I didn’t know what linoleum prints were. Growing up the recreational was scarce and I only really had experience with Crayola’s crayons and watercolor on looseleaf sheets. Sitting in the Johnson with fancy tools and these innovative tools for creating art, I realized how privileged I am to be a Cornell and join a program such as The Rose Scholars.

I love drawing cats so I went ahead and started creating my linoleum print of a house cat. It came out surprisingly cute and great. For my first attempt with linoleum printing, I thought I had done an amazing job.

I knew that I wanted my new prints of feline, feminine, and dark essence to go on my door. For my door is the first thing people might encounter when they want to see me. They will know that I too am, essentially, complex. Like the different but dark colors of my prints, for my door will give you snippets of my story. These linoleum prints, created on a day where I was happy and felt like I knew myself, these prints were nonetheless, ambiguous. For my door holds these prints – prints that were reaped and sowed in the presence of privilege, but oppression. For the print was messy and jagged and typical for any middle class child that first touched linoleum. For my door tells the story of an unsophisticated artist, who is exposed to knowledge and exponentially sponges it.