A couple of people asked me recently in separate occasions what drives me when I make. And both times I said, honestly thinking about it every time, that it is the story. I know when something is complete when the story comes together. Most of the time I don't know the story before I start making, although often I have a hint, a word, an image, an item that I want to work with, and I don't stop working until I'm satisfied. And what satisfies me, is the story that connects the dots.

In fact, once I'm satisfied, I usually keep on working. It is exactly at that point that I start working even harder, very intentionally, feverishly, because I see the path and I'm decided to follow it. This is what happened with the sculpted creature here.

I knew I wanted texture, an extra sculptured element. I had a background image that had developed through a process of trial and error until it made sense. There was some space that asked for attention. I added a blob, it looked shinny and interesting, but it was not enough. I already had at that point the general idea of a creature protecting the figure (or at least what I saw as a figure) in the background, so then I intently started working towards making it clear, at least to me. And since I had a story, once the image was complete I felt the need to enhance it with a poem, heroic and just a tiny bit cheesy, like a pure heart. 

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The painting is 20x20, acrylic on canvas (including the 3D elements) and just a bit of mixed media.

I will protect you

I will protect you

from the thing

that tails you through

wind and rain.

From what finds you

in the sun

and drags you

back below. I will

be the guard

dog, the watcher, the 

catcher, the shield

the amulet, the one

you touched

and did not hurt.

 

 

 

Between September 2023 and July 2025 I studied for an MFA. When I started this study I was 41 years old, with three jobs, a young child and a busy, somewhat messed up life. My creative rhythm, as well as almost any other set rhythm I might have had up to that time, was disrupted, and most works that came out during this period were not products of the pure joy of making (one day we'll talk about the process as well as the outcome of this study). However, there were those moments that somehow slipped through the fingers of institutional creativity and then several little projects appeared. However, because they came to life in fragmented, seemingly unrelated moments, I failed to see them as a whole and I also failed to see from the start their immediate connection with the topics, materials and methods that I chose for my 'institutional' projects.

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Self-portrait was the first one of these side projects. It came to fruition during a ceramics workshop around Halloween. I decided to use acrylics and varnish (nail polish) instead of glazing it. The topic of identity, stereotypes and gender roles, that would later emerge in my graduation project, as well as masks as a medium, would only become concrete about a year later in my practice. 

Picnic was a child of found objects. The discarded, the every day, the unfitting. From the wooden board to the plastic threads, all objects in this assemblage are items that would have otherwise ended up in the trash, which was also meant to be a performative building element that would shape the sculptures in identitours.

 

Wall was the last one. The bold color palette is there, as well as the found objects. Underneath, on the found canvas, you can see parts of an underlying painting of a woman. But it's not a message of despair. This wall is a live wall, a lived wall, against the sterile white of decorum, and is in fact a happy expression of that woman. Looking back, those choices I made unconsciously were expressions of and foreshadowed the concept of virtuality, that I also embrace in identitours.

 

It seems that there is always a little bit of us in everything we do, one way or another.

 

 

The public phone booth, where generations have spent hours and small fortunes talking to friends, family and lovers, where tears were shed and laughter echoed, seems to be a curiosity of the past, a ghosted presence in the urban landscape. One of my plans for the future is to re-imagine the phone booth. For now, I present here the best example of a public phone booth's organic role for (and inevitably its integration into) lively subcultures.

Lipstick (acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 40x30) is the first in a series of paintings that question our dependence on objects for validation, attraction, confidence and gender identification. The object is larger than life, because larger than life is the space it occupies in our lives, and the text balances between existential threat and singalong lightness.