As a current senior in the Art department at the University of California, Irvine, I am working towards broadening and solidifying my academic and artistic endeavors as I pursue my efforts in applying to grad school. After my transfer from Mt. San Antonio College to UC Irvine in the Fall of 2017, I had noticed a shift in my artistic venture and thought process, which did not exclude an academic deviation. In some ways, they worked in tandem with a stronger desire to research and produce artwork with subjectivity that I felt tied into directly, backed by firsthand and secondhand experiences.
As a painter, I approached the medium with a breath of fresh air that focused on conceptualism as well as a reconditioning of traditional painting skills. To my surprise, my works adapted in sculptural ways as they moved into a three-dimensional arena. Even more of a surprise was the realization of how performance art in my practice became a dominant medium with which I used as a support to bounce ideas back and forth from painting. As new genres studies became a newly found interest, which included ideas like how to consider space, time and the body, I felt an urgency for my work to evolve and maintain this state of change.
In late Spring 2018, I received news that I was accepted into the Art Honors Program for the 2018-2019 school year and granted residency space at Claire Trevor School of the Arts in UC Irvine and have since taken advantage of the opportunities provided. By spending a majority of my time in the studio experimenting with materials and looking at influential artists such as Rebecca Horn, Paul McCarthy, Rafa Esparza, Matthew Barney, and Robert Rauschenberg, I had a eureka moment as I discovered a common thread within my work. The commonality, water, was such an ever-present resource that I was blindsided by its obvious presence in even my earliest performative work. For example, “Temporal (2018),” is what I consider the birth of its conception as the representational use of amniotic fluid was evident in this performance. Thereafter, I alluded to how discussions can be brought forth with water as a dominating medium.
As I am set to open a solo exhibition in less than a week, the conversation in question surrounding the work isn't shy of the elemental usage and environmental importance as this is just an early milestone in the vast resource pool I plan on fishing out from. As my concepts and subjectivity shape-shift back and forth from the personal arena to the political, I have been delving increasingly into my own heritage, homosexuality, and socioeconomic status. I find that being candid in this way brings forth these important discourses which I would like to confront if accepted into this program. I’ve abandoned no skill on this trajectory as an artist, I plan on continuing to build on this foundation of interdisciplinary studies.