I am a 29-year-old printmaker/graphic designer native to El Paso, Texas, who graduated from the University of Texas at El Paso in Spring 2020. I consider myself an abstract expressionist who enjoys using the different processes found within printmaking, including relief printing, lithography, etchings and screen-printing. Although my favorite medium is woodcuts and relief printing, I sometimes choose to combine some of the different processes. A lot of my inspiration and influences derive from street art, graffiti, skateboarding culture and music. Growing up a musician and skateboarder, I love how both are very momentous, free, creative and explorative. I believe this is how I stumbled upon one of my biggest strengths, improvisation and experimentation. I also enjoy that I can be both reflective while being abstract, very energetic and usually highly subconscious. There is also an emotional intensity that I feel I grasp from this style of artwork.
Learning how to go with the flow and being automatic when I begin my process, making abstract and expressionistic marks through my carving, is a fun combination to play with. Everything influences and affects the next outcome just as in music or skateboarding. Maybe I intend to carve one particular way or want a more intentional mark, and while carving, I make what I might consider a ‘mistake.’ That mistake cannot be fixed once carved, so I find a way to solve that by reacting to it and making it intentional. Not all my artwork is created in this manner, for example, if I am making something extremely intentional and planned out, as they go but I love that experimental side of relief printing. You go in wanting to do one thing, but find the outcome changing a bit, or even a lot. That’s also why I love using wood for relief printing, because, depending on what type of wood it is and how it is processed, I am going to react differently to the carving, and it usually dictates a texture of its own. It is like going from one environment to another, such as in skateboarding or changing a band member in a band, that all causes the art and creativity coming out of it to change. I think this is why I started free carving in relation to music because I knew the carving could be free, experimental and momentous, while the music is usually chosen. Depending on what music I play, it always guides my carving differently and I love that. I feel the music, get into the groove and just carve away.
