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., often informed by research, material functions, and relationships within 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?

Steward Your Space
2025
Risograph Print Poster
17” x 11”

“Land Stewardship is a radical way of caring for the land to support communities of local flora and fauna to persist across the landscape and its surroundings. The act of stewardship “reflects the existence of an ecological conscience,” in turn “reflect(ing) a conviction of individual responsibility for the health of the land”(Leopold). In this way, it differs from conventional gardening practices, as it prioritizes matters of personal responsibility for the future of ecology and its relationship to human societies (Mumaw).”

This poster encourages urban gardeneners to uphold stewardship practices, proposing potential garden layout opportunities and effective space use on urban properties. The map illustrated opportunities for laying out an urban garden space to benefit local urban ecology. Examples in the map design include introducing alternatives to turf lawn, usages for shady spots, growing vegetables and edible plants, and the importance of providing coverage for songbirds. The map is relatively simple and meant to inspire a more general audience to benefit their local ecology and promote ecological restoration in their own space.

This poster design was created along side a research article under the same name. The research article is a collaboration between Serena Yu and Fiona Hudson, who created a paper house zine meant to sit atop this poster garden, which carried more specific instructions related to local New England ecology.

Click here to read the full research article.

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.

Book Marks
2025
Lasercut Bristol
6.5” x 2.5” each

Book Binding

sd

above:

The First Fish I Ever Caught
2025
oil on canvas
2” x 3.5”

This is the first fish I ever caught.

left:

Neighbour2025
oil on canvas board
11” x 14’

This painting pays homage my summer living on the Sunshine Coast, a small island community off the coust of Vancouver, and the family of black bears that would frequent my neighbourhood.

Evil Office Mates

2025
Ink on Paper
4.5” x 6”

Last Updated : 1/14/2026

serena yu.

...CV

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

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