Artist Statement

I have always been a lover of words, creating worlds through paper and ink.  But I am also a believer in the power of the image and the physical voice. I’ve been involved in theatre for five years, and the way actors can use their vocal range and expression to bring a script to the stage has always been a magical phenomenon to me. I operated the sound board at my high school for three years, manipulating the volume, bass, and even effects their voices could have. I also used video cameras to record performances throughout the school year. In my sophomore year, I discovered my love of journalism in a broadcasting class where I would anchor and write stories. These experiences persuaded me to pursue media as a major at Hunter College.

After taking a digital media class last semester, I grew interested in image. I planned and executed my own photography project titled “Summer Style Showcase”, where I photographed my friends as models in beautiful places around New York City. I wanted to capture people, and although my shoots were directed by me, I grew interested in the idea of capturing natural human expression. So sometimes before taking a shot I would wait. I would wait for the model to lose a bit of their consciousness of me photographing them. Then I would take the photo, and hopefully catch the real person under the model’s mask.

What I hope to do is create a world or at least a feeling through my media work. I want to combine the narratives of writing with the visually stimulating narrative media can create. Being of Dominican and Chinese descent also has made me conscious of the representation of people of color. I hope that all my projects encompass a body of people and cultures that are diverse.

My best ideas come in my daydreams, when I’ve dozed off from reality and entered my personal creative landscape; the idea, the process, and the end result all come to me as if a movie. And then comes the frantic need to produce this work before it fades from my imagination.

My favorite part of my work is the process; editing photos for four hours, cutting little snippets from long pieces of audio, organizing models’ wardrobes and scheduling location shoots for them. During the creative process, there’s nothing I value more than hard work. When your eyes strain,your back hurts, and then, when you finally finish editing, it’s like you can finally take your first breath of the night. The specific end goal depends on the project: start a conversation, make a statement, or just create an aesthetically pleasing portfolio. But underneath any of those goals, is a goal that is purely for myself- to see my daydreams in front of my own eyes.