art
“Atardecer” - 2020, gauache and color pencil on wood panels
During the summer of 2020, I turned my parent’s garage into a makeshift studio to paint my second commission for Comida Cantina in Evanston, IL.
The painting is on 3 wooden panels- two 3 x 3 squares on either side, and a 3 x 5 rectangle in the middle. The edges on all sides are painted and each piece can be hung individually, or together to create one fluid scene.
My inspiration for the piece is the Oaxaca Central Valley in southern Mexico. I owe a lot to Oaxaca for teaching me so much about art and inspiring me endlessly - the people, the places, and the deeply rooted and ancient culture. I’ve been going there since 2016, and had been planning to spend a good portion of 2020 in Oaxaca, but I came back to the states in March due to the pandemic. Painting this piece helped me make peace with that sudden and strange change of plans.
When I’m in Oaxaca, one of my favorite things is watching the sun set behind the mountains as I’m riding the bus back to the city after a day spent exploring the pueblos in the sun.
I used gauache, a paint that’s a mix between watercolor and acrylic, for the background. The details of the foliage in the foreground are all in color pencil. I intentionally included a lot of reds and light blues to accent the interior of the restaurant. The painting took me a little over 3 months to complete.
Working on this painting during COVID helped me find a sense of peace in such a chaotic year, and honor the place that’s nurtured my art so much.
You can see my painting Atardecer, as well the painting below, 3 Magueys, at Comida Cantina in Evanston, IL.
“Tres Magueys” - 2020, Indigo, gauache, and color pencil on wood panel
In January 2020, I painted a commission for Comida Cantina, a Latin American restaurant in Evanston, IL. Their bar is mostly tequila and mezcal focused - lots of agave spirits! Mezcal is what informed the subject matter of the painting, or rather the specific type of agaves that mezcal come from: Magueys.
I tapped into my experiences living in Oaxaca, the birthplace of Mezcal, to design the painting and choose the materials that I used. The 3 Magueys that I painted here are Tobala, Espadin, and Tepaztate. The Indigo ink that I used for the blue in the Magueys was actually grown and processed in Oaxaca, and is traditionally used as a natural dye for clothing and rugs.
The rest of the colors come from gauache, watercolor, and colored pencil. I built the panel of the painting from wood. It is 3 ft x 6 ft x 3 inches and hangs next to the bottles of artisan Mezcal at the bar of Comida Cantina.
Upcycling
Upcycling means giving something a new life, or increasing the value of an item by changing it. Between 2017 - 2020 you could often find me with a sewing needle in hand and a pile of fabric in front of me altering clothing that I bought in the thrift store. I utilized patchwork and painted by hand to give these items new life. Here are some photos of the final pieces, all of these are original and one of a kind pieces that I made.
Natural Pigment Silkscreen
In 2018, I did a monthlong artist residency in Oaxaca, Mexico through an organization called Arquetopia. The focus of the residency was to utilize natural pigments in silkscreen. I studied with a teacher named Manuel at Tlaponochestli, a center dedicated to experimentation and education around natural pigments. I was inspired to do this residency after seeing firsthand the environmental impact of clothing production in a city in India called Tirupur. I wanted to explore more eco-friendly ways of making clothing and creating art with textiles. Below are images of my work. All of the colors in the silkscreen patterns are derived from plant matter, insects, or soil. I created unique designs and then printed them onto locally woven textiles, secondhand clothing, and clothing that I made myself. Many thanks to the people and land of Oaxaca for teaching me about the extraction of natural pigments and allowing me to use their materials and techniques in my work.
Painting with Natural Pigments
I first felt called to learn how to paint with natural pigments after contemplating the environmental impact of acrylic based paints, which are plastic/ petroleum based. I wanted to learn how to paint with something that would not harm human health & the environment when I washed it off my brush, so I turned to exploring natural pigments. My first experience was learning from artist Stella Maria Baer at a natural watercolor workshop in Joshua Tree, California. We crushed soil to make beautiful colors of the desert. Then, as I learned about the use of natural pigments for silkscreen through my artist residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, I applied the techniques to create watercolors, too. Below are some images of paintings and studied that I made using all natural pigments.
Color Pencil Drawings, 2017
