ras+e is now, but let's rewind. gymnastics preoccupied the first 15 years and taught me to vault over rusty nails placed in front of a springboard so i would learn to hurdle from three feet back. 4.0 happens to be the number qualifying my education experience at the university of south florida and 20+4 is the number of years i have spent dedicated to it. typical typography classes included baskerville 6.5/13, and the waitress + receptionist for academic advising gigs claimed six years in order to pay for my schooling. after they told me i was good enough to make it into mica for my graphic design mfa, i ended up writing a 350-page novel and personal narrative about the triviality of a young artist coming of age in an eccentrically expanding quarter-life crisis world. i call this inch of pulp stroke & fill. the words professors choose to describe my work may include but are not limited to: digital, tactile, idiosyncratic, and whoa dude. i am a student. i perpetually experiment. i deconstruct media and question the way people communicate via impersonal mitigated message systems. writer, scavenger, seer. they call me a designer. i call me an artist. tools are irrelevant; i am not my medium(s). my playground spans screeprinting, video, letterpress, digital and alternative darkroom photography, stencils, book arts, installation art, music, projection, alternative printmaking, writing, and graphic design. 1 is the number of mutually dedicated colleagues i have invested my career in collaborating with and 15 is the number of projects we have completed in the past 6 months alone. 1 of our collaborative projects received 251 ooohs and ahhhs from mica’s passer-by student body capping the gdmfa program for most received complimentary intrigue by any 1 student-pair. yes, i keep tally. to date, this is elizabeth herrmann collaborating with ryan shelley. this inbox/ outbox digital/tactile collaboration is called ras+e and the work(force) is called re: our philosophy is to communicate viscerally. these numbers are my past. 2,768 are the number of images i’ve made to date and 95,889 are the number of words i’ve written in my novel. i’m a maker. i make things. i am a writer. i write things. interesting things and lots of them. this is me. i am a girl and these are my numbers.