My favorite art piece I created was a publication design for a typography class. This art project was where I cemented my style, in which half of the design process is done non-digitally and by hand. At the beginning of my education in graphic design, I felt as if I had to confine myself to a strictly digital format to create. This mindset was very oppressive, and I was never that happy with what I produced. I wanted to create layered, textured works, but I felt like I couldn’t do that working just digitally. So, I started experimenting with design with a physical, hands-on approach, and something clicked. This specific project was when I fully embraced this style. The process involved digitally creating the design and plans for the publication, then printing out all the necessary components like the base design, pictures used, and text. Using an exacto knife and clear tape, I cut, cropped, layered, and collaged the design together. Once I was happy with the product, I scanned it back in digitally and had my design. I did not hold back in this process, I did not try to be clean and organized, and for lack of a better term, I became an absolute mad scientist on this project. The end product had a grungy, messy textured depth that I could never create just digitally, and it felt uniquely mine.

Artist: Clovver Playlist: "i’m not going to my 8 am tomorrow" Songs: 1.) “Chandelier” by Will Paquin 2.) “Time” by Kelsey Lu 3.) “Self Care” by Mac Miller 4.) “Poison Tree” by Grouper 5.) “Rhinestone Eyes” by Gorillaz 6.) “Not Allowed” by TV Girls 7.) “Jealous” by Eyedress

Throughout my life, I have had to overcome obstacles and struggles in my life, starting very young. I was an impoverished Latina living in a racist area. I felt isolated from my peers at school and did not feel safe in any places outside of my own home. In my teenage years, I struggled with my identity as a queer person living in a household and going to a high school that was not accepting of LGBTQ+ individuals. Even now I have had to overcome self-hatred and other mental struggles from these experiences in life. I was able to cope with these obstacles with creative writing. As a kid, I was too young to be able to confront and process these experiences and how they affected me, so I turned to creating and writing fantasy stories. I would get lost in the magical worlds, characters, and creatures I created. I now know that this was a form of escapism. When I was a teenager I started to write poems about the things I experienced. These poems were dramatic and morbid, and many of them were never seen by any other eyes except my own, as they were part of a personal journey of overcoming these obstacles. In the present time, as a college student, I have come to understand and fully accept my experiences, and my writing has gone back to stories and characters rather than poems, and these stories revolve around characters with the same experiences and struggles that I experienced. While this is still a way for me to cope, I also hope to publish my own novels with characters who are relatable to people who are like me and hopefully will help them overcome obstacles like I had to.

The first time I struggled to love myself was when I was in Sophomore year of high school. I was just starting to have realizations about my sexuality, at a football game, I kissed a girl for the first time. But unknown to us, someone had recorded it, and sent it around my school. The next day random people were asking me if I was gay. The girl and I had panic attacks and cried to each other in the bathroom. We lived in a not so LGBTQ+ friendly area and we were not even out to our families yet. I wasn’t even sure if I was gay. But this experience pushed me farther back into the closet for some time. I was in fear of being kicked out of my home and being attacked by the homophobic people at my school. I was in fear for my general safety. People looked at me with either disgust or as if I was some type of anomaly. I felt disgusted and invaded, I felt like there was a target on my back. And I blamed myself for all of it. I thought that if I had just not kissed a girl, if I stuck to being straight then none of this would have even happened. This is why nobody like gay people, because we are all in their faces. I should have just respected that. After a while though, I was able to shake those feelings and allowed myself to discover who I was again, and instead of shame, I felt pride for who I was. But this experience also made me aware of the dangers that LGBTQ+ youths across the globe face. I was scared for my life at the time. For the past few years I have read stories of LGBTQ+ students being attacked and even killed, and their schools doing nothing to protect these children or prevent these things from happening. Going forward I want to help change school settings to be more protective of LGBTQ+ youth. I want to petition and demand for more education about LGBTQ+ identities, history, and issues today to be taught in schools starting at a young age. Stricter rules and consequences against homophobic or transphobic acts or language. Having time during the school year to celebrate pride and LGBTQ+. And creating much safer and more comfortable settings for LGBTQ+ children, like counseling and spaces where LGBTQ+ students can freely express themselves and gender neutral bathrooms. School should be a place where students can learn, grow, and express themselves safely and comfortably. And I hope to one day make that a reality for LGBTQ+ youths.

The pandemic started during my junior year of high school. Before the pandemic happened, I spent most of my teenage life stressing about school and working part time jobs. I was rarely ever engaging in any fun outside activities. I never took the time to enjoy my present, I was always working towards the future. I took my time for granted. The pandemic came and took away the little bit of time that I had left as a teenager. It took all the good parts of being a teenager in my senior year of high school and left all the stressful parts, and the added pains of going through a global pandemic. But it was a wake up call for me. I realized how much I took for granted and how I wasted a good part of my life. Going forward I want to cherish and love every moment of my life, from the mundane to the exciting. I want to appreciate where I am and who I am now, and spend more time with the people who I love and love me. In short, the pandemic taught me that life is precious and I should love every second of it.

Being an artist is to be the most open that you can be with your emotions as well as your mind. Art, in its truest form, is a way for people to express who they are, how they feel, and what they think. Art can let others into your mind and understand who you are as a person. You are the greatest communicator to others as well as to yourself. The open nature of art drives me to be honest and natural with myself when I create. I do not try to hide anything, or try to mirror other artists' works. I just let my hands move and my brush glide. I choose whatever colors I feel are right, and I work until I feel as if I am done. I trust my instinct, and I don't question it. I feel as if that is the best way that I can be truthful to myself. I struggle a lot with intimacy with other people. I usually do not feel comfortable talking about things I'm going through or how I'm feeling for fear of what they might think, if they don’t understand, or worse if they start worrying about me. Sometimes I couldn’t even express what I felt in words. Visual Arts helped me express these things in a very personal way, in a way that made sense to me, it helped me better understand myself. For my senior year in high school, my art class had an art exhibit for our final. I was afraid that people would find my pieces to be confusing and not understand them. I was secretly hoping that the event would be canceled. But when people actually saw my artwork, they understood them, and actually liked them. A guy who was in another art class, who showed no interest in art at all, saw one of my paintings and loved it. He kept coming back to look at it and complimented me and talked on and on about it to my art teacher. Some younger students looked at my art and commented that they could never make good art. I was able to talk to them and convince them that they in fact could and probably are great artists and motivated them to keep pursuing their art. That day is what inspired me. Going on, I want to make art that helps people relate and understand themselves just as it has helped me. If I am openly honest with myself, I can possibly reach out and relate to others who feel the same things I do. I can connect to people and make them feel more accepted and understood. I also want to help people gain a new appreciation for art and to inspire others to give their art a chance and to pursue it with honesty and openness.