Faculty Spotlight Questions

• What is an early experience with art or a specific artwork that made you decide to pursue a career in the arts? How has that experience shaped you and/or how do you view art differently now?

  I learned how to draw from my dad. He is an artist in many ways. He would sit and draw with us to keep us busy. My mother taught me how to write after she noticed I was really good at mimicking the lines my dad would draw. When I was in elementary school, a substitute teacher who had clearly grown tired of my incessant chatter, showed me how I could make drawings from cursive handwriting in an effort to keep me focused. I ran with it. Even the work I’m making now involves deriving compositions from automatic handwriting.

• What do you most hope students will take away from your class?

  I hope they leave my class feeling like art and art making is part of who they are as people. I hope they feel comfortable making or talking about art when compelled to do so. Most importantly, I want them to leave my class with a sense of the powerful nature of narratives and how the artwork that we look at in class tells us the story of our collective human experience.

• How do you approach students who find creating or studying art difficult?

  More often than not, students are already engaged with or in possession of one cultural object or another. During the first week of class, I ask students to think about the spaces they inhabit on a daily basis. We discuss these objects that we keep in our spaces and the various connections we have to those objects. We discuss where those objects may be located within a given space and why we keep some objects while we discard others. Students then develop a personal narrative around the objects they share with the class. Jewelry, articles of clothing, video game systems, automobiles, family portraits, among other type of objects, are seen in a different light once we consider how these objects also come to us with a cultural tale to tell; a cultural tale that is charged with our stories, memories, and experiences.

• What skills and abilities make a good teacher?

  A sense of humor, empathy, and the ability to develop trust with the students enrolled in your courses. This is a good place to start. Once you develop that trust, you also have to be clear and deliberate in communicating course expectations and effectively listening to feedback that students provide in return. Teaching and learning is a dance; it ebbs and flows in both directions.

• How would you describe your workspace? How has your practice changed during quarantine?

  In the last decade, I’ve lived in four different cities throughout the state so I’ve grown accustomed to working from a home studio. The common living areas in my apartment are basically an art studio that happens to have a kitchen attached to it. The layout of my apartment changes with my needs and I keep a wall free in case I want to work larger than what my easel or drafting table can accommodate. For reasons of accessibility, my work is small in size so I haven’t had to change my approach to making art objects, thankfully.

• Is there another medium or area of research that you have always wanted to explore?

  Since most of my work is in two dimensions, I’d like to see how that would translate into the third dimension. I really liked working in clay while I was in college and that might be a good place to start an exploration into sculptural work. Who knows, maybe I’ll take a class at ACC! On the art as social practice end of things, I’m currently looking at various non-profits and community-based organizations where I’d like to volunteer with the hopes of developing some form of long-term project. Most of the socially-engaged work that I’ve been involved in has been short-term and there is something that is powerful and fruitful for everyone involved.

• If there was one artwork that you could bring home and display during this period of quarantine, what would it be?

  Cornered (1988) by Adrian Piper. The great thing is I could actually set-up her installation in my apartment using objects and materials I have on hand. It’s a powerful work of art that deals with race, prejudice, and assumption.

  [Cornered: https://hammer.ucla.edu/take-it-or-leave-it/art/cornered]  

• If you could study under or interact with any living or historical artist, who would it be?

  Adrian Piper is my answer again! Her work is thought provoking and remains relevant to our current zeitgeist. I enjoy work that discomforts and disrupts; her work does both.

• Name a place that you’ve traveled to, but feel like you need to go back to because you didn’t have enough time there.

  I’d have to say my maternal grandmother’s place of birth, El Ejido de Guadalupe in northern Mexico. It is a place I can always keep going back to. Before her passing, my grandmother was the last surviving member of her siblings and she requested to be buried in the small cemetery maintained by the village. Her funeral took place in April of 2019 and our family had not gathered in the village for over a decade. A whole new generation of young family members got to experience what the rest of the family had experienced decades ago, swimming and playing along the same creek that we played in as children. For me, there is a great sense of origin when I visit this place that doesn’t travel back with me when I return home.

• What types of books do you read? What are you reading now and/or what is one of the most treasured books on your bookshelf?

  I recently moved through various novels by Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Good Omens, and Neverwhere) and am currently reading Anansi Boys. I wrapped up Culture as Weapon: The Art of Influence in Everyday Life by Nato Thompson and plan on developing a couple of lessons that cover some of the content and concepts from his book. Culture as Weapon is an excellent and lucid text, especially with everything that is going on in our country at the moment. If I had to pick one book that I absolutely love it would be Trickster Makes This World by Louis Hyde. As an artist, the way he consolidates various myths around the trickster archetype and its propensity for boundary hopping and shape-shifting, just made so much sense to me. This book reminded me of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics, a great text by the late queer theorist, Juan Esteban Munoz.

• What do you like to do for fun?

  I enjoy playing video games! I currently played the Last of Us II…what a masterpiece of a game! My dogs also occupy my free time. Trixie is a Chihuahua, Blue Heeler mix and Loki is a Boston Terrier; both are bundles of energy. I also follow politics pretty closely, but that isn’t so much fun these days. 🙂

• What is your superpower?

  Shape-shifting, in a metaphorical sense. I have found myself in various career paths that had nothing to do with the arts, but I’ve always felt like I’ve engaged these spaces from the lens of an artist. This process demanded I wear all sorts of hats. I’ve learned so much from these experiences. Sometimes I’m an educator, while at other times, I’m a community organizer, and occasionally, I’m even a custodian of sorts. At the moment, I’m a hermit crab, who can’t leave its shell.

• How do you most make an impact?

  By caring and being sincere in your interactions with others. A certain level of impeccability with the words that you chose is also a good way of making an impact; walking the talk as effectively as you can.