One Rad Latina

Born and raised in the upper Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood ("Dyckman aight then"). Proud daughter of an immigrant Dominican mother and Puerto Rican father. I grew up in the early and mid-'90s, back then everything was colorful, there was even some neon leftover from the 80s. You can definitely see that in my art, I also take pride in the colorful beauty that is my Latina culture. From the red's in our flags to turquoise waters that surround the islands of my parents and ancestors. In my home art was not a priority when I was growing up, it was discouraged in order to have me pursue academics, which I excelled at. I was even told by one of my parents that I had to be "born artistic" and to just "focus on my studies as I did not have a natural talent needed to be a successful artist. Yeah, sometimes parents can be wrong. Art was always there, as doodles in the margins of my heavy textbooks and notebooks, as different styles of calligraphy/graffiti on the covers of my binders and straps of my JanSport's bookbag. Art would not be easily deterred from my life nor I from it. So here we are, now, decades later... reunited and it feels so goooood.