I want to create a plant sculpture that is part of a performance act which community members (from the Skid Row History Museum & Archive) engage with directly. Using moss, or concealed gridded plastic plant pots, I would like to compose the sculpture in such a way that people in the space can add and remove parts of the sculpture. 

With this I hope to critique larger societal ideas. The composition of the sculpture–whole and green–will be symbolic of a unified, sustainable Los Ángeles. A vision for a city in which green spaces are not neglected, but cared for across boundaries.

As people pull plants from the sculpture they will experience a struggle of greed, symbolizing how individual benefits can tear one apart from a sustainable community. Eventually the sculpture will be bare, as dozens or hundreds of individuals reap the benefits of a once-connected form. I will compose the piece in a way where, once something is removed it cannot be returned. Detrimental decisions will be permanent.

This slow yet gradual deterioration will demonstrate how public spaces have been destroyed as private corporations and developers built a monopoly on land – taking away its intricacies from the people for fuller pockets. The prevention of re-building will force the viewer to think critically about their decision and seeing other’s actions will shape the experience. I imagine one person’s greed could become a chain, and therefore the viewer will grapple with not just the ecosystem of land, but its connection with human behavior – and, how once they are intertwined, repercussions come quickly, sparing nobody. 

My project will be a examination of our country's medical waste crisis, as rhe U.S. healthcare system generates more than five billion pounds of waste each year. As a chronically ill person, I know that I am a contributer to the crisis, as I personally see the waste create by my own care. I have been collecting my empty prescription bottles for many months now, and my goal is to use these bottles to assemble a garment that I will wear in a video. The video will show the broader theme of medical waste, while also revealing the unsettling concept that my own survival can be quantified by the amount of waste I've produced. I believe that this is an important project because medical waste is often overlooked in discussions about climate change and pollution. It is a complex issue due to the sanitary element, as well as the pure necessity of the items being used. Generally, waste is seen as a sign of our overconsumption, but this waste is representative of lives being saved.

This project will strike a balance between sparking a radical queer imagination and grounding it through the effect of the built environment. We will explore two aspects of reimagining L.A. an architectural redesign of public institutions and a fictional explorative narrative piece. All pieces will work in tandem to create an exhibit-like experience where the viewer can progress alongside the reimagining of L.A., seeing themselves within this newly designed space and encouraging their own radical imagination of the city.

By referencing community enhancement projects such as “New Public Hydrant” by Chris Woebken and “Testbeds” by New Affiliates, the design concept of the project shares a similar goal to repurpose scrap construction materials with consideration to better the built environment of communities. According to CalRecycle, construction and demolition materials make up about 25% of California's waste disposal. What if those materials were repurposed into public infrastructure that considers healthy public rituals with the built environment while keeping them out of the landfill? This project would do just that–create communal contact zones bolstering the Angeleno identity for the people of Los Angeles while eliminating construction waste.

The narrative piece follows the Angeleno body and mind highlighting the Angeleno cultural/spiritual experience that must be preserved and accentuated by our new reimagining for a truly sustainable, equitable, and healthful future. This piece will illustrate the re-resourced infrastructure design done in the other half of the project, demonstrating how the body interacts within the physical space. To create the narrative we will reference Jose Esteban Muñoz’s ideas of queerness as the horizon from his book Cruising Utopia, highlighting the radical queer potential of agency and joy. This will be done in either a narrative animated short or interactive media.

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My project consists of a series of small 3D illusion murals, as many as possible, deceptively portraying a more natural, sustainable version of the very spot it’s painted on. Imagine a skylight painted on a ceiling with the image of the starry night sky that would be possible to be seen if Los Angeles was free of light pollution. Rows of plants native to this land painted along the edges of a a blank building. Getting surprised by a flowing stream beneath your feet that turns out to be paint on the concrete that buried a real natural environment long ago. I want to paint murals that remind people of the existing environment and that inspire a better world, that people can view and believe for just a second were real.

My project proposal is a journalism column communicating that “environment is health.” I intend to reframe climate advocacy as a health issue to engage readers and promote sustainability. Within the pieces, I hope to incorporate recent literature findings about the impact of real-time climate issues relevant to Los Angeles to promote education and make information about the climate crisis digestible to readers without an environmental sciences background. I intend to consider how certain climate issues local to Los Angeles impact health while offering current solutions that audiences can implement individually or advocate for within their community. I feel that communicating the health impact of environmental crises and sustainability initiatives is an effective way to engage audiences. In the project, I hope to create a column that would be produced every month to bimonthly that examines climate issues to promote awareness and advocacy for climate mitigation. Within the pieces, I would like to make the articles engaging for all readers and include art media.

My RSO, Woodlums, recently embarked on a partnership with The Jream Foundation, which will bring outdoor rec and nature-focused workshops to Black and Brown kids in LAUSD, facilitated by our e-board members. Within this, we hope to incorporate art-based curriculum as well. We would like to document this journey in the form of a short (10-30 mins) documentary film that addresses inequity in access to green spaces, beaches, and outdoor education while shedding light on the huge impact that communion and creativity in nature can have on oppressed bodies and minds. The film would acknowledge not only the physical barriers, but cultural inaccess as well, to engaging with the outdoors and outdoor activities, and make an argument for the need for cultural relevance and representation as well as the potential for outdoor engagement to be a key to achieving long lasting sovereignty within Black, Brown, and low-income communities.

A 15-min. audio documentary weaves narrative writing, interviews, and underwater recordings to map a future of sustainable mussel aquaculture in Los Angeles. This project explores the social ecology and mythology of aquacultured mussels, from labs developing gene editing technologies, to sea ranching off Long Beach, to distribution chains and the dining table. The audio piece asks, "How can we envision and implement more holistic and sustainable local seafoodways in LA?" Our project will culminate in a dining experience in a community garden in mid-city L.A. using sustainably-sourced mussels with a discussion to follow. This event will bridge sound art, audio documentary, and taste samples in a collective, immersive experience for a group of twenty-five people. This project aims to map out sustainable seafood systems, spark cultural imagination about the life cycle of our foods, and strengthen community networks surrounding practical and everyday changes we can make to address climate change. We plan to use this project to launch a larger collaborative research initiative to investigate the social, ecological, and mythological narratives of the future of California aquaculture.

“How Baby Beavers Can Save Los Angeles”: a short film/documentary about the historical importance of beavers and salmon in thriving eco-systems; how their man-made decline devastated Native American lifeways and contributed to modern health disparities; and why recent baby beaver sightings in Palo Alto can inspire us to action.

My proposed project would tell this story through a mix of archival footage, environmental and health statistics/reporting, interviews, and narration. Shedding light on how things once were, I hope to inspire viewers to work toward an alternative Los Angeles that promotes much-needed health and justice for our environment and fellow beings.

I plan to visualize a future for Los Angeles that relies on community. A future where humans come together and realize that we are apart of the nature that we habitat and therefore pour into it as opposed to taking from it. This future sees a betterment as people who put forth beauty and life and in turn those around them follow suit. With this, changing Los Angeles for the better won’t be seen as a chore and more like second nature to those who view it as part of themselves.

This proposed project combines a variety of art forms including a contemporary composition for solo piano, “Three Passions for Our Tortured Planet” (2021), dance, soundscape design, projection and light design, and videography. The original music was conceived by composer Brian Field as a response to climate change and consists of three distinct movements: Fire, Glaciers, and Winds. My hope is to create an immersive experience for listeners by combining visual disciplines such as dance, sound, and light design with the existing piece of music. The end result is hopefully a three-part video series that sparks discourse about what creatives can bring to the fight for climate justice and how the arts can be used in a collaborative way for activism.

My envisioned project is called “On Wings”. Since my primary study is environmental data science with a focus on bird conservation, I want my project to be a discussion on how Los Angeles could become a more sustainable habitat for birds. I have worked as a freelance illustrator, thus my primary medium will be digital illustration and animation. Since habitat fragmentation caused by urbanization is a major cause for species extinction, my project will discuss how urban landscapes may contain the possibility of adapting into an artificial habitat for wildlife, bringing connection between their natural habitats.

Los Angeles, especially its coastlines, has provided sanctuary for many local and migratory birds like snowy plovers, California Least Tern, etc. In my project I want to envision how we could transform the existing landscape so that it can provide more ecological services to both people and birds. Specifically, how parts of the urban landscape could be redesigned to accommodate more wildlife, and become a transfer hub for migratory birds.

An evening listening to our University community’s perspectives on the impacts of climate change and intersectional environmental justice, as told through the art of poetry.

This would be both an open mic for students and an event featuring a poet from the community.

Aquaculture Mussel Seaweed Soup is an audio documentary that weaves narrative writing, interviews, and sound recordings in a story about sustainable aquaculture in Southern California. Focused on abalone and mussel farming, this project follows the social ecology of an aquaculture product, from a lab developing gene editing technologies and a mussel farm in Long Beach to local distribution chains and the dining table. This project will culminate in a dining experience in a community garden in mid-city L.A. using sustainably-sourced mussels that would be paired with a showcase of the audio work and a discussion to follow. This event would bridge sound art, audio documentary, and taste samples in an immersive experience. This project aims to map out sustainable seafood systems, spark cultural imagination about the life cycle of our foods, and strengthen community networks surrounding practical and everyday changes we can make to address climate change.

This community installation is intended as an ameliorative solution in reconciling environmental sustainability, food security, and intra-community support networks in South Central Los Angeles, where our University Park campus calls home.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, community fridges have propped up around the greater Los Angeles area as a community-oriented, grassroots-backed approach in assisting our city's most vulnerable residents in securing not only food and hygiene resources, but also in strengthening social ties within communities. Governmental bodies and charity have excluded a great many of its most downtrodden residents with means testing and an increasingly dissolution of social security nets. For many, times of need are omnipresent. Our goal is simple: reach this need while maintaining net-zero emissions, in a way that beautifies the community it aims to serve.

We have modeled a proposal, based on other succeeding projects, for a solar-powered community fridge and pantry in South Central to provide food, water, and hygiene products. The installation will be covered with murals, making the hub itself a communal art piece.

I would like to install a body of work that is focused on a site-specific sculptural installation. My idea for the piece emerges from a continuing body of work that I have been developing both independently and in academic settings for over three years now.

My work tends to have a considerably large scale, therefore, I would likely install one focal piece using the entire floor of the gallery to create an immersive space. The piece would be made up of 100 resin chickens and is a continuation of a series of paintings completed in March 2024.

Conceptually, this body of work is rooted in an investigation of late stage capitalism in its seductive cruelty. Human history is brimming with examples of our manipulation of the Earth and all its creatures. This exploitation had been heavily accelerated over the past few hundred years with the rise of colonialism and the industrial revolutions that followed; in the last one hundred years indeed, the issue has dramatically increased even further.

Chickens become symbols of consumption. The consumer society in which we live (in the West) utilises chickens in perverse, exploitative ways, as seen through the exhaustive mass-poultry industry. They are indeed a perfect microcosm of capitalist socio-economies, whose overall goals and habits in turn are harmful to the individual, the planet, to the working class, and to an extent, even to the ruling class, whom the system supposedly serves to benefit.

The aim of this series is to bring about questions about the institutions and conventions of consumer culture that continue to allow atrocities at local and global scales to occur, poisoning the land and water, disconnecting the consumer from the animal life that is lost in mass-meat agriculture, the consistent instant gratification and the idea that we should want all of this. Further, the piece will explore in particular hens and their role as the primary commodity of the poultry industry owes itself as a mirror to the reproductive social labour expected of women in a patriarchal capitalist society.