown knight. Europe had dragons and castles—we had tumbleweeds and genocide. So we crowned the cowboy not because he was good, but because he won. Then we told that story until even history forgot it used to know better. That’s how you build a simulacrum. That’s how you sell heroism at scale. You carve it from violence, sand it smooth with nostalgia, and laminate it in freedom rhetoric.

But you can’t slap a Howdy, Partner! sticker on colonialism and call it character development.

Eventually, the myth metastasized. The cowboy turned into Uncle Sam. His boots got shinier. His mustache got sanctioned. But the message stayed the same: This land is mine, because God said so, and also I brought a flag. It’s Manifest Destiny 2.0—now with more trucks, more slogans, and fewer consequences. America learned how to brand the boot on your neck so well, people started thanking it.

And I? I was raised on that branding. Taught to pledge allegiance to the myth while the land beneath my feet whispered a very different story. One of stolen breath, broken treaties, oil pipelines, and plastic flags waving over burning ground.

That’s the ecosystem I inherited: a country built on marketing and myth, wrapped in spectacle, dipped in denial.

So I made a gospel of my own—glitter-stained, grief-laced, glitch-filled.

If we’re all just remixing dreams and delusions, then mine would scream back. I rewired Fisher-Price toys and called it prophecy. I printed apocalypse on stickers and passed them out like communion wafers. I turned the Doomsday Clock into a lullaby machine and handed it to a child. I bottle-fed despair until it glittered.

Because if satire is the only language the simulation can’t censor, then I’ll preach in punchlines. If joy is forbidden in the face of collapse, then I’ll giggle harder. And if the myth demands silence, then I’ll build an altar out of feedback loops and scream until the fake stars flicker.

This is my sermon: messy, maximalist, unapproved by any church with a tax exemption.

Because the bells have always been ringing—we just harmonized with them so long, we forgot they were alarms.

But I remember now.

And if this chapter is the gospel,
then the next one is the reckoning.

You can keep your patriot dreams and powdered wigs.

I’ve got glitter in my lungs and a funeral to host.

A Recursive Ritual for Girls Who Wouldn’t Stay Pretty

Masking. That thing we do to survive a world that punishes honesty but rewards performance. It’s not just for makeup and Mardi Gras—it’s how we learn to twist our edges to fit round holes, contorting ourselves until even we forget what shape we started with. Neurodivergents do it early. Femmes do it constantly. Survival is a costume party no one asked to attend.

“Basketcase” says it plainly: you can put the mask on or leave it off, but either way, the cage came first. It’s a freestanding sculpture—a bust with a movable basket-woven mask. You can press it against the face, or not. The form fits either way. High masking skill? That just means we got real good at disappearing.

And that’s the trap: the better you are at masking, the more invisible you become. The more comfortable others feel, the less seen you are. So I gave the audience control—to press the mask against the face or not. It’s interactive. It’s a mirror. And like any mirror, it might not show what you want to see.

It reminded me of a different kind of silence—another mask made of myth.

Butterflies scream. You just can’t hear them. I learned this during a toddler game of “What sound does the animal make?”—and something about that broke me open. That’s when I made “Butterfly Scream.”

Butterflies are silent, delicate, and decorative. Much like the ideal woman. I wanted to make one loud. Add eyes to flowers and suddenly they stop being background. They watch you back.

People call my work pretty. People call me pretty. As if that’s a compliment. I have better traits.

I worked in gentlemen’s clubs for half my life. Let me explain something: men will say they hate when women objectify themselves—while paying to be part of the audience. They claim women who dance are desperate or degraded, but they line up like it’s communion.

One performance is sanctified, the other is scorned. But only one pays your rent.

They say we’re selling ourselves. No one ever says the church is selling you when you're eight years old, singing for the congregation with your Sunday smile and your forced hugs in the foyer. But if I perform for money as an adult—if I claim my own stage—it’s suddenly shameful. My father got fired from a church for inviting the homeless and again for welcoming Black parishioners. But even he couldn’t see me, because I never fit the lens.

Medusa had a heart of gold. Literally, in my version—her eyes are gold leaf, because seeing clearly should shine. In mythology, she was a priestess raped by Neptune in Athena’s temple. Athena punished her.

That’s rape culture in a nutshell: protect the system, not the soul.

Medusa couldn’t be desired anymore, so they called her a monster. I think maybe that was mercy.

This piece loops female faces smiling on command. It’s set up like a vintage tube TV, sitting on carved wooden shoulders. I call it “You Look Prettier When You Smile.” Because that’s not a compliment. That’s a demand.

The soundtrack? A broken-top-40 earworm:
“I’m just a girl in the world / why won’t they just let me live?”
Released on my eighth birthday.

Smile. Don’t make a scene. Stand at the door. Hug the church elders. Perform. Be small. Be nice.

One guy told me on Tinder that he liked older women.
I hadn’t even realized I was one.
Not until that moment. Not until I felt myself being archived mid-sentence.

I’ve dated younger ever since. People my age stopped dreaming.

But I didn’t. And if I scream like a butterfly or stare like Medusa or set your assumptions on fire with gold leaf and tube TVs—maybe that’s the point.

We were told to be good girls.
We became glitter bombs instead.

(tied to Tinder pages 27-33)

You Don’t Get to Censor a Medusa and Still Pretend You Believe in Storytelling

Let’s begin with the obvious: they couldn't print the painting because they were afraid of the nipples. The Medusa that won the painting award for a national juried show—a searing, gold-leafed, soul-rattling depiction of rape culture and reclamation—was reduced to a single sentence: “Greek mythological storyline of Medusa and Arp’s fascination with idioms.”

Excuse me?

That is not what the work is about. That’s not even in the same zip code as what the work is about. But apparently “a painting about sexual assault, mythic injustice, systemic objectification, and the way society treats female pain as spectacle” was too much. So they did what any institution in polite panic mode does: they sanded off the sharp edges, dusted it in euphemism, and called it a day.

They took a grenade and called it a figurine.

You remember Medusa, right?
Gold-leafed eyes, looped smiles, not here to be palatable?
Yeah. She won the award.
They just couldn’t print her.

Let’s talk about the quote they actually used. I said I loved idioms because they express what’s hard to put into words—but what I actually said was, “They express the weird shit we don't know how to say out loud.”

What they printed?
“Weird phrases that don’t really make sense, that express things that aren’t easy to put into words.”

They rewrote me in real-time. Sanitized me into something sweet. Something quirky.
Not dangerous. Not difficult. Not female rage in a pretty frame.

And let’s not forget: when they interviewed me, they asked for a picture of me instead of the painting. Why? Because the image was “too much.” Not violent. Not grotesque. Just real.
And that, to some people, is more threatening than anything else.

Because a Medusa with a heart of gold means you can’t just look away.
You have to ask who turned her into a monster.
You have to admit that maybe she was never the monster at all.

And that makes some people very, very uncomfortable.

So let’s be clear: I don't have “daddy issues.”
I have clarity.

I was used as an object for Jesus and told to smile for the congregation. When I use my own body—my own story—to tell a truth, it's called attention-seeking.
When the church did it, it was called devotion.

Both were a performance.
Only one was considered sacred.

This is why I make the work I do.
This is why I make social practice art—not art for art’s sake.
Because I’m not trying to make something pretty.
I’m trying to make something true.

And if the truth makes you nervous?

Good.

That means it’s working.
This isn’t a tantrum.
It’s a testimonial.
This is Side-B, baby. The track they didn’t want you to hear.
And I’m playing it loud.

(tied to Tinder page 33)

A Reflecting Pool for Feelings Too Big

Are high highs worth low lows? I ask as if it’s a choice. As if we get to opt out of feeling too much. Emotions often feel too big to carry, and even bigger to explain. There’s a helplessness in trying to put the ocean into a sentence. But I know I’m not the only one trying. That shared struggle is a kind of lifeboat. Even if we never meet, the fact that someone else has also screamed into a pillow and tried to laugh afterward means we’re not alone.

Cry My Eyes Out began as a dare, a sketch, a joke with teeth. It became a wooden figure standing in a rainbow kiddie pool—hollow-eyed and endlessly weeping. The eyeballs float in the water, free to be picked up, cradled, misused.

No face. No gender. No smile. Just the suggestion of a person shaped by absence.
It could be anyone. It is everyone.

It stands still and cries while people laugh, poke it, take selfies.
The absurdity is the point. It asks: why are we like this?
Why do we point at pain only when it’s palatable?

The kiddie pool is important. It references the way happiness is sold to us: clean, simple, inflatable. And yet here it holds grief, disillusionment, burnout. It’s a reflecting pool for the feelings we’re told to mop up in private.
Grief isn’t sanitized here—it floats.

Waves Waving is a painting about how gestures can be both connective and futile. A wave can mean hello, goodbye, help, or surrender. It’s a gesture that reaches—sometimes out, sometimes under. That ambiguity resonates with how I experience the world: simultaneously reaching out and drifting.

Some of my earliest fears involved water. I nearly drowned in a pool as a child, but it’s natural water that terrifies me more. I think it’s because it hides things. Fear of the unknown, of slipping beneath a surface and being forgotten. There’s a known link between people who have seizures and fear of drowning—both feel like vanishing. Losing control of your body, and being unsure if anyone will notice until it’s too late.

Life Saver and Unexpected Risks touch this nerve. They don’t resolve it. But they do what art is supposed to: they tether.
They say: I felt this too.
Maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s the only life raft we have—tethered feeling. Floating witness.

There’s nothing wrong with making work that hurts, as long as it doesn’t hurt alone. My sculptures cry for me when I can’t. They float when I sink. They wave back.

Because sometimes, the loudest scream is shaped like a rainbow pool and two hollow eyes pouring into plastic.
And if it helps you laugh, poke, or feel something again—then the joke worked.
Even the heartbreak was part of the design.
Even the drowning had choreography.

(tied to Tinder pages 33-38)

Sorry, I Thought You Were Waving at Me…

Signal lost, signal sent—same motion either way.

This piece is a sea of hands that forgot whether they were saying hello or help. A choreography of survival gestures. Arms severed from context, suspended mid-wave in a field of grief-colored blue.

Are they beckoning? Surrendering? Bidding farewell?

The repetition makes it funny.
Then creepy.
Then devastating.

How do you say everything and nothing at once?

It plays with the ambiguity of gesture—how a wave can mean I’m here,I’m going,I’m drowning,I’m trying.
How desperate we are to be recognized, even if only by a mirror or a myth.

These aren’t hands of power.
These are hands of hope and hesitation.
They belong to people who feel too much and don’t know how to say it.

So they wave.
Again and again.
Until they are seen—or disappear.

Some waves are just the ocean trying to remember how to hold us.

The power of Waves Waving is in its refusal to resolve.
It’s slippery.
It feels like something trying to finish a sentence underwater.

To make the meaning too clear would be to betray the piece’s emotional grammar.

I see you—
even when you’re drowning beautifully.

(tied to Tinder page 36)

A Manifesto for Creative Becoming

Execution is not the assignment.

I don’t teach art in the traditional sense.

I invite people to think, to feel—and most importantly, to believe their thoughts and feelings matter.

Everything begins with this truth:

Concept comes before execution.

Art doesn’t need to be flawless to be real. It just needs to be true.

The first spark isn’t line or form or color theory. It’s Dada.

Absurdity. Rebellion. Unmaking.

It’s the moment you realize meaning can be torn apart and rebuilt your way. Not to dismiss technique—but to unshackle expression from the fear that it isn’t “good enough.”

Because that fear? It kills more ideas than failure ever could.

And when you realize your job isn’t to impress—but to communicate?

To echo.

To signal.

To be felt?

That’s when it gets good.

That’s when it gets honest.

This forge isn’t a classroom. It’s a heat source.

Not a production line for portfolio pieces—but a crucible.

Where identity gets tempered.

Where contradiction is welcome.

Where your weirdness has weight.

This is for the ones who’ve been told to “tone it down.”

For the ones who’ve been called too much, too messy, too loud, too strange.

For anyone who's ever been told to wait until they’re “good enough.”

You don’t have to wait.

You don’t have to shrink.

You only have to show up and mean it.

Art can be your weapon or your blanket, your whisper or your war cry.

What matters is that it’s yours.

And that you gave it breath.

-----

The Smoke After the Flame

You don’t need permission to begin.

You only need the match you’ve always had in your hand.

This is the forge.

Not everyone’s ready for it.

But you are.

Let the system squirm.

Let the rules tremble a little.

You didn’t show up to blend in.

You showed up to burn honest.

And don’t worry—there’s still room for velvet shields.

This isn’t about swinging hammers at glass hearts.

It’s about teaching them how to dance in the fire.

You don’t have to be the best.

Just brave.

Just true.

And never forget—

your weirdness is not a liability.

It’s the whole damn spell.

It wasn’t all for nothing.

This is the battle report I never thought I’d get to write—scrawled in spite and survival, delivered long after the smoke cleared.

I didn’t just make it out.

I made something from it.

And if you’re holding this, maybe you will too.

Because the system never expected us to take notes.

Let alone light the map on fire and walk away, soul intact, ready to sing the tale.

Want to teach this? Show it to your dean? Stitch it into your student union zine? Go for it. Just keep my name and don’t dull the edges.

Got questions, compliments, or existential dread? Whether you're vibing or just haunting from the shadows, send your signal through the contact portal—or descend into the deeper depths and slip into your favorite social media rabbit hole.

From the ashes with teeth—thank you for reading.

Keep your weird sharp and your heart louder than their rules.

Love Jordy - Patron Saint of the Partially Collapsed

(This was a love letter, after all.)

Now go light something on fire—metaphorically. Probably.