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Collage
Time Capsule Project: Unnamed
For anyone who understands the deeply etched fear of being asked what you did last Tuesday and not remembering the answer.
How it started
After a particularly bleak week in which it felt as though my life was falling apart, I leaned heavy into the pity party. So this is what my life has turned out to be huh? In my ___th week of life? I did the math. 1250. What a nice even number.
Feeling particularly self indulgent, I gathered up photos from the last 7 days, and slapped the pretty number on top to post to my Instagram story as a proclamation of how little I had my sh*t together despite the volume of time I’d spent on earth.
Then, I did it again the next week. And the next. And
Check Out Last Month
NOVEMBER 2025
What the process looks like
While every collage is different, it typically consists of bouncing back and forth between Capcut, PicCollage, and SCRL, gaining ideas from and giving ideas to my collage as it constructs itself with my help. Though I have experience with Photoshop, Lightroom, After Effects, and Canva this project's conception occurred in everyday accessible apps and it's been a joy stretching the boundaries of these more 'limited' but less bloated programs.
A true collaboration between me and my life that has me ooo-ing, ahh-ing, and aww-ing as I pour over the details.
What it means to me
This project has helped me to reflect on my life and improve it in the same process. When I was 15 years old, I created a blog titled Objectively Myself, not with the goal of gaining any readers, but simply to see if there was a way to truly catalog the entirety of a person’s existence. It included my diary, any photos I’d taken, my playlist for the day, a photo of my planner, even screenshots of my food journal.
A Note From the Editor: kids should not have unrestricted access to the internet. Anyhow…
It pained me to think of a life lived without the ability to recall it. Did it even happen? I’ve always lacked emotional object permanence. Though I’ve grown to understand there is no way for others to truly know someone in the same way they know themselves, creating my collages has become a far less quantitatively focused means of capturing my story. Gathering the photos and videos from my life every week gives me a moment to reflect upon my experiences, posting them permits my peers to decipher their own understanding of my life, and allows me to look back on what has been before me as I am now. Though not every week is chock full of catastrophe, catharsis, or calls to adventure. That’s when I really have to look.
When I began my time capsules, I was at a rather chaotic time in my life. I was traveling, changing careers, straining friendships, and finding myself in all manner of hijinks and commotion. But inevitably the dust settled, and while I had no intention of stopping the series, I found myself uncertain as to what it would now contain. I went for one of my therapeutically recommended thought walks, gazing at the soft pink cotton candy clouds and darkened silhouettes of tree branches against them. I noted the comically burnt out bulbs in storefront signs spelling new statements. I paused at the layered graffiti I passed regularly. Honed in on a drip down my iced passionfruit boba cup. Took note of the colors that jumped out at me repeatedly. In the same way I’d been capturing pictures of pigeons as a reminder that there was singularity even in the oft overlooked, I began to feel that way about everything.
Everything offered itself up to be seen. The world has become brighter, louder, and more colorful, and I relish in my gratitude at my ability to see it.
Check it all out here
More digital collage
Sometimes it's not about a week. Could be another moment. Or a vibe. A hue.
Tactile collage
My creativity blooms under limitations. See how I choose to use what I’ve physically gotten my hands on.
Writing
Always a Storyteller
There isn’t a single stage in my life I could point to in which I didn’t identify as an entertainer. Be it on a stage or in my tightest knit circles, I’ve found solid identity and utility in being able to amuse those around me. Every court needs a jester, every campfire a bard. Yet, much like my visual arts, I thought myself uncreative as my fictional faucet didn’t flow freely. I dabbled in occasional short stories, but was otherwise more or less ‘confined’ to the real world. How did my younger self not see the boundless narrative opportunities that already wove themselves together.
While I still dip my toes into imagined realms, I’ve found a joy in both celebrating and interrogating that which already is.
Misadventures of Aaliyah Lew
There came a point where I’d told some of my travel stories so frequently that I’d perfected the recipe. A smidge of this to help enhance that. Know what to add, what to leave it. And after my oh so patient family had heard the many retellings they recognized when it was ready to package up for listeners to take home.
‘You could honestly make a memoir’, ‘You have to tell the one where...’, ‘You really should be writing these down’. With enough encouragement, and maybe a sufficiently inflated ego, I agreed that it was time to start putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard).
Misadventures of Aaliyah Lew is a place to share my own stories, and the stories of those I meet. Through a mix of vignettes, narrative nonfiction, and other memoir formats, I hope not only to detail my own experiences, but those of others, drawing connections between the two and the reader. It is a collaboration connecting us around the campfire.
A Sad Slut's Aside
In my head I consider A Sad Slut’s Aside to be the supplementary soliloquies to my misadventures. While Misadventures of Aaliyah Lew contains my thoughts and perspectives in real time with the events they correlate to, ASSA is a place for all disembodied streams of consciousness to form. Sort of my life’s annotations.
Less narratively focused, I enjoy exploring flash essays, poetry, or other prose to break down my breakdowns and help me discern my inner dialogue. Think of it as a curated diary.
Video Editing
I like cutting stuff up and putting it back together. I like music. I like precision. I like storytelling. Perfect storm.
Performance Edits
In my time as a wedding band manager’s executive assistant and event supervisor (what a mouthful!) I was tasked as his promotional video editor! Feel free to take a look.
CONTACT ME FOR MORE SAMPLESPersonal Content
Sometimes text alone feels insufficient in eliciting the reaction I hope to extract from my listeners. So I make them watchers too.
GANDER YONDERArt
Ever in beauty
Nightmare series
Why nightmares?
After a particularly visceral dream that left its ghostly mark on my roused body, I needed to illustrate the image that had been burned into my brain. I hadn’t drawn in over a year, and only done so digitally once, but I began passing hours, mind quiet with focus, in efforts to depict the disturbing scene my brain envisioned. Hours became days, and upon its completion I came to realize that my mind had been more at rest throughout its creation than it had been during any night of REM over the last few months.
This was my opportunity to reclaim. If my nightmares are meant to strip my sleep clean of any peaceful rest, then I’d use those same nightmares to find that same quiet in my waking hours. Processing and peace. How transformatively restful.
I have only created the one thus far, but believe you me, there’s an extensive backlog and endless supply of bump in the night terrors to gratuitously share.
Stay Tuned
All Other Art
Sewing
Entropy Bunny
A childhood chock full of Project Runway and family emphasis on self-expression led to the inevitable: a desire to create clothes that allow me to show up exactly as I see fit. Getting dressed in the morning has moved beyond "what looks nice?" into "what do I want to convey about myself?"
This has translated into many phases. The denim only stage of 2nd grade—I was ready to run and play in the mud—became the dresses only phase of 3rd grade—a reminder that despite my adventure I was still girly. The streetwear of my skateboarding days, the glamour of my dancer days, and my parents' most dreaded 6th grade pop punk phase that had them wondering "what on earth is she wearing?" every day as I rushed to catch the bus.
As I've learned more about myself, however, the clothing on offer directly from the store has not always seemed accurate in capturing the nuance of who I want to be. I walk through the world attuned to what's around me, something that often draws attention, and if people are going to be looking at me I want them to see me exactly. Thus Entropy Bunny was born.
Through upcycling and pattern mixing I'm able to encapsulate how it is I feel. Highly feminine, vibrant, atypical, storied yet at times seemingly unfinished, Entropy Bunny embodies the spirit of divine femininity defined by delighted disorder. It is both who I am and what I wear.
Ren Faire Musings
While I use Entropy Bunny to wear who I am, clothing’s power to change who you are isn’t lost on me.
In my childhood, one of the highlights of every year was attending the renaissance faire with my brother and parents. Stepping into the world of the imaginary established my love of the fantastical. In preparation, my grandmother would pass her seamstress skills along to me to help me craft who it was I wanted to be, whether it was a princess or a maiden.
My participation in theater thereafter then solidified my understanding that costumes could become who you were, if but for a moment.After traveling for many years, unfortunately missing the renaissance faire as a result, upon my return to the area I knew I wanted to show up more creatively than ever before. Combining my rusty sewing skills, growing intentionality in storytelling, and some good old trial and error, I began creating characters deeper than simple labels.
The Moss Fairy—sleepy from her rest down by the creek—charms children with her iridescence, many trinkets, and bashfulness. Her slightly mischievous nature never overpowers her kindness. The Many-Faced Autumnal Jester has but one task: to reflect or transform the emotions of others in the solemn season of Fall. Her face impossible set both in a dramatic pout and a captivated warm smile, puzzled, concerned, she uses her staffs’ faces to cover her own, filling in the gaps of what she's capable of emoting, to provide community, comfort, and entertainment as the leaves die and air chills.
