That would be hands down my fabrication work which I did based on my love for the stars and the moon, it was created at a time when I had just transferred into my 4-year college. I was living on my own for the first time, exploring myself and what I wanted to work towards, and this project came at a point in my life where I was experimenting with something new, access to new materials, and the ability to try and work on it and I am overall a very ambitious and stubborn person and I wanted this project to come into reality despite the short 5 weeks we had. The combination of learning a new material and program, and being able to create it into a physical space about the stars and moon, was a vulnerable symbolism for me. I was stepping into a new chapter of dreams, I was reaching towards the moon, with the stars passing by me, and going to my four-year art school signified that potential through this piece. I had never worked with any type of 3D cutter, nor with Illustrator, but I found the idea of creating my assets and having them printed out and it grew into a testament to my resilience, ambition, and drive to study art and I was physically doing it! It became a love letter to myself the milestones I achieved and the future ahead. I thought the stars were impossible, yet here I am with them.

My dad. He has always been someone who I have naturally gravitated towards. He has always been a stoic man, for good reason, he has faced ultimatums and unexpected challenges thrown at him. My dad has been that warm blanket, that fond memory that never dies, that tender warmth I always see. I have lost a lot of things in my life, including my possessions and home from a fire sparked by a bad breaker box. I remember vividly my dad carrying me out with just our clothes on our backs and the blankets I had wrapped around me to prevent me from being cold. Despite what would be called a haunting or traumatic memory, I always did find the fire ablaze to be beautiful, full of saturated hues of oranges and yellows, and eventually blending into the night sky. I ignored the bright flashes of police cars and ambulances, the warmer colors always have felt fonder. From a breaker box and loss of entire years' worth of possessions, emerged my inspiration for saturated colors, based on that memory, while also subsequently focused on the experience of living, seeing beauty in our surroundings, objects begin to matter less when you live through loss. Memories have come to feel more saturated, and warm, and a beautiful symphony of strength, ambition, and resilience of my mind and my dad guiding me throughout the way. I have come to understand that and the older I get, the more I reflect on the way I love warmer colors, the night felt more familiar, and why I always felt safe with him. I want others to see the beauty of memories, and how the mind is a very beautiful yet deceptive piece of voice, there is beauty in the mundane, even the most ordinary of tasks and errands can be beautiful. I find love and inspiration by being with my family, with friends, and experiencing new things around me, and I want to push that while I am still honing down my artistic voice, currently focusing on more formal illustrations and exploring more environmental ones. I believe it is important to look into oneself, why we behave the way we do, and why we gravitate towards the things we like. Currently, I am an illustration student at Maryland Institute College of Art, exploring ideas and new creativity run amuck as I have more access to resources than I ever had before attending. I want to push those ideas of the mind and memory further, to help others understand their traumatic memories, find comfort and heal to look toward a more fulfilling and accomplished future. The obstacles that we face only make us a more well-rounded person, not a weaker one. I plan to intertwine more of my digital artworks with more physical materials such as using Cricut or 3D cutters such as a CNC cutter to bring my works into the physical space. I found out through my exploration and attempt to merge my love for illustration into a physical space, it felt more personal, more sincere, and vulnerable. I want others to look at my works based on memory and ask questions, spark their flame of creativity from self. Inspiration comes from so many things we don’t always think about constantly in our minds, and discovery and experimentation aren’t always bad. It just means you are creating new things from old ones, finding and making new memories along with it. There is power in narrative. Your voice and life are unique to your own, no one can change that, and neither voice ever will.

Art has always been a passion of mine that I have neglected or attempted to suppress for years. Like many other creatives, I was told by parents, peers, and society to focus on careers that were more successful than an art one. My memory of my 8th-grade teacher reading my career path after taking one of those career quizzes, she gave a long face as she read: “50,000 a year? Hope you have a backup plan.” Since then, It became a lingering subconscious voice as I navigated through high school, but a turning point came along through my high school teacher, despite being a heavily underfunded, neglected school on the east side of the county- always preached potential, and it became a turning point in my life where she made me open up my eyes from the foggy view I had once had. Art had granted me its meaning when I realized I could hide symbolism and meanings. Tell a story through a piece just like the great masters of the Renaissance. I can tell a million ways to portray my feelings like those in baroque paintings, to gravitate an audience and teach new things to people they previously hadn’t learned. A large part of any adolescence such as mine was finding an outlet for a lot of feelings I had, and finding artists that had the same vision as me, made their experiences known yet so overtly quiet that you had to listen, look, and read into what it meant, that was beautiful. I wanted to do the same as well. An artist that comes to mind is artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, who immigrated from Spain and was commissioned by the federal government to create a sculpture for their newly built Immigration building in Chicago, Illinois, dubbed: "La Tormenta." A cloud-like structure inspired by data collected of storms from Missouri into Illinois, yet The Storm as Manglano-Ovalle says: The storm is usually something we connote as bad, but I hope they see a beautiful storm. This country was born out of storms from other shores.” It gives a multidimensional aspect of the United States: The American Dream- and the sculpture is inside an immigration building. The local influences of storms in Illinois, to the multifaceted meaning and message of Immigration being America’s history- within a federal building no less- is something to be in awe of. When I saw his work, through my drawing class, it was simply to bring exposure to different artists and what we could conjure up as our final works. But I began to realize that through education, through its resources, there was potential to do things I never realized because now for the first time- they became accessible, the ideas, the hopes, the dreams- the gears were turning. Pursuing art through education was about making possibilities come alive, so that the ideas I wanted to put down could become reality, and I too- can make an impact like those artists have done for me. I pursue art through upper education to learn and push myself to new limits, and to develop the artistic voice I want to put out in the world. I want to be an educator through my art, and seeking my education to hone that craft and explore ways of doing that I didn’t know prior has allowed me to see that even more, and has made me thrilled I took the risk and ignored that teacher who told me to have a backup plan. I haven’t looked back since and I don’t think I ever will.

Do you know when you have someone who just stares at and inspires you? How do they trip over words because they're so full of inspiration and motivation that they begin to wear off on you? Their warmth, their joy, and their emotions make you reflect on your own choices in life, and make you second guess whether is this the career path you want. Mrs. Miller, my art high school teacher, I owe her my dreams, my inspirations, my love, and ambition. For the majority of my life, I grew up knowing I had to go to school because that was the basic necessity, that school was my job, but I was never encouraged to the level Mrs. Miller did to me to fully realize that I needed to think with my heart and listen to it more than what my brain thought was rational. When I was young, I grew up drawing like most kids, but I kept going at it, drawing small scribbles on the side of my notebooks, and assignments, and daydreaming. But what is ironic is I never thought I could make a career in drawing, in doing something I genuinely loved, because what seemed logical for me even in my small child mind was that getting a good job would be better. Moving forward to high school, I became solidified with the idea of doing political science or international relations as my career, I thought it be a good fit since I already speak a second language and I love history! When I met Mrs. Miller, it made my idea of my career fall flat on the floor. She opened up avenues and resources I never knew existed, she let my inspiration and creativity for the arts run wild, and she always profusely encouraged me and my classmates to follow our dreams, but not in the cliche movie way, she knew her students, she knew me, she knew how to get to each student in their way. I remember how she constantly would speak to us about taking risks, about the uncertainties of life, and how the arts in general is a realm full of it. That’s what was holding me back. Uncertainty- and venturing into the unknown without knowing made me scared. But she made it sound oh so comforting, I was so full of doubt to even realize the possibilities, to change my mindset, but she managed to do it in a way where even now I laugh at how right she was, her words echo within me when I feel doubt. I took the leap of faith and applied for art school, specifically illustration. I am enjoying every minute of it, every ounce, resource, and community here. I hope she knows her words carry deep within me, it made me follow my heart and my dreams of becoming an illustrator, to pass her passion and dreams down to other people, to make them feel awe as she did to me. Mrs. Miller, your love and inspiration helped me realize to take risks, enjoy the experiences, and always wonder and explore. She is my greatest inspiration and support now, and I couldn’t thank her enough even if I could articulate it.

Originally, this assignment was basic, it was about drawing a memory, whether it be good or bad, whenever you were younger or in the present, or perhaps the future. I took advantage of this assignment to become vulnerable with myself. My friends, coworkers, and family know that I am a very stubborn, strong-headed person, and when I have a goal or a dream, I am working hard to achieve that goal. I am tenacious and persistent, but oftentimes what I leave behind is looking after myself, reflecting on how far I have come along in my growth of self-discovery, and the lessons I have learned and still learning. I get uncomfortable sometimes facing my past, I try to look at it through a monotonous lens, greyscale even. For me, it helps me not become to overly attached emotionally to the past, to not show vulnerability, because in my culture, it's about working hard to succeed, and taking a step back to demonstrate emotions is a sign of weakness. I have always been afraid of being uncomfortable. This is why, I decided to step out into that sea of discomfort, discomfort in facing my past, discomfort in my feelings, discomfort in my flaws, to embrace all these emotive sides of myself, to accept that this is also me, a girl who knows she has been hurt, who has cried, as I remember my friend saying once, crying is the best painkiller when you are feeling down. A memory that I have buried deep when making this piece was when I was a child, the childhood home I lived in, burned down completely, and I remember vividly the embers that came from the house. I remember seeing the sparks coming from the breaker box fly out and start the fire in my room, before everything derailed as screams and footsteps of my parents rushing out of the house with other family members as we all watched, shivering and holding on to nothing but the clothes we wore and blankets we slept in, watching from a corner of the backyard. The colors from my artwork come from that fire, in almost a dream-like way we remember memories, the fire was so bright, and I wanted to portray that in my artwork, the contrast between light and darkness. I drew myself my older, present-day self, and my younger self cuddled in that old blanket from years ago. My older self is almost showing my fire, demonstrating to my younger self to not be afraid, to confront and process what had happened, to comfort her from the loss she suffered, that it is okay to cry, and to show her that the fire she experience will only help her grow, will help her value her ideas, her dreams, and help her become me. That is why I am proud of what I created, to celebrate me, to celebrate the hardships, and to remind myself kindly, that it is okay to cry, it is okay to reflect, and it is okay to be proud of how far I have come.

Like most, I was a kid who happened to become easily distracted in the classroom, head laying down on my left, while my right hand drew little abstracted figures of my parents, friends, little characters I dreamed of in my little childlike mind, and then excited by drawing my characters, before being told by a teacher to put it away, but secretly, I kept drawing when the teacher was not looking. Why? Despite the possible consequence from an educator, I always kept itching to continue what I had started, to make the ideas in my mind into reality, to admire what I had made, because even now, almost 15 years later, I still admire how far I have come from my younger self, the growth and learning I have done. I believe that is why I chose a career in illustration, in particular, I have always been fascinated by the storytelling and imagery you can create in one image that tells the message you want to portray to others. I always found it inspiring when I look at previous art movements, such as art deco, or even the golden age of illustration, how instantly in my eyes I gravitate towards color, and composition, and how effectively portrays the message in a nice pleasing package to the eye, which is why it was so great, as naturally we are gravitated towards artwork that pleases our eyes, and pushes the message of the artist at hand. You can tell a story with a character and a background if they are lonely if they are happy, all with the change of their lighting, their pose, and where the background is located. That is what is beautiful about art itself, it is about the innovation, the metamorphosis of ideas that change and get interpreted throughout the ages and time and evolve. Naturally, I became more passionate about art the older I got, with more experiences I had under my belt, good and bad, I was able to express the ideas inspired by such experiences, or preserve those memories by illustrating them. I want to share how I felt about x memory or a terrible experience I had, sharing through my art my identity, my goals, my fears, and my vulnerability. Art has the beauty to be vulnerable without any explanation, and it's up to the viewer to interpret if they resonate with it or not. I enjoy that sort of anonymity, as I struggle with vulnerability, Art gives me the freedom to share that vulnerable aspect of myself and my life, without feeling judged by others.