Family Portrait aka Self Portrait (originally 2007)

This was an examination into the offspring generations of immigrants (to America) that dealt with an onslaught of cultural prejudice by assimilating into the standard American value system. A visual exercise in the expression of the loss of ancestral values, languages and traditions.

This project was one of my first sculptures, and deals with psychological discordance between members of an American family that has been stripped of cultures of origin. My own experience of being both Mexican and Polish descent facilitates this personal project. My grandparents on both sides spoke in their native languages very fluently, often to my dismay because I could never understand what they were saying, except when they chose to speak in English, which they were also fluent in. Somewhere between theirs and my generation, the language and culture was set completely aside, and I blame not the baby boomer generation but the messages that they were bombarded with in media and in school. (If you want to succeed in the US, speak ENGLISH.)

I have no qualms with English, but I do take issue with the loss of language from those cultures - particularly Spanish - since so much of our population now is migrating from Mexico and we limit ourselves greatly by not learning to speak such a crucial language in such a crucial time.

Self Portrait (Voyeur Series)

As part of our digital art requirements, we must take a series of photography classes, including wet photography (film).

This was taken in 2007 with the Canon AE-1 SLR (35mm) that my father gave to me after high school as a gift. He never used it when he bought it in 1981, so I got to reap the benefits of that! Nearly dropped it in the tub a few times. I took a series of photographs after having read about Cindy Sherman and some concepts about the female form in photography, particularly about how the lens has traditionally been the realm of the male utilizing voyeurism (to intentionally or unintentionally objectify the female). It intrigued me, because I had been a figure model for life-drawing classes since 2000. (I reaped the rewards in under-the-table, awesome hourly wages and in free drawing classes any time I wanted). I was constantly being stared at, in the nude, by other artists I'd walk around the room each break I got and checked up on people's art to make sure there weren't any creepers in the class. The person that ran each class also knew the people that showed up to draw, and it was pretty safe all around. I was proud to help out artists learning to draw or honing their already gifted talents. And I was not too shabby of an artist myself, so the free classes helped me brush up.

But I couldn't help thinking that there was an inherent voyeurism to life drawing, and photography, that I'd failed to notice all those years. Could I have been an exhibitionist, and not realized it? I still model on the side, for extra cash and for respected artists in the community. Am I just as much a voyeur, then, since I too draw the human form and scrutinize the images I seek behind my lens? For the series of photographs I was to take for a project in my photography class, I decided to explore the idea of voyeurism, and use myself both as subject and object, both the voyeur and the exhibitionist.

For the glossy effect, I used a floodlight and would submerge myself under water in my tub, leaving the camera outside of the water in my hand. I'd try to take the photo as soon as I came out from under the water, so the thin film of water was still on my face. Used a mirror to get the image of myself, and the tub was my prop to hold my hand still with the long exposure time. I had fun with it.

Multimedia performance Steady Decline (New Religion), 2009

The fully installed church, located in a warehouse for the Antithesis Exhibition on May 1, 2009, was a piece that explored the repercussions of addictions to online social networking sites through the lens of instituionalized religious practices. Video projections involved animated emoticons (icons) interspersed with snapshots of my facebook contacts' status updates. I did 4 different performances/rituals throughout the opening night - mostly appropriated from my memory of Catholic mass as a child - where I paid homage to the icons/emoticons/prophets of a new religion, blessed myself and the church-goers with water, beer, bubbles, silly string, pringles, and candy. Gregorian chanting played in the church throughout the night.

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Video stills from Steady Decline (New Religion)

There were two videos projected onto large white screens (fabric) on left and right of the altar in the front of the installation/church environment. These were some of the icons that built and animated in After Effects for the projections, which also included facebook status updates from my contacts. The videos themselves, as a relic of the performance, are jointly titled "Icons of A New Religion."