Bar Angel 1
2023
17″x14″
Colored Pencil, Washable Marker, Posca, Micron, and Graphite on Bristol

I started off with a selection of 6 elements and principles of art and design- value, color, composition, scale, repetition, and emphasis. This piece is more or less the first iterance of Bar Angel, however I keep finding myself adding a few more touches here and there as time goes on. I will say that I considered this work the most done when it was displayed at Franconia Sculpture Park for Inventadas, a latine focused multimedia exhibition curated by Alondra M Garza.

11.18.2024: In high school and college, I prided myself on my ability to remain consistent in my work. I could stay on top of things, keeping my inbox at a 0 and responding to emails within a 24 hour period. I don’t know how I did it and I especially don’t know how I lost it. Looking at this piece a year after starting it, I see how I was drowning. Rest didn’t just seem like an impossibility, it also felt like selfishness.

How could I rest when I have to respond to this email? How dare I complain about back pain when I’m in my 20s? If I’m on my phone all the time just respond to the emails! Be the bigger person, when they go low, you go high. Don’t get into a power struggle. Remain professional. Abstain.

When I started this drawing, I was one dimensional. A line that went only from point A to point B, pulled on one end and unraveling like frayed thread on an old sweater. I continuously folded into myself, becoming less person and more worker. Any feeling, reaction, need, and desire that was in any way at odds with my professionalism resulted in a religious like shame. These two selves, The Person and The Worker, initially could survive in 8 hours shifts with each other. But contracted hours slowly lost their edges and engulfed my vision. Everything was related to work. 1 hour commutes and 2 hour debriefs, I kept my emotion in the muscles surrounding my spine. These two selves could not co-exist. The Worker was the only one putting food on the table. I had to choose, and I needed The Worker more.

9.22.2023: Many afternoons when I opened the door to our shared bedroom, I could usually catch a glance of my grandmother nervously hiding a Busch Light under her bed. Or maybe it was the cigarette she would flick away when we pulled into the driveway. She would spray lavender Febreze in the hot Texas air to barely hide the stench of Marlboro Reds. The fear of addiction and the power of shame can be found in my liver and lungs too. Overworked and underpaid, my only comfort these days is the after work shuffle to be around other queer people, other exhausted drinkers. As a second hand catholic and indoctrinated American, I was taught that suffering was liberation. Work is redemption. There is a link between the hard labor of labor and the hard labor of the lord. Bar Angel reflects on the connection between work, religion, queer culture, and addiction, all marked by my experience with Mexican perspectives of such subjects.