Flores de Vida

2024 / Steel, Aluminum, Plastic Cane, Rope, Beads

I reference the shape of a wooden box my grandpa built to house a half-scale statue of a saint. Instead of having a physical object inside, the shadows made from the light source above occupy the space, with their evidence on the ground. The metal eye embodies the divine within the experience of the everyday, placed on what can be the top of a table, or the seat of a stool.

I am using cane weaving to create spaces of Latin American religiosity, while also reclaiming the medium and making it specific to Nicaragua. Cane weaving came to the Americas in the 1650s through England. It was used to create furniture that could withstand the hot and humid climates, unlike the upholstery typical to Europe at the time. It took root in the United States, and evolved into wicker furniture, but in the rest of the Continent, the technique has remained the same for centuries. The weave pattern in Nicaragua has its own name, ojo de pollo, or chicken eye, since every other square makes an eye-like shape. Through interventions within the weave with wire, beads, and string, I use the weave as a gridded canvas to adorn with colors and materials familiar to churches in Nicaragua, building upon the naming of the weave to create a specifically Nicaraguan object.

This is part of my Art Senior Thesis project.

Plexus

2024 / Copper

This pendant is placed the middle of the chest, a symbol of embodied religiosity. The ‘all-seeing eye’ is extended from the constructed to the human. Within this framework, the pendant is extended beyond an object of adornment into an object of devotion.

Abdomen

2024 / Copper Wire, Solder, Rope

I developed this technique of using a soldering iron through my fellowship at the Center for Collaborative Arts and Media in 2023/24. I layered a macrame tapestry behind the metal cage to create the semblance of an enclosed space that is pierced and permeated by the life that occurs around it.

Solder is a metal typically used in electrical boards. The space between the cage and the tapestry represents the abdomen, a space where feeling is felt and held within the body. Instead of conducting electricity, the sculpture conducts the energy of who is around it, working the same way an abdomen does.

Sandino Manifesto

2024, Print

This is a poster examinines three different periods in Nicaraguan history. In the middle column, a manifesto written and published by Augusto Sandino is displayed in a blocky font that emulates the writing commonly found painted in the Nicaraguan public space. Written in 1927, it calls on the unification of the Nicaraguan in the face of an American occupation. Sandino’s name and likeness were then used in the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN); the revolutionary party that defeated Somoza in 1979. In 2006, Daniel Ortega was voted into power and with him came the revival of the Sandinista party that is still present today.

Headlines from these three eras of Sandino/Sandinismo are displayed on the two columns framing the manifesto, and are typeset in fonts that are historically accurate based on examination of original newspapers. At the time of making, the last headline added was from two-weeks prior. I argue the middle font is timeless within Nicaraguan typographic history because it is the same blocky lettering that is found on the streets. It also embodies the Nicaraguan public, as it is done by everyday people aiming solely to communicate.

Human Prints Vol. 1

2023 / Paper, Ink

“Human Prints Vol. 1” is a collection of 32 human prints photographed, vectorized, and cataloged in this booklet. I utilized graphic design and grammar technicalities like “full bleed,” “rivers,” and “run-on” conceptually.

Lamp to Remember

2022 / Steel, Lightbulb

This lamp serves as an observance for the people involved in the 2018 protests against the Ortega government. In what started as a peaceful rejection of social security reforms by Ortega quickly escalated to state-sanctioned violence against hundreds of thousands, leading to thirty deaths. Protesters engaged with metal trees of life, found throughout Managua and erected by the government, through cutting them down with chainsaws as a form of protest.

This direct engagement with an ‘Ortegian’ symbol is what I sought to capture in this lampshade, emulating the distinct spiral pattern of the trees in a crude and burned manner to reflect the moment the trees fell to the ground. These spirals also serve to let light shine through, projecting this moment of action onto the walls to memorialize.

Stool for Thinking

2022 / Steel

I created this stool with the intention of placing the human body in a position of thinking. The spirals on the feet and on the seat of the chair represent the process of moving inward/outward.

I was examining the process of creating a thought from material reality, through symbol.

Tag Bag

2023 / Steel, Clothing Tags

The soft body of the object is made of discarded clothing tags sewn together. They are reversed, revealing the materiality of their text. Reversing them also reveals their sculptural qualities, further distorting their utilitarian purpose. The handle is a forged fork emerging from a spiral, a surrealist amalgamation of symbols that serve the user as one.

Found Type in Nicaragua

2024 / Print

This zine documents hand-painted signs, vinyls on vehicles, and typography in churches in order to showcase and preserve Nicaraguan graphic art. Heavily influenced by Ellen Lupton’s ideas on typography as cultural memory, the series highlights the visual language of Nicaragua’s streets—where text functions not only as signage but as a marker of identity, commerce, and spirituality. By preserving these ephemeral designs, this project captures a visual landscape that has not been looked that through the aesthetic eye.

Xetma

2023 / Charms, Rings

“XETMA” is a typeface I designed using beads from my jewelry practice and Milagros, or votive charms. While making this I was interested in what would happen when constructing a font out of gems, stones, and beads who’s purpose are for adornment on the body and for religious devotion.

I explored this in two iterations, one where the font is used in tandem with the jewelry I made from the charms, and the other in a poster emulating a votive street sign I documented in my zine.

Milagros are found all over churches in Nicaragua, where the public ritual of placing these objects on statues of saints inspires devotion in others.

This project was chosen by Everyday Practice, a design studio in Seoul, to be recognized in The Design Kids 2024 Awards, an international design competition for young designers.