This project was featured in the College for Creative Studies Student Exhibition in 2022.

RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT:
This project evolved from researching and documenting an object, its meaning and function to deconstructing those elements into a typographic collage.

DECONSTRUCTING MEANING:
The object I had selected was an Ulu Knife my grandmother had gotten as a souvenir on an Alaskan Cruise. This object was perplexing to me, as it was mass produced with a steel blade, wooden handle + holder, and an embossed stamp of ‘ALASKA’ and an illustration of the state. The meaning behind the original object was to be used as a Woman’s Knife. This tool was multipurpose traditionally used by Inuit, Iñupiat, Yupik, and Aleut women. This would be used for carving meat, cutting bone, carving blocks of ice, skinning animals, cutting hair, and more. The design of the knife allows for someone with less upper body strength to do heavy duty cutting with less strength needed by distributing the weight differently.

DISCOVERING IDENTITY:
These tools were of great significance to these women, with cavings detailing life stories and some believed to have their spirit passed on within the tool. Seeing the Alaskan Souvineer so detached from its original meaning then lead to further research into the identity of womanhood.

TOOLS:
I then created the complimentary posters using projection techniques, combining physical pen marks, printed typography, photo scanning manipulation, inDesign, Illustrator and Photosho.