Mia Santino
she/her
Design Major
miasantino.myportfolio.com
Hello! I am Mia Santino. I am a Design graduate from the
University of San Francisco. I am a creative thinker in constant
pursuit of making art for the world. I believe a designer’s role is
to inspire their audience to think differently and efficiently. My project Spilled Thoughts conceptually represents the critical
thinking that pushes and inspires me as an artist and designer. I aim to have my audience appreciate the idea that no one will know yourself better than yourself.
Spilled Thoughts is a multimedia book that displays my artwork from various moments with myself. I have found that it is in these moments, when I am just with myself and my thoughts, that I truly discover the most about who I am. These discoveries lead me to feel inspired as an artist and inspired to design and make art that is authentic to me but also gets my audience thinking in their own conceptual and self-reflective way.
As I continue on this journey of self discovery, and reflect back on how far I have come as an artist, designer, and whole person, I have realized that at times this expedition can be lonely or even dark. To emphasize the idea of overflowing thoughts, I leaned into heavy collage work and mixed media to create the effect of how my mind feels. My project acknowledges that the thoughts that run through our minds are a lot messier and explosive than we imagine. In this book and installation I am aiming to bridge a gap between concept and reality by accepting that sometimes we just need to spill those convoluted thoughts. I would not be the artist and designer I am today without using this concept to spill my own thoughts into my work.
