The Name...

It was a happy day for my fourteen-year-old self when my mother granted me permission to create my very first email address. Without hesitation, I jumped on my rumbling laptop and brought up aol.com, fingers flying across the keyboard in excitement. But then... I paused. This was a big step - I was finally going to be mature and have an email, a way to communicate with anyone in the world. A way to send and receive unmonitored stories anywhere I wanted. A way to subscribe to things and be contacted! All my young mind could think of was that my email address needed to reflect who I was so I could be easily identified, remembered - but how would I choose my own definition? Where did I even start with such an important decision?

At that tumultuous moment, my sister, two years older and already established in the emailing world, sauntered in casually and smirked at my lost expression. No doubt sensing a perfect opportunity to play a joke on her little sister, she convinced me to be creative (her own email address was memorable and professional - her initials with some numbers). We ended up combining our South African upbringing with the somewhat insulting term for an immigrant, "alien", and came up with africanalien. Sisterly duties complete, she left me sitting there, feeling all proud of the new email whose meaning I would have to explain countless times in the future. Whether it was her having great insight or just taking advantage of a sibling's naiveté, I have always loved the name because it really suits me. At first, it was a little weird and uncomfortable, tight like new leather boots. Now, after wearing it for years, I am proud to have a name that both explains my roots and tells a bit of my story.

A Portfolio

These are many of my designs and work from the past ten years or so. Work is such an inaccurate way to describe it, though. The collection of pixels you are looking at represent the cause for a few of my grey hairs, have been the reasons for grunts of frustration and the culprits for why I have large purple bags under my eyes.

They also represent some of the best times, the reward for painstaking hours of staring at the same sheet of paper, the same tiny pixels on a computer, and repeatedly sewing the same silly little beads onto a hunk of fabric. They are hours where I don't even feel the time flying by and forget to eat. I am sharing the things that engross me.

take a look!

See the reasons I stay up all night. Each little bead, every digital brush stroke, all the erase marks and pencil lines lead up to demonstrations of what I can do. I'm excited to show them to you.

The Name...

A Portfolio

take a look!

enjoy!

megan landau