Experimental poster created from a mad-lips style questionnaire I posted in several public locations on the Texas State campus. The final design is based off the following selected responses:

Nouns: Chaos, Tiger; Verbs: Defenestrate (to throw someone out a window), Eat; Colors: Violet, Golden Hour Yellow; Moods: Paranoid, Optimistic; Song: “Sophie” by The Altogether.

The final poster was printed on the riso printer and was on display in the misregistered exhibition from February–March 2022.

To create these Doodle Shoes I asked all of the undergraduate design students I taught in the spring of 2023 to respond to the prompt, “What is it like to be in your shoes? Make a small drawing representing a daily struggle or a daily joy that you experienced this week outside of the classroom.”

Using this guidance they created this pair of shoes, which I wore to class periodically throughout the semester. The finished artwork represents the importance of a teacher “walking in their students’ shoes” to fully understand them as people, not just as students.

In our increasingly isolated and digital society, we are often forced to struggle with our personal problems silently due to a lack of a community to help us deal with them. I wondered how I could create a different world temporarily, in which people felt free to reveal their struggles and others eagerly picked up the slack for them.

To create this temporary world, I asked the people in my life if they would be willing to share a problem or “burden” they were carrying with me. I printed all of the responses I was cleared to share on tote bags and bandanas (two items that you might literally carry with you), as well as on tabloid-sized posters. I combined all of these elements into an installation, and asked visitors to take one piece of it with them as they left. These carry-able souvenirs are both symbolic and literal reminders of the meaningfulness of carrying someone else’s burden, and how others’ problems often feel more manageable than our own.

During COVID quarantine I became very interested in the concepts of community and “found family.” I frequently grappled with loneliness and anxiety during this time and wondered where others found meaning, comfort and connection. I asked this question to approximately 50 friends and colleagues and combined their responses into a poster-sized illustration.

When I was offered the chance to install this poster in a gallery, I created a puzzle component to further explore the idea of community. Using my original poster as a reference, visitors to the gallery formed a (temporary) connection as they worked together to piece together the puzzle version of the image.

In this 3-hour workshop held at Texas State University, each student participant designed a set of 6 stickers. Each sticker was associated with a prompt that required students to have a personal conversation with another student participant, encouraging them to get to know one another on a deeper level. After the stickers were printed on the risograph printer, students created collaborative mini-books that included one sticker from each participant.

This workshop was meant to make space for first-year design students to create friendships and connections away from the pressure of the traditional design classroom environment. It also served as an introduction to the riso for many of them!

These stickers were all created by Texas State art and design students in my Riso Sticker Workshop! After the workshop was over, I asked for one sticker from each participant and found a new home for each one near my apartment in South Austin. I posted the images on social media and tagged all students who shared their handle with me, as a way to create an informal digital gallery of the collaborative project.