Preciosa I

I was very nervous the first time I combined the dirt, water and inks. I took a mini trip to Connecticut with the sole purpose of working on it, and because I was scared, I waited until my last day there to get to it. I was scared that the beautiful thing I’ve been imagining wouldn’t manifest, or at least not in a way that did justice to the image in my head. It helped a lot that the friend that I was staying with had an ink making book, and we got into it just for the sake of entertaining ourselves. I enjoyed touching all the plants, flowers, and fruits and converting them into something shiny and new. 

When I started creating shapes with dirt above water, I was almost identically following the lines and shapes of the ultrasound image. I was feeling meh about it, didn’t hate but didn’t love it. It was later on when I stopped checking the image and loosening up that I liked more the shapes that I was creating. As for the water part, I was playing with colors and elements—such as jamaica and butterfly pea flowers—seeing what looked beautiful and made sense. A big part of this exploration has been about creating something aesthetically beautiful, a perspective that is kind of new for my artwork since I usually start with an almost-finished concept and the aesthetics come later.

This time I’m trying to separate the art exploration from the concept building because it usually slows me down or, even worse, freezes me out. During school, I had to always be thinking about the concept while creating to be able to defend the work later on. It created a habit that I’m now trying to restructure. 

The concept is coming together, but I try to think about it separately by looking back on the explorations, instead of setting up the concept before. Another reason why I’m focusing on aesthetics is because I want to be able to hang it in my home. I’m starting to collect art pieces and I want my work to be among them. Due to the nature of my last pieces, I cannot capture them in one image, so this time it would be great if I could. 

When I finished these explorations, I decided to keep playing with fine red clay because it left a nice fine layer. I also decided I wanted to build some sort of platform where I can put light underneath the water, as well as speakers for sound vibrations. The last thing that I noticed was that my favorite color was red, especially dark red; and I started to consider using menstrual blood because I already knew how distinct and beautiful it looks in water.