Attending at California State University San Bernardino, I completely fell in love with printmaking. When it comes to printmaking, I can manipulate colors in a way that makes my work feel warm and inviting. I always want my work to feel relatable to the viewer and somewhat familiar. Most recently I created some silk-screen prints, silk-screens are essentially stencils that ink is pushed through a mesh screen with a squeegee. The prints were of a children’s game called “loves me, loves me not.” It is a game of chance where a flower’s pedals are plucked one by one to see if the person’s love interest loves them back. These prints are a diptych, which is a work of art with two matching panels. The panels I created was of an illustration of a flower above water with its last pedal being plucked. In the first panel I personified the flower with a sad face and with text at the bottom of the image reading, “Loves Me, Not.” And the second panel the flower has a happy face with text at the bottom of the image reading “Loves Me.” Both panels show both possible outcomes of the game. I created this diptych at a time where I was getting over a breakup. I feel like heartbreak is something experienced by most people and I wanted to create something relatable. Creating the piece was a way for me to release current frustrations and be optimistic. My goal is to make the audience see a piece of themselves in my work and show that at times we share the same pains and joys. And with my art I hope to inspire people to be more vulnerable with their emotions.

For as long as I can remember I have always been drawn to art, and most recently have wanted to carry out a career in that direction. I am an art student pursuing my Bachelor of Fine Arts, and I completely fell in love with printmaking. Printmaking has a very large and wide range of techniques and one of my favorite techniques in printmaking is silk-screening. Silk-screening is the process of printing an image on to a surface with a mesh screen. An image is burned on to the screen creating a stencil, and ink is pushed through the stencil with a squeegee by hand, leaving behind a sharp image. The time I have spent on campus, at California State University San Bernardino, has led to some of my proudest works, and some of those works being silk-screen prints. And when it comes to my work, I always want it to feel warm and inviting and to be enjoyed by everyone. Growing up I always felt out of place. It felt like nobody knew where to place me, and I never really knew where to go. In parts I feel that my sexuality had a part in it, it felt like people were able to sense that I was gay before I was able to fully figure it out. Not only did I feel out of place but also left out. With the work that I have created so far at Cal State, I wanted it to feel relatable to anyone and show how universal our feelings can be. I most recently created a diptych, which is a work of art with two matching panels, of a very well-known children’s game called “loves me, loves me not.” It is a game of chance where a flower’s pedals are plucked one by one to see if the person’s love interest loves them back. The panels I created was of an illustration of a flower above water with its last pedal being plucked. In the first panel I personified the flower with a sad face and with text at the bottom of the image reading, “Loves Me, Not.” And the second panel the flower has a happy face with text at the bottom of the image reading “Loves Me.” Both panels show both possible outcomes of the game. I created this diptych at a time where I was getting over a breakup. I feel like heartbreak is something experienced by most people no matter their sexuality and can be universally understood. I hope with my work, these pieces specifically, the viewer has a sense of relief knowing their pain is felt. And to look forward to what comes next in their lives. Lastly, this would be my last semester on campus, and this scholarship would cover a large amount of my tuition. I would be able to focus more on my studies, and be able to create more art. I would be able to create this semester with ease of mind and hopefully my work can reach and comfort my community, the LGBTQ+ community.

Last summer I stumbled across some Monarch butterflies in my front lawn fluttering around some milkweed. I go and approach and investigate and see that they laid some eggs on the leaves. I go and take them in and see them grow and change and it was so delightful seeing them change. They truly were inspirational I was so happy to of stumbled across them. My favorite part of that whole experience was letting them go and seeing them fly as butterflies. There was something cathartic about letting them go and seeing them fly free and stumbling onto them on my every day life. I was able to capture a few moments with them and created four color screen-prints. I also created a collage of things I stumble across in my yard on a daily basis. Some mocking birds, mourning doves, the moon, fig leaves and a basket. I adore the surroundings I live in and wanted to highlight them in a collage. I take a lot of inspiration from nature and I am very grateful for the ecosystem that exists around me.

Pursuing an art degree in Cal State San Bernardino made me stumble upon a medium that I fell in love with. That medium was Printmaking, and the printmaking studio on campus is always bustling with students creating works of art. There was an Earth Day event on campus were myself and my classmates worked together to up-cycle old t-shirts and educate students in printmaking simultaneously. We were educating these students on three different printmaking processes and they were bringing in old t-shirts to add designs to and give these shirts a new life. We were working together not just to make sure things ran smoothly but also collaborating and providing work for students to print on the shirts they brought in. This was a very successful event that was ran by students, myself included. The printmaking community we have on campus is very committed and we all collectively support and help each other out. For this event I was running the screen-print station, screen-printing is a mesh screen that has an image burned on to it working like a stencil, and we had about five different screens for students to work with. I contributed an image of a butterfly and other students contributed there own nature inspired images for the Earth Day event. Students were encouraged to bring old clothes so we could print images onto them. The idea was to up-cycle and bring new life to old clothes. We also had old shirts donated by the school for students that did not bring their own shirts. A lot of students were having fun just trying to find the best spots to put the designs on their shirts. I was educating them on the process and encouraging students to print the images themselves on the shirts. The event was super successful with how well we all worked together and it may become an annual event. Overall, printmaking is one of my favorite mediums with how versatile it is. This collaborative event hosted by students really inspired me to pursue educating people on the art form. It is fairly easy to pick up, but hard to master. I had a lot of fun educating students on how to use a silk screen and I hope I was able to inspire some of them to take a printmaking class in a future semester. Creating a larger community where we could continue to learn from each other.