WEARABLE

For this project, we were tasked with creating a wearable sculpture. I constructed mine entirely from buttons, hot glue, wire, and tinfoil. The piece explores the naivety of youth and the way expectations can quietly shape — and sometimes restrict — a person’s sense of self.

The sculpture takes on an organic, coral-like form, contradicting the materials its made of. This contradiction is intentional. The buttons cluster together to resemble coral — something alive and intricate — yet each element is uniform and predetermined. This tension reflects the experience of growing up under unrealistic expectations: appearing vibrant and full of possibility while being subtly structured by external pressures.

Coral is home to a large percentage of ocean life, yet it exists only in limited regions of the ocean. I was drawn to this paradox. It mirrors the idea of naivety, holding an abundance of thoughts, dreams, and imagined futures, yet lacking the breadth of lived experience. Viewing the world through “rose-colored lens” can feel beautiful and expansive, but it can also create fragility. Like coral, it is both resilient and vulnerable.