identity, new things, and commencement

The past few months have been full! Updates:

• I ran for School Board Director and won the most votes in the Democratic Primary
• I completed a Community Quilt Project with the Fulton Theater as part of the Community Outreach Initiative for In the Heights
• I graduate this coming Tuesday!
• Thesis is done!
• I started a webzine called Latinx Lancaster with new best friend and soul sister (and blogger/Astro-psychologist/Astrologer/badass) Ariana (@saltwaterstars on IG)

Through all of this I've been thinking a lot about identity and how my art can work to document and help others decolonize their art and identities. I think that a lot of this definitely started with this blog and my new studio practice. I find myself again at a moment where I'm transitioning into a new schedule, new perspective, and out of academics. I'm glad to be finishing grad school and intend to continue the work I'm doing with placemaking and the Latinx community in the city but I also see this as an opportunity to breath and revisit my work.

Starting Tuesday I'll have a more flexible schedule and I'm looking forward to diving deeper into a new portrait series I started. I'll talk a bit about them below:

 This is Self Portrait as Atabeira. As you know if you've been following my work, I'm obsessed with Atabeira and Taino mythology. I'm still learning a lot and plan to read even more. I had been thinking about goddesses a lot after an interaction with Line Bruntse (former mentor during the EAR program). I had been avoiding saying it out loud and she sort of took the words out of my mouth when she said that my work was about goddesses and self-determination. I decided to start imagining myself as various goddesses as a way of reclaiming my history and identity. I also like the overlap of saints and goddesses and using bold colors. I've been looking at prayer candles a lot and their label designs. I'm interested in how we represent deities and how that informs our spiritual life too. for this painting I wanted to play with texture and crowns as halos. I also liked the idea of playing with the Latina hoop earring (which I own many of thank you) and blurring the line between my face and the face of Atabeira. A direct likeness used to be a sign that I made a good painting but lately, I've taken to trying to be fast and loose and mix bright colors. This is the first portrait I did that I'm happy with the final outcome. 

I'm really happy with this one.  I started playing with the star sequins (mostly because I have a huge bag I'm trying to figure out what to do with) but it just didn't work. The pallete was too much too so I moved on to a more toned down pallete with the finished piece.It's smaller (just under 8x10) and it forced me to pull back a little. I was thinking about symbols that mythlogize Puerto Rico and the flamboyan flowers came to mind. I was also wanting to channel Frida Kahlo's pallete for the skin here. I like her yellowy and ruddy tones a lot and I have a more yellow undertone to my skin. I was taught to mix paint more for pinker tones and I'm still trying to undo that learning. I started to take on and learn how to paint other skintones at the Art Students League of NY and that was really eye-opening in terms of how limiting Lancaster can be. That's for another post though. I'm definitely going to continue this smaller series and play with more ideas of saints, myths, and identity pieces.