74 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM knew not a soul and it was terrifying. I was all alone,” she recalls. Whitney persevered because she knew it was a fantastic learning experience, noting that, “I was able to be involved in every aspect of wedding dress design.” After getting married in 2010, her life became peripatetic, with moves from New York to California, North Carolina to Pennsylvania. A final move brought them back to the Bay Area where they bought a home in Redwood City and settled with their two daughters. Whitney’s work in the wedding dress industry had disappeared due to Covid, and she began to think of other ways to use her creative skills. “I always had a vision of having a gallery in my home,” Whitney explains. To fill those empty walls, she began to make art using paper that drew on her skills as Her colorful, multi-layered landscapes capture the beauty of the California coast and mountains. “Living here has inspired me,” she says. “We can go to the beach, the wineries or the mountains in less than two hours. It’s pretty special and something I never take for granted.” Like many pandemic-era artists, Whitney turned to Instagram to get the word out about her new business. The positive feedback was immediate, but she decided to carry on only after asking herself, “Can I see it growing, evolving?” Thanks to her photography background, Whitney was able to create her own content but was wary of online retail. “I didn’t want to get sucked into the world of social media and always wanting to be seen.” It’s obvious that Whitney has managed to strike that healthy a seamstress. She starts with a foundation of hand-colored paper (or unstretched canvas) and then layers other cut papers on top. Whitney uses paper clips to keep the layers together and to move them around as she wants before taking the final step of joining them via the sewing machine. “I think of the sewing machine stitch lines like painting—where do I want the eye to be drawn? Where do they criss-cross?” The result is a combination of collage and quilting—but don’t refer to it as decoration. “I would never categorize my art as decorative,” Whitney says, “and I try to stay in the fine art category. I hope that my aesthetics, my eye and my finish are very refined.” {home & design} PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: WHITNEY ALYSSA / ROSA DELGADO ABOVE: (left) A detail from Blue Ridge Mountains. OPPOSITE PAGE: (from left) One of Whitney’s series of mini artworks; a wedding dress she designed in college; the artist in her Redwood City home studio.
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