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About me

Ceilidh (kale) has practiced various art forms for over a decade, and enjoys theatre, visual art, composing, whispering sweet nothings at the sky, photography, and writing. They have “had a piano hobby” for over thirteen years. Though often asked what they want to be when they “grow up,” they have no intention of doing so (it sounds too serious).

Aside from the arts, they also enjoy making bird noises, pretending to be a dragon, and cantaloupe. Kale can usually be found with a pen in their hand, pocket, hair—or at least somewhere in their general vicinity.

Contact

Email: [email protected]
Instagram: @suitcasedragon

Resume (available upon request)

Portfolio

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Illustration

I like drawing funky little creatures, fluffy clothes, and occasionally backgrounds, but my real love has always been drawing real and imagined figures.

I began to dive into comics during the spring and summer of 2022, with a comics course in the spring and a three week intensive over the summer.

The following are short one-page work, mainly self-portrait comics.

One of my finals in Fall 2021 was an aptly termed “challenge” to write a poem and somehow illustrate it. While the assignment was left very open in terms of what could be considered illustration (ranging from photography to edited images to vector design, etc.), I chose to try to illustrate it in digital art. Using Procreate, I illustrated and formatted my free-verse poem in booklet form over the course of three days.

This short work, titled “metaphor,” features a reworked original character.

> See also: Both False & True Anthology, Poetry, The Dictionarium


Fine art

Painting was my main art form for nearly seven years, starting when I was quite young. I consider myself foundationally a painter; I painted very little between 2017 and 2022.

I have always loved to draw people; they have been a lifelong study of mine. As my style permits, I like to draw people as they are, being uninterested in both caricature and the “perfection” of traditional painted portraits.

The idea that a drawing represents the person differently, not better or worse, has been one of the things I have held on to through the saturation of the “ideal” in the modern day.

I took a screenprinting class for the first time in the fall semester of 2019. I’ve been obsessed with screenprinting ever since. Likewise, I have experience with softcut block printing and enjoy making stamps.

The below works were fun to create and have some personality that sometimes feels absent from my more meticulously registered prints. Most of the works below were registered by eyeballing the print; an intentional choice to create a offset / contrasting effect.


Graphic design

As a big fan of colorful palettes, clean styles, serifs, pattern / pattern subversion, and biomorphic shapes, my graphic design is all over the map. I enjoy experimenting with filters and palettes as well as other fine-tune-y tech things, though I do gravitate towards flat, discrete colors over gradients.

I work in both vector and raster; I am proficient in Procreate and Vectornator, with some skill in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I have a passing acquaintance with InDesign.

I enjoy drawing fun banners; the most recent are for the mascot of the Partnered Discord The Creative Collective, and include the server’s mascot (Bunnelle).

Emote / emoji sets are a good way to test expressions and figure out what the “essential” part of an expression is, and how to exaggerate it.


Coding / web design

  • The Dictionarium
    Original fantasy-steampunk worldbuilding wiki site. Contains characters, maps, definitions, diegetic music, and, of course, art. Built using WordPress, with some HTML / CSS tweaks to the preexisting theme.
  • Wall
    Coded from scratch, “Wall” uses original photography and the Bootstrap framework.

As an additional hobby, I occasionally code Bootstrap decorations for a multipurpose character storage site known as Toyhou.se. Some of them can be found here.

> See also: Poetry


Music & audio – Composition, covers, voice acting, recording & editing

“ten-legged octopus,” original short theme. Composed in Musescore. Personal work. 2022.
“Remember This Place,” original short song. Composed in Musescore. Project work. 2022.
“applepup’s theme,” original short song. Composed in Musescore. Commission work. 2022.
“two kinds of love,” original song. Composed in Musescore and polished in Reaper. Personal work. 2022.
“Song for the Star-Filled Expanse,” original short song. Composed in Musescore. Project work. 2022.
“come back theme,” original short song. Composed in Musescore and polished in Reaper. Commission work. 2022.
Personal work.
Commission work.
Commission work.


Writing

  • Poetry
  • Prose
  • Essays
  • Other writing

I work in rhyming, free verse, illustrated, and occasionally generative poetry.

  • I cannot go (generative poetry using Perchance engine)

Most of my recent prose appears very similar to, or is a semi-fusion with, the style of my free-verse poetry. Though my first love is more middle-grade style adventure, a lot of my writing has lately been created as a way to explore a less straightforward storyline.

I often write technical or instructional content. This is due in part to managing a Discord server, in addition to website setup, event planning, and more. I also frequently find myself proofreading and / or editing my own work and that of my peers.

> See also: Both False & True Anthology, /ˌmanəˈfestō/


Photo & Video

The presentation below was an experimental project, attempting to capture my “tourist philosophy” of visiting a new place by using photography and text. The slide below shows the “gallery view” of the project; the full version (with slide comments) can be found here.

The video below was sourced from the raw footage spanning twelve years, with all but two clips filmed myself, and edited in Adobe Premiere. In an attempt to describe my “DREAMHOME,” I have made myself and the viewer into loving observers of a psychedelic, nostalgia-tinted montage that attempts to capture the disorientation of childhood memory.

Final for CP: Studio (SAIC) research project: DREAMHOME Fall 2021. Includes original cover of “Send In the Clowns” on piano, broken up throughout. All other footage and audio is mine.

in its most essential form, the physical world is chaos brought into order masquerading as chaos. anticipatory of the fulcrum, as is everything we have ever known; indeed.

The above carefully-curated nonsense was posted as part of a final project in Fall of 2020. The original concept of the project was to film a series of 2x speed videos of organizing / disorganizing various household objects such as pens, books, mail, and more. However, it evolved into an exploration of and homage to the DADA movement, which has always fascinated me.

The clip below is the most successful of the final videos. It is meant to be played on eternal repeat as a piece of absurdist performance art. The entire project was posted as a website, but the site has since crashed due to lack of maintenance.

Art 140 final project, 2020. Exploring concepts of Dada / DADA art.
Originally hosted on https://tidy.polydidact.org/

> See also: “tidy” Multimedia project


Fabric / textile

“Bunnies in the Grass,” sleeves and block-printed applique on an upcycled sweatshirt.

“Mme. Butterfly” quilt, created in Fall 2022 for the Tell Me a Story assignment.


Projects & collaborations – Larger projects, collaborations & contributions

Both False & True anthology, an offshoot of the small writing group Procrastinating Writers United, was compiled and edited by myself and the co-founder of the writing group. One year of contacting young authors, illustrating, editing, and formatting later, the anthology was self-published in 2019 as a paperback through Barnes & Noble Press.

> See also: Prose, publications,


Other / misc. – Projects that do not fit cleanly into the categories above.

An art-and-values analysis created November 2022, /ˌmanəˈfestō/ uses both visual art and text-based approaches to explore the art process.

“tidy”
Multimedia project (music, video performance, webpage)
March 2022

A reworked concept from late 2020, “tidy” is a love letter to Dada art. The full webpage (which can be found here) includes the subtitle “close to the beginning, where i was to find the qualifying sandwich, in” – a direct reference to Hannah Hoch’s famous work “Cut with the kitchen knife,” as well as an oblique reference to nonsensical Dada naming conventions.

The work itself is an exploration of “tidying up,” whatever that may mean; it also investigates how the speed of the music influences the viewer’s perception of the speed of the video, which is static throughout.

Visit the webpage by clicking here.


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Creative education – Classes, mentorships, and misc. educational opportunities

From kindergarten through my junior year of high school, I was educated in a mishmash homeschool style that included workbooks, outside classes, “lifelong learning,” and dual-enrollment at my local community college. My senior year was completed at a charter school, and I enrolled at my local community college. After completing two years of community college and most of my general education courses, I transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to pursue a BFA.


Galleries & exhibitions – Outside work features

Additionally, my poem was a finalist in the 2015 Time for Kids poetry contest judged by Ken Nesbitt.


Publications – Submissions, interviews, and other

2023

March“Notes on SAIC’s updated mask policy,” illustrated essay analysis, posted online to the F Newsmagazine site. Not available for purchase.

February“I’m Sure My Professor Can Read,” single-panel comic, printed in the comics section of F Newsmagazine. Not available for purchase.
January“I’m Sure My Professor Can Read,” single-panel comic, posted online to the F Newsmagazine site. Not available for purchase.

2022

November – “Tea Time,” 1 page comic, submitted to Xerox Candy Bar‘s fall zine: Mealtimes. Not available for purchase.
May – “fractal,” 3 page comic, submitted to Xerox Candy Bar‘s spring zine: Y/N Here. Not available for purchase.

2021

October“Artist Feature,” interview, included in the first issue of the Gaygenda magazine. No longer available for purchase.

2019

May“Both False & True,” multiple pieces of short fiction, poetry, and interior illustrations, anthology published through Barnes & Noble Press. Available for purchase here.

kale // suitcasedragon
multimedia portfolio