I’m so honored to be featured in Uprise Art’s Journal for Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month. In our conversation, I reflect on my life and practice as a Tejana artist born and raised in Austin, Texas—here in La Frontera between the United States and México.
We talk about collage as a way of holding many layers at once: memory, place, family history, cultural identity, and imagination. I also share a little about my studio rituals, the joy of collecting printed ephemera, the materials that find their way into my work, and how I understand heritage as both something inherited and something we actively carry forward.
I’ve been working with paint & collage for over 20 years, but the language has developed slowly over time. I was initially drawn to collage because I loved its openness and accessibility. The opportunity to build an image through accumulation and intuition helped free me to build something that truly reflected all the layers within me.
As my practice grew, I began to understand that the materials themselves could help me reconcile the point of confluence & conflict that I often felt as a Tejana. The deconstruction inherent to collage was liberating and opened me up to share a story—albeit abstract— that I often don’t see reflected back to me through mainstream art or media.
I see my work as a beacon to others that might also be working towards understanding their origin story and ultimately, finding their place in the present and into the future.
I’m grateful to Uprise Art for making room for these reflections and for uplifting my story as an artist working in the Borderlands. You can read the full conversation here.