“Home” is the one of the pieces I am proudest of. After each piece that I make, I feel like I have gained some kind of secret or piece of knowledge with it, but with this piece I felt like I shifted as an artist into making more meaningful work. 

In spring 2022, I had the chance to take an intro to printmaking class. As a painter, I was a little bit skeptical about whether or not I would like making work in this way. But when I walked into the studio for the first time, I truly felt like my life changed instantly. I love everything about printmaking; the different techniques, the smell, the people. I loved the way I could spend hours carving a block and it still was a surprise when it came out of the press for the first time. But most of all, I fell in love with relief carving. I loved the way I could spend hours carving a block and it still was a surprise when it came out of the press for the first time. I could not get enough of it! 

And then I got this crazy idea; what if I made an animation out of relief prints? This would mean that every frame, however long it would be, would be individually carved. It was a crazy idea, even for me. However, when I told my  professor about this spontaneous idea, she was so excited. She had never seen anyone attempt to do something so big like this, and she insisted that I take independent study with her so that I could have access to the studio and her advice. 

In fall 2022, I started carving. First, I sketched loose thumbnails of what a potential sequence could be, and played around with the composition and order of scenes. When I refined the sketches into bigger, more detailed drawings, I started carving one scene at a time. Every scene consisted of about 10-12 frames, which I individually hand drew onto the linoleum blocks and then carved. After I finished carving 1 to 2 scenes, I would go print them on a thin japanese paper that I hand tore to size. After months, when I had all the frames printed, I was able to individually scan them. Because it took me four months to carve all 70 planned frames, and then a couple more weeks to scan each print and edit them together in software I had to teach myself to use, I didn't see my animation until it was done. 

When I watched it for the first time, I could not believe it. After all this work, I had finally achieved what I had wanted to make, in one of the hardest ways possible. My hands were exhausted and I was exhausted but I felt more proud of myself than I had ever felt before. I had been making this piece for the whole semester, staying up late every night carving, and not having seen my piece in action this whole time. That moment made me like all that work was priceless, and I will look back at that moment for the rest of my life.

Throughout the process of making “Home”, I was questioning what home meant to me, as a queer biracial woman. In my work, I often use the imagery of the ocean as a motif for home because it's the place that makes both of the places I come from come together. I wanted “Home” to convey the emotion of feeling safe, calm and serene in a place that makes us comfortable, and like I finally belong. The themes of this piece really launched me into a new body of work where I could explore themes surrounding the ocean, home and the biracial experience.