San Francisco, CA, United States
My work exhibits the urban experience from the perspective of a Mexican-American (Chicana) woman. I was born and raised in San Francisco’s Mission District, a cultural mecca whose beauty and grotesque fueled a need to tell the story of this neighborhood, a story many Latino-Americans have in common. I portray the many elements of what it is to be Latino-American. Through my experience I illustrate the complexity of home and identity that we bear; a sense of home that transcends physical geography, and an identity that stems from a dual ancestry, as well as the roles we play within our family and community. It conveys the rigidity of tradition and weight of responsibility in a working class home. It is about the hardship, displacement, debauchery, celebration and cultural blending that is coming of age in an inner city neighborhood. Through the process of printmaking I create an urban surrealism where familiar places and figures are reinvented to have no distinguishable identity or location; a reflection of the convoluted themes in my life. The processes of woodcut, silkscreen, monotype and intaglio allow me to evoke this surreal realm through layering, line, texture and repetition. I graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in May 2014 with a BFA in printmaking and currently reside in San Francisco, California.
