Grey & Cash Display
The display wall featured fifteen original pieces and a small artist's bio.
The night before set up at Grey & Cash.
Me framing the pieces in the display frames the night before set up in my apartment's kitchen/dining area.
The display wall featured fifteen original pieces and a small artist's bio.
In September of 2021, my first [public art display went up in Grey & Cash in Monrovia, California. All the pieces were created between 2019 and 2021; all the works collectively dealt with my relationship to my corporate career, romantic relationships, and living with Bipolar Disorder.
The display remained for a month and generated nearly $1.5k in patron sales. According to Alfonso Arellano, this display generated the most conversation and praise of any previously featured artist at Grey & Cash.
Thanks Alfonso, Grey & Cash, and the people of Monrovia for your support and newfound friendship!
CALL ME
Created using vector shapes on Figma. CALL ME depicts two individuals who, in the day, refuse to show each other emotion or affection, but in the night they open up to intimacy with each other.
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 1
During the height of my depression, I felt I had lost so much of my sense of self and time. It became that the only thing I lived for was creating more art every day. I would agonize over small details and begin new projects so that I would never have a moment to think. When I finally stepped away from that creative frenzy, I looked at all I had created and wondered if I had even changed or grown or learned from all I had done.
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 2
Prior to moving to Los Angeles I was working full-time as a product designer for a startup ed-tech company. The job was extremely demanding and unforgiving. All my time, energy, and emotions went into designing. I was working 14-hour days taking meetings at odd hours and working every day of the week because I wanted so badly to be financially stable. When I was working all I could think about was painting. When I was painting all I could think about was working. Neither of these activities felt good at the time.
WHAT IF IT NEVER WORKS
After my friend passed away in a plane crash and an acquaintance passed away from health complications. I developed debilitating anxiety related to my physical health. Over the years, I have developed coping mechanisms to manage my panic attacks—even getting to a point where panic attacks are rare. But I secretly harbor a worry that there will come a day that the coping mechanisms won’t work.
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 3
In order to cope with working 100-hour weeks and not being able to see my loved ones, socialize, or take care of myself I escaped into daydreams wherein I was doing the most mundane of tasks. I sit next to a telephone waiting for a call that will change my life. In the center of my daydreams is a question: is this how life will end? Only being able to live inside of a daydream?
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 4
In 2020, right before the pandemic hit, I went through a difficult breakup that disrupted my home life. I wondered if the way I had been treated was fair. I wondered if the fact that I had to reconfigure my entire life after the breakup was fair. In the comic the character is ambiguously holding a comma between the words NO and FAIR. This symbolizes my inability to decide whether or not the situation in sum total was fair (No, fair) or not fair (No fair). The height of the ladder symbolizes the difficulty of knowing.
SWIMMING POOLS
The naked humanoids swim in a golden pool towards some unknown common goal. We are all searching for the same thing.
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 5
I have quite a few hobbies including painting and drawing. I, also, was one of the first of my friends to reach salary pay. For the most part, I’m an optimistic person. But that can be a lonely place to be. I don’t think enough people ask me if I’m okay or need help if I’m being honest. I am often told I come off as doing well. If that’s the case then it’s just too well. Each object in the drawing exists in my real life including my first comic book self served.
NOW WHAT?
I was inspired to paint this after finally being close to the person I wanted to explore my feelings with for a long time. We were together and able to try things out, but I couldn’t help look at them and think now what? What do we do next to make it work? What do we do? Maybe we were just excited about the potential, and now we’re finding out it’s nothingness after all this time.
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 6
When you’re working a job that you’re not happy with and it’s a job that asks a lot of you, you end up going into auto-pilot. These invisible hands feed you, dress you, clean you up, and clean up after you. These hands take your phone calls and set your meetings, and they tell you what to say. All the while you’re not really living. You’re just getting by not totally aware of the world happening around you.
HOLY COW
This is the first full-sized comic I drew back in the beginning of 2020. I used skewed perspective to show how daunting of a task it was to write a text message rejecting a wonderful person who I was not ready to date. The words progressively enlarge and look jumbled and mashed together. A cow is included as comedic relief, because—let’s be real—rejection is a cringe-worthy affair.
COMIC IDEA LOG, PIECE 7
I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in the spring of 2020 after years of not understanding the extreme ebb and flow of my emotions. The character kneels in defeat at a vantage point ing at all the things they love doing the most. All they feel is despair. They cannot connect to that part of their life. They feel so far from it. Telephones off the hook riddle the ground behind them: they’ve answered every call to change their life and still it remains the same. Is this all there is?
THE GULF
Two years ago I watched Cloud Atlas half-awake but just caught a character say there’s a gulf between these chairs. I’m not sure why it was so jarring to hear that. Two years ago, I realized what it meant to me. The other character in that scene says that the gulf is an illusion. So, to me, it means that the differences between any two people can be quite shocking, especially since it can cause so many degrees of separation. However, those two people want and need the same things in the end (at least I think so). There’s a gulf in between the two women in the painting but they’re still so close. There’s so much empty space surrounding them—why not just close in on each other and be together? Regardless, they will never close the gap in the painting. They will remain that way forever.