For the new year, I spent my first three weeks of January as an Artist in Residence at SPACE Gallery, upstairs in their residency room. This was my second time being awarded this residency after applying for their BIPOC Rent Free Studio + Residency Program in 2022, and again in the Fall of 2024. I feel so grateful to have been selected for a second year, and what a special thing it is to be able to return to a place.

One thing about this residency was that I made more space for myself. It might sound strange but my first time at SPACE was my first residency experience anywhere. Time there really changed the way I approached my art practice and what I asked of myself in what I needed to thrive, but at the time, was still finding ways to not take up space. And this time around, I learned that this was not serving me.

While in residence, I really settled in and was able to spend one full week there, living and working, after the first two weeks commuting, or continuing to work my full time job. In hindsight, I really should have arranged for staying the entire time, and while this in some ways was a mistake, it was a huge lesson for me. I’m grateful that halfway through my second week I realized what was not working and made this shift. It was a really powerful lesson in asking more of myself. I’m grateful for my sweet friends who watched my cat, Daisy, and really grateful for the ability to invest some resources into Daisy being taken care of so that I could be away, investing in my art practice.

Not only did I take up more space in my life, carving out time within my home, personal, and non-art work life, but I took up more space with my art.

This new year has me rethinking the vessels and containers for my ideas. In some ways, I ask myself if it is necessary to have so many separate sketchbooks, but it’s really helpful for me to have multiple so that I can organize my thoughts and follow a process. I began an artist book after reading about the idea of an artist book through Adam Ming’s Substack. I was really inspired by the ways this book functions—not quite a sketchbook, not quite a journal, not quite a scrapbook—it exists as many things and functions as a place to collect our influence and attention.

“It's a space where you choose what influences you, instead of letting the world choose for you.”

It collects what interests us so that we are constantly referring back to ourselves, following our own set of interests, and able to pull from that source.

“Choose a book that feels right. On the first page, write: “In these pages, I collect what influences me. Ten minutes a day. Building a library of inspiration. Making material for my art.”

— Ten Minute Artist with Adam Ming

And, in my smallest sketchbook to date—I began a daily drawing practice.

In an attempt to create something, precious and un-precious, as a ritual and sacred act, I started making a drawing a day on January 6th. So that in studio or out, I could make one small thing every day, just for 10 minutes a day. I found a lot of joy in my blue and periwinkle fountain pens drawing butterflies and bird nests.

One page a day, as ritual so that I “build my identity as someone who creates every day, no matter what.” So that each day, I am returning to myself and returning to my practice, however I can, no matter how imperfectly.

Ways to hold a butterfly

I am indulging my practice with butterflies as a way to explore Ecuador—my birth country.

After some research and podcasts, I found myself really enamored by the butterfly as a symbol and as a way to move around or through my altars. I was thinking about the Amazon Beauty or Blue Morphos to connect my love of blue to the butterfly and back to Ecuador. I’m not sure why I feel like I have to have an excuse or even permission to explore that connection, but I find myself creating ones as if I am not reason enough.

But sometimes, it really is about making space and fighting the reasons we tell ourselves we cannot.

A large part of my time in residence was spent creating large fabric paintings on lightweight and heavier weight muslin, as well as a bamboo and hemp piece of fabric. The beauty of this residency was the opportunity to occupy space and take advantage of the large walls. Embracing the ability to spread out, drape, sprawl, hang, fold, and spread. I ended up exploring large scale fabric paintings and fabric resists and for the first time in a long time, that was my main focus versus creating multiple smaller works. I am still learning how to stay connected and engaged with a piece through a longer session of making. I think it requires patience. I long to communicate through my work and for my work to communicate with me, and I think that desire eases me into smaller sessions because the message is clearer after each session. The longer, larger works require me to continuously ask questions, visualize, and seek out the message. And in that, it takes longer for me to receive it.

Right now, I am making paintings on fabric, paper, and panels of an arched shape that I am calling an altar, as I explore this shape in four ways: as burial (object), as window (lens), as portal (transformation), and as threshold (in-between space, neither here nor there). At SPACE, I created three large paintings that explored these in some ways.

THE THINGS WE NAME ARE POTENT.

NAMING OUR IDEALS BREATHES LIFE INTO THEM.

One moment, I am in beginning. The next, I am at the ending. And what a beautiful cycle of start and stop.

I feel so grateful to have a space to return to—within me, in my practice, in my home. I carry with me from my time at SPACE: patience, awe in the every day, shared meals, morning coffees by the heater, rainbows from the window on paper and walls. I carry with me the feeling of persistence in a piece, fighting through the awkward parts when you’re most disconnected from the idea and the vision. I carry with me an added fondness of in-between spaces, the threshold; the dampness of fabric, dyes and paints saturating through thread and in my fingertips.