serena yu.

serenayu858@gmail.com
672-667-1442
@h3ysiri
Serena Yu

...CV


Hi! Thanks for visiting my portfolio site!

My name is Serena Yu, I’m a community and sustainability driven artist, designer, and nature lover from Vancouver, Canada, currently residing in and studying illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI!

My practice is a constantly evolving process of exploration and discovery.  I am interested in exploring material patterns, functions, relations, and intricacies of the natural world.  I believe in employing sustainable practices in my practice, and deriving materials from the natural world that can easily be returned, emphasizing their innate ephemeral qualities over archival. 
For more information please refer to my CV above.

... Selected Work  
... Illustration 
... Painting
... Foraged Pigments and Material ....Exploration




Spring Magnolia
2025
Oil On Canvas Board 
14” x20”

In early spring, magnolia trees are one of the first to bloom, offering a calm presense as the planet wakes up from winter. Part of a larger series of observation tree paintings, this painting aims to capture the movement of flittering songbirds, reaching branches, and delicate buds on a soft spring day. 


Bound Botany - New England Fall Archive Book
2025
Handmade Papers, Ecoprints, and Naturally-dyed fabric
Created from Foraged & Preserved Organic Materials 
4.5” x 7” x 1.5”This book is a culmination of the New England fall season plant ecology, represented through foraged pigment, experimental fibres, natural compounds, and preserved organic material. The local ecology offers seasonal colours, textures, and mediums that are bound into an indexical archive focusing on material quality, experimental process, and natural collaboration. 


    You Are Exactly Who You Think You Are

        2024
        Oil On Canvas Board 
        18” x 24” each
This diptych explores the idea of perception, particularly how our personal perspectives are influenced by our own decisions. Usage of the same personas, motifs, and palettes define two separate yet similiar dystopias. How do we perceive the idea of self, and how does our view on ourselves and the world around us define our reality?






Knot of Frogs

2024
Watercolour and Goauche on Paper
11” x 14” 



the Ribeiroa Ondatrae is a species of parasitic flatworm that is documented to cause limb malformations, usually excess hind legs, in many species of amphibians. The parasites first intermediate host is the ram horns snail, which is then ingested by the frogs, and the limb malformations are suggested to occur due to interruptions of the limb bud formation during the larval growth stage. These excess limbs make it harder for the frogs to move around, allowing the parasites final target, birds and other predators, to capture and eat the frogs, aiding in spreading the parasites’ offspring.

 













Leave No Stone Unturned
2024
Risograph print 
11” x 17” 


This piece pays homage to a childhood spent on the coast of the Pacific Northwest flipping over rocks in search of crabs, leading to my time now as a college student collecting crab species for the saltwater tanks in my workplace at the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab at RISD. This illustration refers to the idiom ‘leave no stone unturned’, meaning to be thorough and careful. Porcelain crabs, as well as many species of shore crabs, are found living under and in rock crevices along the Pacific Coast, camoflauged by pattern and shape. 




Sketchbook Binding and Ink Experiments
Please refer to my Foraged Pigments and Material Exploration for more information

Book Marks
2025
Lasercut Bristol
6.5” x 2.5” each










Last Updated : 1/13/2026