I am a visual artist and educator. 

I create art predicated on realities and legends of my upbringing. My works are visual records of family, community, and border culture along the Rio Grande Valley, my home. These Borderlands have long been ravaged by poverty, human trafficking, and the ongoing Mexican Drug War. The Rio Grande cuts one land and people in two, like a wound, bleeding a legacy of pain, tears, and struggle that have beset the area for generations.  History, national identity, race, class, and language all intersect along the border and upon the bodies of Tejana/os. My family has resided in this geographic territory for over four generations.​

I have researched vernacular arts like pano arte, drawings on handkerchiefs believed to have emerged from Chicano prisoners in the 1940s, and the huipil, embroidered Mayan textiles worn by indigenous women in Southern and Central America.  These art forms are reconfigured to tell contemporary stories of life along the Texas/Mexico border. Juxtaposing colorful watercolor-drawn images of flowers indigenous to Texas against stark, monochromatic media images, meticulously rendered in pen, I offer the beauty of home against grisly depictions of violence and death.  Using these tools on domestic textiles such as handkerchiefs, pillowcases, and bed sheets, my work draws upon what Amalia Mesa-Bains coined, the domesticana, and examines psycho-political struggles of life along La Frontera.​

The struggle of the marginalized, the silenced, and the underserved has been part and parcel, a continued motivation behind my calling and my craft.  After earning my MFA, my work took a shift towards examining broader issues involving human rights, education, and motherhood. My hope is that my work continues to create dialogue and sustain messages with socio-political connotations, connections, and critique.  I would like my art to provoke not just further inquiry around critical issues that affect our community, but action.