I grew up in the Sonoran Desert of Tucson, Arizona surrounded by cacti, creosote, mountains, and desert skies. My mornings as a child were characterized first by boredom and then by asking myself what I wanted to create. Potions, fairy houses, and rock people consumed my cares. As I grew, my focus shifted towards academics and social activism. I also began to question and explore altered states of consciousness through dreams, meditation, and breath. It wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I began exploring traditional art mediums through a ceramics class. Everyday, during lunch and after school, I was sculpting. From there, I fully immersed myself in painting, drawing, and sculpture.
At Georgetown University, I continued my study of studio art alongside a major in culture and politics. My studies were framed by critical theory, an interdisciplinary approach for understanding how interconnected systems of power create reality. From this framework, I narrowed my focus on cultural geography which allowed me to investigate the relationship between body, place, and broader environmental context. Since graduating, my curiosity has been primarily directed towards a study of physics and how it models the natural and energetic systems of reality. Throughout all of this, my fascination with consciousness continued to manifest itself through an exploration of inner worlds.
Across the realms of consciousness, physics, and geography lies the same question: what connects us, the natural world, and all of existence? My approach to art is informed by my studies, using art as a methodology for mapping speculative geographies across time, space, and consciousness. Through a cartography of inner and outer worlds, art becomes the visual method to render unseen systems of connection. My artistic inquiry is rooted in a belief in the power of imagination to create liberatory space for new ways of being, thinking, and acting in the world. With altered perspective, universal patterns and geometry, and light, my art proposes alternative ways of seeing and being human outside dominant frameworks by visualizing the unseen and generative space of imagination. This critical counter-vision is not only a portal to that which connects all, but also a practice of uncovering, mapping, and reimagining the forces that shape lived experience.
Today, I live in Ocean Beach, San Diego creating art and designing transformative pedagogy for Georgetown University. At work, I am dedicated to creating new educational paradigms rooted in interdisciplinarity and experiential learning. I believe art is a valuable experiential method for applying learning across disciplines, and yet its potential within education remains largely untapped. Professionally and in practice, I’m motivated by the power of art to imagine, understand, and envision new worlds.