Visual Art

some of my proudest work to date.

mis inspiraciones y musas

a watercolor series of some of my favorite Spanish speaking painters inspired by my own roots.

architecture watercolors

Roanoke River Lighthouse

Built in 1886. Now sits off the waterfront of my beautiful hometown, Edenton, NC.

Fallingwater

Architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright.

My logo.

The following is the step-by-step process I used to create my personal logo and unique brand.

Logo process.pdf

First, I wrote out my signature as I do on most of my artwork.

Then, I decided to shorten it to just my first and last initials. I played around with the angles of the lines a bit, but tried to stay true to my original signature.

I chose to make the slash through the "H" a paintbrush. It was still missing something.

Enter the artist's palette. I wanted it to have the same bold lines as my penmanship, with some sort of color-way peeking behind it.

Here's what I came up with for the color-way.

I have an attachment to the number 7; it's become a significant number in my life in a lot of ways. I found the hex color #7777000, a gorgeous olive color, and incorporated it into the palette. I then used the digits of my birthday, 5/29/97, as a hex code for the second color, a rich ultramarine. The first color on this palette holds no numerical significance, but I wanted to warm up the other two colors with this earthy blush color.

Palette created using coolors.co

I then used the pen tool on Canva to draw my signature, adding the brush on "H."

I searched Canva's "Elements" and found a palette icon I liked, and the circle pattern vector illustration you see behind it. I customized the colors in the illustration.

This is the final product.

Doing my part, through art

There is often little you can do when faced with tragedy on a national and global scale, besides feel hopeless, tired, and make feeble attempts to compartmentalize your emotions.

Some offer thoughts and prayers. Some offer donations to those affected. Some offer activism for radical change. I have done all these things, and yet the feeling of hopelessness remains.

I wrote this poem in conjunction with a recent painting I created after a slew of terrifying news regarding women's rights:

When there is nothing left to say, because nothing is being heard anyway

When our voices become hoarse from screaming, throats raw with despondency

When the words won't come out because if they do, the searing hot tears will come first

We can communicate through art.

Stuck

Watercolor and ink, 2022

Amerikkka

Mixed media, 2014

Film projects

Memory Lapse, 2017

Directed, filmed, and edited by me using a Nikon D3200, GoPro HERO4 Session, and Adobe Premiere Pro

Director's Statement:

When we reminisce about our lives - from fond memories we shared with loved ones, to frightening or damaging experiences that leave us just a little more cracked than before - we tend to alter the memories, even if only a small amount. We retell stories from our past again and again, sometimes leaving details out or adding “embellishments” to the tales. We subconsciously remove severely traumatizing experiences from our memory as well, and perhaps this is a wonderful thing. Maybe, just maybe, our brains push out these bad memories to make room for the good ones.

My experimental film explores this idea of memory alteration, and the act of trying to remember a repressed experience. When the memory of a traumatic incident is recovered from the lost files of one’s temporal lobe, one of two things may happen. One, a person may brush it off as a fake memory, or simply a dream that felt too real. Or two: the person accepts this newly recovered memory and must now live with it.


But how can I possibly live with it?