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‍How does your participation in Make-It-Pop! resonate with the exhibition's emphasis on vibrant colors, graphic styles, and ironic subject matters?

My participation in Make-It-Pop! feels like a natural fit because the exhibition’s focus on bold color, graphic language, and irony reflects the core of my approach. I’m drawn to pop aesthetics because they allow me to use humor, contradiction, and visual punch to explore subject matter that is often uncomfortable.

The graphic style and layered composition connect directly to my background in both fine art and design. I’m interested in how polished, playful, or “pretty” aesthetics can carry uncomfortable truths especially when addressing gender bias, objectification, and cultural stereotypes.

What are your aspirations for viewers' takeaways from experiencing your artwork showcased at the Make-It-Pop! group exhibition at InLiquid Gallery?

My hope is that viewers are initially drawn in by the bold color, pop imagery, and graphic layering, but then begin to recognize the deeper commentary underneath. I want the work to feel visually engaging, even playful at first, and then slowly reveal itself as more complex and confrontational. If someone walks away questioning those stereotypes or seeing something familiar in a new way, then the work has done what I intended. I also hope the overall feeling is empowering, because while the work critiques objectification, it’s equally about agency, resilience, and reclaiming identity.

You layer silk screened pop culture icons to challenge gender bias and objectification. Is there a type of certain icon you most frequently re-contextualize? Or is it a mix of particular characters and people?

It’s usually a mix of icons and characters, but there are definitely a few images that I return to repeatedly. One of the most consistent is the silhouette of a sexualized female figure. She often appears small and almost secondary within the composition, placed in unexpected areas. I repeat her partly because I’m drawn to the graphic power of the image, but more importantly because of what she represents. Depending on the context, she can function as commentary, sometimes even sarcasm, especially when she’s contrasted against imagery that suggests innocence or softness. That tension is where a lot of the meaning lives for me.

Another recurring element in my work is pattern, particularly floral patterning. I use it as a background layer or visual texture to create complexity and nuance, but it also carries symbolic weight. Floral prints often reference traditional ideas of femininity, and for me they become a shorthand for feminism and gender expectations. Growing up, I had loud 1970s floral wallpaper in my bedroom, so the patterns are also personal—an homage to a kind of “girlishness” that was assigned to me early on and normalized as a stereotype.

In that way, pattern becomes both decorative and conceptual. It’s not just visual repetition, it’s also a reference to social patterns: the ways gender roles are reinforced, repeated, and absorbed over time.

Your works featured in this exhibition use typography throughout your canvases with words such as “Good girls aren’t hungry or furious. All the things that make a man human are a girl's dirty little secret.” and “Self-saving princess.”. How does the use of typography further enhance the messages of your artwork and how do you find which quotes to reference?

Typography plays a major role in my work because language is often where gender bias begins—quietly, casually, and repeatedly. The phrases I use aren’t random; they’re the kinds of statements women absorb over time, whether through media, culture, or everyday conversation. By placing them directly onto the piece, I’m making those messages impossible to ignore.

​My intention is for the text to clarify and intensify the meaning of the imagery. Sometimes it reinforces what the viewer is already sensing, and other times it disrupts the visual narrative by adding irony, tension, or contradiction. In many pieces, the typography becomes an additional layer of confrontation, almost like a voice speaking over the image.

I find quotes in a few different ways. Some come from vintage magazines and advertisements, where the language is often shockingly blunt when you see it outside of its original context. Others are phrases I’ve heard throughout my life, things that feel ingrained in culture and memory. I’m drawn to lines that feel familiar, even if they’re uncomfortable, because that familiarity is part of the point.

As a graphic designer by trade, I also love the visual power of words. I treat typography as both language and form using it as shape, texture, and composition to support the imagery and strengthen the overall message.

You mention using materials such as photo-silkscreens, painting, and spray paint then layering, juxtaposing, and overlapping images. In addition, you state that your silkscreen process mimics a paintbrush. Could you expand upon how you accomplish this multi-disciplinary process?

Traditional printmaking is often associated with producing multiples or editions, and that’s how I was formally trained. But I intentionally deviated from that structure because I’m more interested in variation than repetition. I treat the silkscreen as another mark-making tool, similar to a paintbrush or charcoal, rather than as a method for replication.

Even when I reuse an image, I build each work through layering and responding to what’s already happening on the surface. The silkscreen allows me to push ink in a way that feels gestural, and depending on pressure, transparency, and registration, the same image can appear sharp, faded, distorted, or fragmented.

I integrate painting and spray paint directly into the process, working in multiple layers so the final piece evolves through both intention and experimentation. Some decisions are planned from the beginning, but I also leave room for the unexpected, allowing the composition to shift as I respond to what the surface needs.

Your work questions the roles imposed on women through roles that are misogynistically assigned to them, but it also celebrates women through the empowerment of your artistic expression and selective photographic choices. How do you balance both of these dimensions?

I often use seductive female figures because that’s the visual language pop culture constantly assigns to women. But I re-contextualize them through scale, placement, layering, and text so they no longer function as passive objects. Instead, they become confrontational, ironic, or empowered.

That choice is also intentional because it acknowledges that women can use sexuality as power. If women have been exploited through imagery for so long, then why not exploit the exploiter?