With my thesis work, a pop-up artist book entitled This Quickening, I was most concerned with visually externalizing an energy that I feel inside of me always: a constant sense of internal convection, which I have come to realize is an abstract bodily sensation of personal potential. I then crafted a book which pairs 3 curated poems with abstract collaged forms that are activated by pop-up paper mechanics to help me further express my experience beyond the language of the poetry. The images that I created to partner the text are moving visual metaphors for my own experience as articulated and enhanced by the poetry, and add a gestural nonverbal layer of communication that offers a fullness of expression beyond that achievable with words.
This thesis paper attempts to delve into the aspects of nonverbal communication through gesture that I touched on in the making of my thesis work, and endeavors to celebrate both the practical functions of our gestures as well as their less obvious nature, which can be seen as inspired and even artful. My hope is that this celebration may lead to more appreciation of our gesturing bodies and their capacity for fullness of expression and communication. This appreciation may then lead to an increased desire to bring an awareness of our gesturing bodies and the expressive functions of gesture into our text- based digital interactions.

Winner of the 2014 William H. Givler Thesis Award for Design Arts