Connective Evolution

My work is meant to examine the experience of grief and the way in which it could be understood through the process of artistic exploration. Through the intentional use of mixed media, I work to create emotional evocation and catharsis.

The inspiration for these pieces stems from the loss of my twin which occurred in 2021. The experience of grief is often indescribable. This is what led me to utilize art as a means of communicating and coping.

With the presentation of these pieces, I aim to prompt the viewer to analyze and sympathize with the occurrence of bereavement.

This series focuses on themes of growth through adversity as it is explored through my artistic process. The series aims to evoke a sense of youthfulness and wonderment while also tackling realistic themes. Each clock represents a piece of my struggle with chronic pain which started in 2020. Symbols like the mushrooms, storm, naked figure, and the clocks themselves have meaning, all having to do with my journey. The mushrooms represent growth from something old, symbolizing how I mourned my life as it was before chronic pain. I use mushrooms as a focal piece in all three clocks as they remind me that time moves on and we must all take what challenges we have faced and give ourselves grace and leniency to deal with them in our own time.

As an artist, I think growth is one of the most important things. I’ve spent the past few years trying to expand my art knowledge and journey. Growing up, I always felt pressure for my art to look a certain way or live up to certain expectations. As I’ve grown up, my art has grown and changed along with me. The pieces I’ve created for my capstone help connect my past journey to the journey I am currently on. Over the past year and a half, I’ve come to the realization that my art doesn’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations except my own. I have learned to take back pride in the work I have created. The themes I’ve noted in my current art are themes that I enjoyed creating four years ago. The difference now is that I feel a connection to my work. There is also a larger sense of confidence and dedication to the work that I am creating today compared to four years ago. Rather than creating work to please others, I am creating art that I am proud of and that holds a special meaning to me.

Throughout this semester, I was able to see the growth and confidence of the artist I once was to the artist I am now. For these pieces, I wanted to show the connection between humans and nature, as I’ve always felt very connected to nature. Throughout my life, nature has been a comfort space as well as a place where I was able to heal and grow. I wanted to depict the different stages of life and how we are constantly changing, growing, and learning how to adjust to life around us.

Rather than be inspired by images, I tend to take inspiration for my work from shapes and texture. I have never had a plan or idea for a painting. There tends to be no brainstorming at all for any of my work. The only goals I have are to create a busy image that can be looked at many times and you can always see something new. I really enjoy layering bright colors. The main idea of most of my work is horror vacui, which is latin for "fear of empty space," meaning, "I love to fill the space of my artwork with lots of color, texture and detail." 

I have always worked in the 2D mainly, but I have had the urge to spread my work into the 3D realm. My next piece will explore this. 

Art as a Multi-sensory Experience

Art is easily understood as a predominantly visual media, requiring our eyes to see the details of brushstroke and texture of material. And while my art is typically visual representation, I enjoy incorporating different tactile aspects that go beyond sight. There is so much more than what the eye can see. We are outwardly seeking beings, using our senses to absorb our surroundings every which way we can. Sound. Scent. Taste. Touch. Our hands, in some sense, are a set of eyes. This artwork is meant to be physically explored through touch, and to make the viewer listen to how the material responds directly through physical sensation and sound.

The Art-making Process

Through art, I am able to explore my connections and relationships with the world around me. I am able to sit with and express my inner thoughts and emotions through my art-making process. When I create, I play. I experiment with various materials, both natural and manmade. By incorporating different mediums into my art, I can observe how materials converse to see what works and to ultimately discover what feels “right” for me in the moment.

Patterns in Nature: Reflecting on Interconnectedness & Change

In this time, I have been exploring the natural world around me more than ever. In particular, collecting natural materials like leaves has become a newfound joy of mine. With the materials I’ve gathered and preserved from my mindful outdoor endeavors over the past few months, I’ve given myself the space to create at my own pace, to explore different techniques, and to create prints of selected leaves with various tools, paints, and surfaces. I’ve carefully chosen my materials. Something about them evoked something in me, whether that was a thought or an emotion, an urge, a memory or an idea. After the fact, when I am creating, I reflect on the significance of the experience. What has life gifted me? Delving deeper within myself and the world around me, the universe and all of the cosmos… Listening to the world around me. I am here. I’m absorbing. I’m witnessing. I’m listening. What are you trying to teach me?

I am fascinated by the repeating fractal patterns in the natural world, and it was my goal to find a way to capture the expansive, growing patterns I’ve seen in these leaves into a new form. I hoped to create a visual, tactile, and auditory rendition of a leaf as close as I could using the materials I had with print-making techniques I have learned from previous courses. These repeating patterns are just one example, one connection between us humans and plants; we see similar patterns in mappings of vein networks and neural pathways in the brain.

I devote my time to exploring these small connections, these moments so easily looked past… acknowledging, embracing life and its true beauty.

I hope that this body of work sparks thought, contemplation, and a deeper appreciation for all life.

Over the past four years, my creativity felt like it was put into a box and tucked away onto a shelf. In my classes, I was constantly being told what to create based on the requirements of the homework assignments. Every once in a while, an assignment would have some loose ends so I could change the parameters of the requirements slightly. My creativity could shine through the cracks of the box in those moments, but it was never enough. Then COVID hit, and I let my creativity sit in that box and collect dust over quarantine. It wasn’t until this class that I dusted off the box; I was honestly surprised the box was still tucked away on the shelf. This was the first class where I felt like I could create anything I wanted without requirements or rules. At first, it was challenging reintroducing my creativity back into my life; it had been so long since I had nurtured it. By the middle of the semester, I began to get my transcendent flow back. I got the inspiration for this piece from a painting I did five years ago. It was of a similar blonde girl floating in bright hot pink clouds. My artwork has always been whimsical and colorful ever since high school, and it felt like I was going back to my roots painting this piece.

For this piece of work, I decided to celebrate all the tools I have learned over the past four years, but create what I wanted using these tools. From freshman year to now, I have taken various art classes, including drawing, clay, figure drawing, painting, printmaking, and watercolor. The foreground of the piece was created using acrylics and watercolor, layered on top of that I stamped painted bubble wrap to create the bubble texture. The figure was painted using acrylic and the veil of the hat was made using oil paint. Separate from this piece, I also created seven clay pieces in the same color palette of this painting. Some of the pieces also have the bubble wrap stamped onto them to create a cohesive series.

Through the process of creating this piece and my clay forms, I recognized that I am an artist. I discovered that just because I am learning art therapy, and someday going to use art to support others, it does not mean that I am not an artist. For a while, I saw “art therapists” and “artists” as separate beings. However, over this semester, I have realized that I can be both and that I am an artist.

Music feels like it is constantly taking over my life, and it was a staple of my childhood. I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, born to a Puerto Rican father and a Dominican mother. They listened to music in Spanish, yet I have grown to listen to music in Korean, Japanese, English, Chinese, Maori, and just about anything with rhythm and a tune. With time, my taste in music continues to evolve, but I always go back to those Spanish songs. They give me comfort and warmth and make me feel closer to my family, just like a blanket. The feeling of safety, familiarity, and comfort that comes from a warm blanket is also present in those songs I so love. They are the connection to family, to my roots, to my language and they are now unified in this piece.

For my final piece, I have taken a quilt and painted into it symbols I associate with some of the songs I feel the most connected to.The materials used are an up-cycled quilt from a thrift store, a mix of acrylic and gouache paint, and my ears, as they allow me to listen to and enjoy music. All these songs are on my playlist, and when they come on, I have no other choice but to sit down and listen. They are songs that carry so much meaning in their words while also giving me a sense of my childhood, a sense of that warmth of knowing my parents are somewhere listening to these songs. I am not living with my parents at the moment, as they moved to another state, but these songs, and now this blanket, help me fill in that connection I miss so much. Waking up early in the morning, hearing these songs blast over in the speakers, and that feeling of “I'm home” are all missing, but these songs make everything feel more at peace.

This body of work is a response to my time in isolation during the COVID pandemic. In this series, abstract, intuitive, and bold colors offer ease of expression from one piece of art to another. They directly relate to a response that follows my emotions and feelings as they arise. I enjoy the abstract freedom that comes with expressive experimentation, and I am interested in exploring intuitive, world-building forms.

Varying in size from very large to small, these works are inspired by many simple pen and ink sketches that are then enhanced by several layers of acrylic ink and charcoal. Every mark is a decision from the previous mark which leads the artistic process. It is a balance between discipline and surrender, control and abstraction which parallels with the play of my internal dialogue. Bright, acrylic ink colors are applied abstractly to create perspective, character, depth, and transparency. This art is a way to come closer to expression and provides space for the creative process to emerge that isn’t controlled or manipulated. It guides me to understand, express, and process what I am feeling in the moment.

I create to allow my inner world and experiences to flow out of my mind and into a concrete form. Art gives me the ability to leave an imprint of my experiences behind. My work is a part of me as an extension of my soul and psyche. Through art, I can appreciate the beauty of the world around me, even when it feels difficult to navigate.