Melina Ives

I am an artist and designer from Eureka, California. My work looks at how everything in our world is connected—people, objects, time, and the systems that hold them together. I draw on design theory, my knowledge of social structures, and ecology to understand and visually represent these relationships. For my thesis, I created a project that maps the hidden systems behind everyday life, depicting the ways in which complex networks shape our experiences and showing that nothing exists in isolation. My goal is to help people see the bigger picture, to think in terms of systems and understand how their actions fit into a larger whole. I believe that by seeing these connections more clearly, we can live more thoughtfully and in harmony with one another and the world around us.