The Tale of
Aubrey Lane
Goal: Create a documentation of a fictional failed victorian celebrity, integrating themes of fairytale, branding, and late 20th century aesthetics
The beginning of this journey started with a wordmap for the word "acting".
I had been very involved in theater my second two years in college, and it was something I was very passionate about.
Acting Wordmap
Me as Countess in Murder on the Orient Express (left) and Jo March in Little Women (right)
What really fascinated me in the beginning was the vulnerability and yet the superficiality that acting inherently has. For my first project, I explored this through the means of communicating through actions. This led to my piece in the Mason Gross Undergraduate Exhibition titled Acting With the Body.
Acting With the Body on display at the 2025 Undergraduate Annual Exhibition
I then became interested in the use of branding and celebrity culture. For instance, the use of hair: Billie Eilish's black and green cut, Sabrina Carpenter's large, blonde, vintage curls; and color: Taylor Swift's red, and Olivia Rodrigo's purple. I decided to create my own celebrity branding set in a time of growing celebrity culture: the Victorian era. I did this by creating a persona, and a poster:
Initial Sketch
Poster Design Variations
Final Poster Design
After creating the first poster, I specificed the direction I was exploring even further. In the poster, her branding is there. Her long, auburn hair, her gothic, romantic, look. However, her face is lit up by a glaring red spotlight. It turns her skin uncomfortably red. The songs are listed in a generic format with no specificity. They themselves are all play on popular slang terms from the time.
This made me wonder: "What would have been her journey to get there?" I became excited about the idea of making this documentation a drama itself, pulling in additional notes from my love of theatricality. I decided to make it a story.
I then made a poster from the fictional beginning of her career:
Second Poster Design
Using these as a start, I then wanted to create narrative memorabilia documenting her. I decided to go with an illustrated book.
The book introduces and solidifies many different iconography. For instance, the browning vine pattern demonstrates the passing of time, and the floral finery for which I was inspired by the Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement. In the book, her hair slowly grows longer, and the color is present throughout. The color scheme combines these two, in being a reddish brown, in turn keeping the gothic, romantic tones.
The Tale of Aubrey Lane by Adah Shimanovich
The next step was creating a display. I sketched out some ideas.
First iteration (left), Second Iteration (right)
Then all that was left to do was to put it all up.
I was quite excited.
Me after I finished painting the arch
Without further ado, I present to you (again) The Tale of Aubrey Lane as exhibited at the As Above, So Below exhibition in the Mason Gross Galleries in the Spring of 2026:
hmmm… this looks interesting…
