Digital Collections Willamette University
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Rachel Belfrom 2025
Full text linkWithin O.U.R world, there lies a biopunk-inspired character, Nova. A hand painted, 18-inch tall Figurine. Through her, I explore three themes that matter deeply to me which is inclusivity, identity, and mental health, especially for people who often feel unseen or misunderstood.
Nova is a humanoid whose body has been altered through forced technology. She lives in a society where her senses and perceptions are controlled, and certain parts of the world are hidden from her. But she begins experiencing glitches, brief moments where she sees more than she is allowed to. Instead of seeing these moments as insight or a gift, Nova believes she is the error.
That feeling of people insisting that you are the problem or that you are broken simply for being yourself became the emotional core of my project
Emma Knapton 2025
Full text linkDisplaced Embers is a 4 minute stop-motion animated film that depicts human and animal displacement through the legend of Bigfoot, revealing the need for cultural considerations when building climate resilience.
Ember, a Bigfoot cryptid, is forced to leave home due to a natural disaster and travels in search of a new one. She struggles to find a preferable place to live that is not impacted by humans. This film is based off of the legend and conspiracy of Bigfoot because the character of Bigfoot is humanoid, creating separation between reality and fiction that can effectively touch upon the urgent subject of the climate crisis. This film seeks to bring awareness about the importance of climate resiliency and the devastating effects of displacement
Fionna James 2025
No full textMemory Garden is a series of mixed media illustrations on watercolor paper that is inspired by my time spent during the summers at each of my grandparent’s houses. After my grandma Anne passed away in January I narrowed in on my relationships to my grandmothers and explored both their similarities and differences with one another. The concept of a garden ties them together literally because they were both amazing gardeners and they each studied landscape architecture. Throughout the summer I spent time working in my sketchbooks and doing creative research to find common threads between the two of them. The finished work encompasses this research and represents the symbols and narrative that I discovered over the summer. The process is an exploration of how the identities we hold of others are non-linear and ever-changing in nature. The finished work aims to recontextualize how memory shapes relationships, and hopefully will connect with others reflecting on their own personal histories. While developing this project I wanted to infiltrate the construct I had made up of where my art can exist in the world. I tried my best to depart from the black and white thinking I'd been doing of what is fine art vs what is illustration
Gia Whitlock, 2025
No full text"We were all in line for coffee, we were all twerking. I was also working on a quilt, and I never quilt."
Excerpt from my dream journal,
October, 2024
For my thesis project, I researched and analyzed my dream content from the year 2024, found in five hand-written journals. I searched my writing for commonly occurring themes and paired it with academic and internet research to explain their possible meanings. Based on the research, this paper centers around dream symbols of the bathroom and the house as well as on visitation from loved ones who have passed away. Possible dream meanings combine the story of my trajectory through the MFA program and end in a tale a personal transformation and evolution in my work
Tessa Ernsperger 2025
No full textA 4 minute 2D animated short film about a little ghost with agoraphobia who gets locked out of the house he haunts, and then goes on an amazing adventure all over town when he finds a rainbow umbrella. Music by Matthew J Webster and has been used with his permission. The film opens with a little ghost staring out a window with disinterest. He then begins to fly around his house, dancing with loops and twirls. Until he accidently flies out the door, which closes behind him with a slam. He's locked outside! Soon it begins to rain, and so he decides to find shelter elsewhere. After a while, the rain begins to go away, and that's when he spots a rainbow umbrella sitting on the sidewalk near him. He flies over to investigate, and when he lifts it up to inspect the object, the wind suddenly picks up! And off he goes! He begins to fly all over town, over the trees, buildings, and fountains! He is so scared, and all he wants is to go back home. Suddenly he shoots high up into the clouds and opens his eyes to see a marvelous sunset just before him. His eyes widen, and he smiles, knowing finally that he is right where he needs to be
Nico Bakh 2025
No full textThis thesis highlights the creation and application of Bakhchin: an ornamental display typeface developed through a process of typographic deconstruction and cultural reflection. Drawing from personal history as a second-generation American with Georgian, Armenian, and Russian influences, the project explores how language, memory, and identity are interwoven through typographic form. Originating from a core memory and experience of creating Cyrillic letters from a roman alphabet for memorial ribbons in a family floral business, the typeface evolves into an immersive installation exploring themes of identity.
Research into experimental typographers and designers—such as Herb Lubalin, Massimo Vignelli, and Eikou Zhang, informs the project’s focus on craft, calligraphy and architectural principles of structure, scale, and spatial interactions. The calla lily, a flower culturally associated with masculinity, becomes the foundational reference for the typeface’s visual characteristics. Words embedded with cultural and personal significance, including terms tied to gender expression, homophobia, and silence are recontextualized to reclaim agency and challenge inherited cultural constructs.
The installation features cyanotype prints, embroidery, newsprint, patterns, projection, gold-cut stencils, and an immersive, sanctuary-like environment to examine how typography can function simultaneously as artifact, narrative, and spatial experience. Influences from immersive installations, contemporary art, and floral arrangements shape the multisensory experience of the space. Through these materials, Bakhchin becomes both a typographic system and a tool in exploring themes of reconstruction, queerness, silence, and cultural inheritance.
Ultimately, the project positions typography as a medium capable of articulating complex themes. Bakhchin reflects the fragility, fluidity, and resilience of identity as a second-generation American—by reclaiming language as both personal and collective connection, and inviting viewers to encounter identity through form, image, and light— by proudly wearing blue
Ellyse Egan 2025
Full text linkThe Steel Archive is the sculptural exploration of a steel box that becomes both metaphor and mirror—an object through which I investigate memory, time, and the vessel of the self. What began as the fabrication of a container expanded into a meditation on containment, reflection, and presence. By reinterpreting the box beyond its utilitarian logic, I approach it as a personal archive: a conceptual space that holds the residue of making, the traces of experience, and the relationship between body and object. In its hollow interior and polished skin, the box transforms into a device for observing how meaning is held, stored, and refracted through material form
Katelyn Tran 2025
No full textQUỲNH is a 3D-printed blind-box toy series that explores my experiences as a second-generation Vietnamese American person. The series includes 7 unique figures, each resembling various foods that I ate growing up. Each figure has its own unique story and visuals relating back to my experience culturally, as a designer/illustrator, and as a collector. They are also paired with a collectable card that has an illustration and short description of the figures’ connection to my experience. This project overall is a representation of my combined skills, wide exploration and thoughtful production process.
I was inspired to create this project as a way to reconnect with my Vietnamese identity and navigate my struggles with belonging. Throughout the whole process, I would ask myself the same question: “Who am I?” I wanted to create a body of work that other second-generation Vietnamese Americans who are struggling with their cultural identity can see themselves in, as well as encourage them to reflect on their own experiences and share them with others. This is reflected in the ambiguous names for each figure, allowing each person to connect their own reason to the figures.
This blind-box series not only allowed me to explore my experiences as a second-generation Vietnamese-American, it also allowed me to form new relationships, strengthen existing ones, and become a little bit more comfortable with just being myself
Oliver Owens 2025
Full text linkTometoiled is a fantasy roleplaying game which draws upon many different inspirational sources to create something which feels both familiar and new. Pulling from more traditional fantasy (ie. gothic, high fantasy) to weirder fantasy (ie. 70’s pulp and art house films) as well as the occult symbolisms of tarot, victorian illustrations, engravings, and illuminated manuscripts. This game allows players to access a more embodied gameplay experience by focusing on engaged storytelling and sensory descriptions. Players will be guided through stories told by the game master and interact with the world around them based on the cards in their decks/hands. These cards are highly reminiscent of tarot, being fully illustrated with loads of symbols held within. It differs from traditional tarot by employing the five sensory organs in place of the four suits of tarot (wands, swords, cups, and coins). These new suits are to give the GM and players descriptive examples of what their characters are experiencing, as opposed to rolling dice to see what happens (as is commonplace in most other TTRPG’s). This game in addition to being an RPG is a deckbuilder game, where the players and game master are “leveling up” by adding additional cards to their decks/hands giving them more options in their experience. There is no goal to a roleplaying game other than to tell great stories, however in tometoiled the character creation process allows players to have personalized “life goal” for their characters, giving a stronger sense of personality and direction to the narratives created. Tometoiled thrives by not over encumbering any GM or player with too many rules which are set in stone, allowing for exploration and creativity. Some sections of the book and cards are not fully defined and give room for one's imagination to wander