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., 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

foraged ochres and homemade indigo watercolour

Foraged Natural Pigments 
& Material Exploration


    My process is increasingly material based, as I expand my practice to prioritise exploration, sustainability, location, and process . How do my pigments and materials, foraged from my surrounding sites, begin to represent not only pigment but changes in season, climate, and ecology?  As my environments shift in this ever-changing period of my life, between home in the Pacific North-west, to school in New England,  I am choosing to document these experiences through material use and process. The unique ephermal qualities of of homemade materials are a reminder of the temporality of these phases in life.

I am currently exploring:
  • Pigments derived from foraged plants, and their unique behaviors
  • Natural foraged dyes and ecoprinting on paper and textiles
  • Experimental plant fibre processing for paper making 
  • Organic material preservation (leaves, pigments, barks

< buckthorn ink on handmade kozo paper                
Bound Botany - New England Archival 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.


The cover is bound with cotton linen, rust printed in a tannin bath

    My process always begins with going outside and collecting materials from my surroundings. These materials are ephermal, and change with the seasons. In fall, I will have fallen oak and maple leaves for tannin. In the spring I have dandelions for dye. I have built up a collection of various rusty objects to rust print with, as the beautiful purple colour resulting from the iron oxide reacting with tannins is one of my favourites.   

I like to print and dye in bundles that all simmer together. I love unwrapping them to find prints can never be predicted

Experimental mulberry (kozo) paper
with imbedded leaves
Oak and Japanese maple leaves tannin printed in a rust bath
Collection of papers made from milkweed
top: bast fibres
bottom left: bast fibres with bark 
bottom right: seed pod fibred 
top: hand pulled mulberry fibre sheets
bottom: rust prints

Japanese maples create my favourite prints. On the right, metal sheets with cutouts create geometric forms.
Above you can see where ginkgo leaves have been used as a resist, creating negatives


Natural Inks



‘Belonging’ 2025
3’ x 4.5’  
Raw cotton canvas dyed and ecoprinted with rust, walnuts, and coreopsis, then painted with homemade iron oxide ink, walnut ink, marigold ink, and buckthorn ink





Sketchbook spreads made with foraged ochres and inks






Last Updated : 1/14/2026