WORKSHOPS

Throughout my career, I have been committed to interweaving my studio and educational work. Since 2007, I have worked as an arts educator, youth mentor, and program manager for organizations including the California College of the Arts’ Center for Art & Public Life, 826 National, the Coalition for Hispanic Family Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Jerome Project. Since receiving my Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art last year, I have worked as Visual Arts Instructor for the Jerome Project at Artspace New Haven, and  for Yale’s Department of New Haven and State Affairs as Artist in Residence at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School (Co-Op). At Co-Op, I created artwork in a wall-less studio space, where students freely engaged with me as I created, and twice a week, I lead an after-school class based on developing individual students’ ideas and proposals -- these ranged from learning new material techniques, such as oil painting and collage, developing conceptual ideas into works of art, such as creating performance and installation pieces that addressed issues of race and mass-incarceration, and connected creative writing and research to art making. My work at Co-Op is a recent example of the numerous arts programs to which I have actively contributed in New Haven, Brooklyn, Phoenix, and the San Francisco Bay Area. As an artist and creative educator, my mission is to make art an empowering, accessible, and intellectually stimulating experience for people of all ages and backgrounds.

Sample Workshop:

What Would Marcos See?

In 1540, Spanish friar and ethnographer, Marcos de Niza, set out on an expedition in search of the legendary “Seven Cities of Cibola”, an empire said to have been made entirely of gold. In Arizona, De Niza stumbled across the Zuni Pueblo, misinterpreting their mud-bricked buildings for the famous golden kingdom. Although he never did find the Seven Cities, De Niza’s quest led him to become one of the first Europeans to cross the present-day Mexico/Arizona border. His detailed journal is considered one of the earliest ethnographic and geographic surveys of Arizona.

My former high school, Marcos de Niza High (MDN) in Tempe, Arizona, is named after the historical friar, and its mascot is endearingly referred to as the “Fighting Padre”. MDN is currently one of Arizona’s most culturally diverse public high schools, which includes a large American Indian population. As a graduate of MDN, I revisited my former campus and led a drawing workshop with students that explored Marcos de Niza’s controversial legacy by imagining Marcos de Niza revisiting MDN in 2009, and students surveyed contemporary campus culture through the 16th century European explorer's lens.