Aurora 2025 with cover

Aliyah Orten

Illustrations of a Home home comes in many forms. the concept of calling someplace or someone your home, is often simply because this entity brings you peace and comfort. when I was a kid, I remember when we were told to draw our homes or think of our favorite people, or place to go. i typically thought of my grandparents; they lived hours away from us, but I held onto those memories tightly. as if I was worried that the distance between us would take those memories away the further I got. i would draw their backyard and intertwine mine and my brother’s imaginary world with this tangible fortress. as I grew up and followed the path to their backyard, I could still see us running on the concrete stepping stones, arguing over whose feet would grow quicker to fill in the older cousins’ foot prints pressed in the very stepping stones. i follow those same, now overgrown steps, to the end of the path, where a garden house sits. a small wooden building that used to feel huge to us, where we would play school or house, and let our imaginations grow wildly. this was the place where home felt exactly as you wanted. other times I would draw the bedroom we stayed in while in town. the middle bedroom had a different theme just about every year. my creative grandmother would upcycle fabrics as wallpaper and put canopies over the

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