About

Being born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri meant that I always had art around me. It’s engrained in my city and family; I knew from a very young age that I wanted to go into the arts. After much trial and error I found sets and props. I love everything from the main set piece to the magazines on the table. The iconic prop everyone who’s done the show has made, to the customized locket the actress asked for to get into character. The creative problem solving, ingenuity, and constant learning keep me perpetually intrigued. I have done many projects that I’m proud of but I can’t wait to take my training to the next level.

Technical Drawings

CAD

For my first CAD lesson I drafted something I will make countless of in my career- a flat. The colors coordinate to different materials with green being 1x4 lumber and yellow being the facing. Red is for spacing in order to measure the distance between the toggles and to separate the back and side view.

I then put the internal and external measurements in. This is in millimeters as my current college is in the UK.

Fun Home first sketch

My most recent project, done in my Scenic Design class at the Center Of Creative Arts (COCA). The musical *Fun Home* is set in a preserved historical home and the main character’s college dorm room.
My concept consisted of a base set (the home) that had two moving components to create the dorm set: a futon, that served as the couch in the house, would be folded out to make a bed, and a raked wall on SL would be moved forward and turned around to a poster-covered wall.

Fun Home Final Plan

I finalized the measurements of each component and laid it out in a 1/4inch = 1 foot scale. I now had a solid guide for my model.

Models

Fun Home set model

In the same scale as the plans, I made a 3D model of the set. Here I brought in the colors and textures. The desk at DSR is where the adult version of the main character sits and observes her childhood playing out. The section of wall behind the desk helps bring the adult character out of the action as well as alludes to more of the house, rather than just an open living room. Both the wall section and the doorway at UC allow for many types of entrances and exits.
I made the wood of the desk slightly lighter than any other on the set to bring it out. The walls of the home are dark cherry wood to evoke the historical feeling. For the décor the main word in my head was ‘gaudy’. This home is made to be shown off, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s pleasing to the eye. The father bought this house as a passion project but he doesn’t have the balance of historical and 70’s furniture down yet.

Below are audience views of the home and dorm set.

The dorm wall is green and more run-down to contrast the well kept home. Posters on the wall finally show the daughter’s interests, as opposed to the décor at home which was dictated by the dad. The posters being of what she wants signifies, and helps to illustrate, the freedom she feels at college.

Here I would put all of Upstage in a blackout to fully create that distance.

Wagon Wreckage

The wagon itself was part of a Wild West toy set I had as a kid. When I came across it again, not looking its best, I decided to make something of it. The wagon is mounted on foam board inside the lid of a small shallow box (the whole model is about 13x13cm). The hood of the wagon is propped on rocks carved out of foam board, and the small rocks spotting the ground are made from model moss mixed with glue that I then painted a grey-brown.

Props

Rusty Cleaver

One of my favorite things to do is age/weather objects. I had the vision for an old rusty cleaver, but not being allowed to ruin one from our kitchen, I formed one myself.

I bought dense EVA foam and cut out my preliminary shape with a craft knife. I then used a Dremel to shape, nick, and texturize it.

I weathered the handle where it would have the most friction. As for the blade, I used iridescent silver paint to add touches of the original metal, especially around the sharpest parts of the blade. For rust, I started with dark brown, then light brown, then brown mixed with orange, all the way up until I was applying pure orange.

Burnt Ends

For a fake food unit I made the BBQ classic- burnt ends. I made a mold by pouring plaster over clay in the shape of the burnt ends, when that dried I carved out the clay and filled the mold with latex. I let the latex dry until it was 1/4in thick and poured out the excess. When they were fully dry I took them out of the mold and painted them. I then covered them in shellac to make them glossy.

Paint

Rusty Metal

To make this look I painted plywood with the dark basecoat and gradually added lighter and lighter oranges and reds. I then made drips with a yellow wash.

Fake Woodgrain

I painted plywood with the base yellow color, let that fully dry, then used the woodgraining tool showed to the right with a dark wash to create the grain.

Woodworking

Reinforced Chair

Actors were going to stand on chairs during a show so we reinforced them. This chair was the hardest out of the batch as the original seat was so warped it was popping in and out. I cut inch thick plywood to the shape of the bottom of the chair on the bandsaw and used an abundance of clamps to keep the seat popped the correct way.

I then secured it with screws from the sides and finished it off by color matching paint and painting the bottom in case it was ever revealed during the show.

Lathe Christmas Tree

The lathe is one of my favorite tools to use. I find it equal parts challenging and satisfying, which makes it worth it.

Before winter break I decided to make a decoration for my family. I went with a simple tree design.

I carved most of it on the lathe, then cut it free with extra room on the top and used a belt sander to make the pointed tip.

Candlestick

This was made my first time using the lathe. I played around with ideas and techniques until I got something I liked.

Restored Clock

My Grandparents came to me with this clock from the early 1900s that had a large chip in it. I filled the chip with Plastic Wood, sanded that down, then color matched paint.

Book/CD Holder

This was done for my Woodworking class at school. We crafted a book/CD holder with a sliding middle divider out of one piece of wood. Below is my initial layout.

From that we cut, shaped, fastened, and stained to create the finished product shown below.

Tools used:
Circular Power Saw
Jigsaw
Compound Miter Saw
Power Jointer
Hand Planer
Drill
Chisel
Mallet
File

Cheese Boards

I taped Walnut and Maple slabs together and cut the wave on the bandsaw. I then mismatched them and glued them together. I ran a router around the outside to give them a patterned dip.

For the grip on the board on the left I used a jigsaw to cut the basic shape and a spindle sander to create the finger grapes. And for the board on the right, the hanging hole was made with a paddle bit and a router to round off the edge.

Welding

I’ve learned the basics of welding by making a basic metal frame. I cut my material with a metal miter saw, giving them 45 degree ends. I then cleaned up the ends with an angle grinder, clamped the pieces in place, and welded them together. I then made it flush using the angle grinder again.

Scenic Art

wUNDERland

An original COCA production, wUNDERland is a Hip-Hop dance retelling of Alice In Wonderland. The set piece that I built on my own was an abstract, asymmetrical hat instillation for The Mad Hatter’s dance. This was designed by professors of Architecture at Washington University, I built off of their technical drawings.

Below are the oblong rings that several of the ropes connected to, creating movement in the wall and making spaces that The Mad Hatter could interact with and dance through.

I secured hats to the ropes with safety pins, putting them at as many different angles as possible and dispersing the colors.

Final product is below

Matilda

Also at COCA, our Matilda set had floor to ceiling sliding doors that divided the set in half for scene changes. The doors were made of flats and met in the middle at a slant.

The slant was particularly hard to make as it used angled flats.

The flats in the shop.

The final product hung up on the track. View from the back.

Kaleidoscope Crown by Ashleigh Akilah Rucker

My biggest design opportunity so far, made possible by a grant from ReImagine- a national initiative to create more BIPOC plays for young audiences.

Set in an African village where mystical things keep happening, the young daughter of the matriarch finds her hair magically changing colors. Through accepting herself and her gift, she helps break her village out of its’ traditional ways.

Kaleidoscope Crown made it’s world premiere as an intricate reading at COCA, I was responsible for conceptualizing and creating the projected sets.

With this being the first production of the play, I had no designs to reference. It was both scary and freeing, I had to trust myself.

I wanted the mystical nature of the play to be apparent from the very beginning, so made each location “kaleidoscoped” by running the images through a filter and adjusting the X and Y axis until I reached what I liked. The environments I made were the town center, a wooded area, the family home, and Nia (the main character)’s bedroom complete with a moon.

Below is the original photo and kalidoscoped version of the town center. The script called for a big, sturdy tree. I made sure to incorporate and maintain that, but by including just the trunk in the final version, it made the only visible part of the tree the sturdiest.