Once upon a time not long ago I would sew...almost every day. I was convinced I would be fashion designer and at the time I was deeeeep in a Pentecostal/Baptist/Evangelical church cult (story for another day) so I was also convinced my modest yet fashionable aesthetic would be the key to converting souls for the kingdom. A lot of that has changed but what hasn't changed is the sewing itch that creeps up with a vengeance every couple of years.  As a visual aide: Here is 17year old me in my me-made prom dressed secretly inspired by MCR Helena but make it modest and ****PINK****. I love that version of me and have compassion for her. She was cute. 

I will be showing some new work in the Demuth Invitational coming up soon! Here is the work in progress. It is a watercolor based on one of my favorite photographs of myself just a few days after coming home from having Mr. Baby. I remember being tired, sore from tapering off my post-C-section meds (literally just motrin and tylenol wtf) and simultaneously proud and shocked at what my body just went through. The background is from the stiff baby blankets they wrapped Mr. Baby in that also likely held so many other babies and had been sanitized to be itchy, scratchy welcomes into this world. This is all on top of some gestural sketches of Mr. Baby.

Hello friends!
In 2024 I planned to make more blog posts and be more active in my personal practice. I suppose part of that became a reality in a way! Shortly after my last post, I was greeted with the most exciting news: I was pregnant! 9 long months with the biggest belly and most heartburn ever, I welcomed my little dude whom shall forever be Mr. Baby to the public. We share a birthday and a face (he looks shockingly exactly like little me) and now we also share every meal and nap. Needless to say, I spent 2025 very pregnant and then very tired from labor and raising Mr. Baby. We're almost at a year now and I cannot be happier (or sleepier).

In honor of Latino Heritage Month I'm sharing a series of poems I wrote back in 2019 thinking about my family, my heritage, and identity. I've been writing and rewriting these over the past 5-10 years now and I like to revisit them to see what has changed, what has stayed the same, and what phrases or lines are still echoing in my head all this time later: 

I've been calling this year my year of no. Meaning, I have said no or been forced to say no to opportunities due to health issues, prioritizing mental health or just simply finally feeling comfortable to opt out and reclaim my time. Since I graduated college, I've held multiple jobs and gigs and once was very proud of myself for always being busy. I come from a family of overachievers and hard workers so it is more familiar to me to be busy and work all the time than it is to have leisure. In my year of no, I've rediscovered play in a way that I haven't in a very long time. My day-job/bread-and-butter is being the Assistant Director of the Center for Creative Exploration at PCA&D and I am happy that a good portion of my job is encouraging people to tap into their creative side. Often this means there is space for play and modeling play for creatives and the creatively curious! Just this past Friday, I spent my day working from It's Modern Art as part of the Peep Show with Executive Director of Center for Creative Exploration and long-time creative collaborator Natalie Lascek. We co-created a space that encouraged play as a vehicle to talk about the importance of funding the arts and advocating for the arts. 

I've been posting about a series that is more personal in nature on my social media.. It doesn't have a name yet but for now I'm playing with the idea of Transmutation. I will be telling a personal story and interspersing progress images of this series below. 

Trigger Warning: Early Pregnancy Loss, Grief, Loss

On May 6th of 2024 I had a miscarriage. I was 6 weeks pregnant and my husband and I had been trying since October of 2023. I have anxiety and this entire process has really touched on all of my anxiety triggers-control (or feeling like I have no control), my health, time, and probably a bunch of others that I'm not even aware of). I was tracking everything so I knew exactly when I was pregnant and started tracking the pregnancy. With my health anxiety, I also was really hesitant to let myself get excited until the last week when I decided to let myself be happy. I started bleeding while at work and quickly through the course of the weekend I knew I was miscarrying. Being taken into the emergency unit and calling nurses was like a dream. I couldn't believe it was happening to me and I couldn't feel connected to my body. By Monday I went in for a follow up to see if everything was okay and learned that what little tiny nugget was hanging out in my womb on Saturday was gone. 

Hello! 
I'm hoping to start utilizing this space to do more in depth writing about current projects and musings again. I've had some folks ask how to start thinking about making murals and that's a big question but I thought I'd share a bit about how I translate finished designs to walls for community paint days. The method I use when the wall is 6ft tall and smaller is a grid method. Many of us have used the grid method for projects in elementary or middle school and probably have never touched it again. I like the grid as a place to start especially when I'm working with youth. Below is an example of my design for Lincoln Middle School. I measured the wall and rendered the drawing in Photoshop to match the size. If I'm not projecting, I don't usually worry too much about resolution and set my dpi to 150 and translate each foot of the wall to inches. It's important to start with a precise measurement of the wall. In Photoshop there is an option under Extras to show a grid. You can adjust the size of the grid by either double clicking your ruler OR accessing preferences and going to the units and measurements or grids and slices area. I set the grid to be 1inch by 1 inch. I prefer to use 1:1 square grids while other like to use different ratios. I usually then label the rows with the alphabet and the columns with numbers. Below I have one portion of the wall represented in the sketch. 

That Grant Street Mural is coming to life! We finished 3 of 20 5x5 panels working from right to left and top to bottom. This allowed us to jump in with big areas of paint to get our feet wet. We've left the white borders that I can take care of in studio along with the map lines and some gradients that I'll add in glazes. We'll continue alternating Saturdays and Sundays into January, take a break and assess, and get back to it. Here is the sign up form if you're interested in painting with us! Note: We do require all participants practice safe Covid-19 procedures including vaccination if possible and mandatory masking. 

I'm excited to share the final render for the CMCL Grant Street Mural project! 
After sifting through all of the feedback from the late summer community engagements, I found a few common threads that I wanted to uplift in the final drawing. Folks were really interested in the parrot and wanted to see it bigger. We talked about the parrot's significance to the CMCL congregation as well as the connections it has to many communities often not represented in public artworks. Parrots are found in South and Central Americas as well as Africa and the Carribbean geographically. They're loud and colorful and hard to miss. I felt that it was important to have a colorful representation that is at once specific to CMCL and broadly recognizable/unifying. I also included a vintage map of the block. The map is a 1912 Sanborn Fire Insurance map that lists the names of companies that once populated the Concord and Grant intersection. Visible just below the halo on the right side you can see "Conn & Slote" printing company. Just one of the iterations of the building. Below the map is a simplified rendering of an aerial shot of the intersection taken during our last community engagement! Pictured are folks walking their dogs, riding bikes, twirling, and scootering about! The reference image shows the original image and the render in the drawing below is my interpretation. I chose to eliminate some power lines and poles to clean up the image and focus more on the people in the space. On the left side is a simplified render of a pawpaw tree! Pawpaws are a fascinate native fruit that remind me of Quenepas from Puerto Rico. Many folks find them to be similar to bananas and mangos. They're like a taste of home for many and yet they're native to this region. I included them as a nod to the land we're on and the persistence/resilience of indigenous heritage. Some folks shared that the feathers swirling felt like the parrot was molting but they liked the movement. In the final render I used the paw paw leaves as a way to capture the upward movement of the parrot. The segments of the pawpaw have images of a period printing press, community members riding bikes and playing in the lot, Susquehannock pottery, and more! I wanted the viewer to be rewarded for getting close to the image. Lastly, the overall aesthetic I chose to work with is inspired by stained glass. I like the way it simplifies shapes and allows space for broad areas of color. I hope this final render resonates with the community! I'll be announcing paint days throughout the late fall and winter at CMCL and additional details as we solidify plans with cold weather and the holidays coming up.