I began working with paper while I was in grad school. I started to mount sheets of cardboard to my studio walls. These large sheets were used as the testing ground for color and applications of paint. At the time, I painted on unstretched canvas that I directly stapled to a wall. The sheet of cardboard and the unstretched canvas were perpetual neighbors. As neighbors, the test colors and paint marks on the cardboard sheet started to communicate with the color and mark-making on the canvas. Soon after, I started to use the cardboard sheets as surfaces for the work and abandoned canvas altogether. Large segments of torn cardboard were assembled and mounted into a unified surface on which I’d paint my compositions. At the time, I viewed these as portable murals that could be disassembled, transported, and remounted in new locations. The graduate studio I was assigned was part of the former Meadows Museum in Dallas TX. The space provided me with large expansive walls on which to make my work. The work was large and the work was expansive.

Drawing was a huge part of my upbringing. I’ve had a fascination with paper since I was a child. While my father never pursued an art education, he’s always been a perpetual doodler. Envelopes, receipts, phonebooks, notebook covers, and random places around our home served as the surfaces for his drawings. My siblings and I were encouraged to draw as a way to keep ourselves busy. Because notebook paper was always available, that was the surface I’d draw on most as a child. My father, who worked out of town for most of my childhood, often returned home with different materials that he’d find. He once brought home a huge box of lined dot matrix paper; an endless stream of interconnected paper, perforated, but strong enough to hold together as a surface on which to draw expansive panoramas of doodles and imaginary worlds. One day, he brought home several reams of bright white printer paper. This was the first time had access to blank sheets of paper on which to draw. Being a kid, I formulated a way of getting even more paper from the reams my dad brought home. I took a pair of scissors and cut an entire ream of printer paper into quarters, quadrupling the number of surfaces on which to draw. I’d staple these quarter-sized sheets into small sketchpads that I’d carry with me where ever I’d go. I nearly lost my mind when a new bookstore opened in my hometown. My parents bought me my first sketchbook. It was large, had plenty of heavy-weight paper, and possessed a bright orange hardcover.

Paper, as a material, is closely tied to different forms of documentation. The constitution on which we base the laws of our country is written on a piece of paper. The narratives and teachings of many systems of religious belief are also composed and written on paper. When we are born and when we die, we are issued certificates that are also filled on paper. Many of other life’s benchmarks are also documented through paper. Baptismal records, report cards, high school diplomas, wedding pictures, birthday cards, invitations, degrees, health histories, and currency are all forms of paper. I’m a first-generation American and I was raised on the US border with Mexico. My proximity to the border and the movement of culture through this imaginary boundary afforded me a rich visual experience. The mercados across the border sold artisanal wares made of different types of materials. I was drawn to the paper crafting traditions of block prints, crepe paper flowers, papel picados, illustrated calendars, loteria cards, novela comics, and papelerias stocked with all kinds of artisanal papers.

In this same context, the question of documentation and the possession of ‘papers’ has been a constant fixture in my psyche. Along the border, paper and documentation determine your ability to move freely. You must possess this paper to leave and enter the country into Mexico. You must possess this paper to move north past the border patrol checkpoints that dot the landscape. These checkpoints often move well beyond the US border. Power understands the dynamics produced by the possession of these papers. These papers serve power. Other papers, those that may have granted us power and agency, have been removed or destroyed, along with our stories, since the arrival of the Europeans in the Yucatan. Other papers, those belonging to people with Spanish surnames, were deemed fraudulent or ignored during the Mexican Repatriation that took place between 1929 and 1939 during one of our country’s many fascist bouts of xenophobia. Over fifty percent of those repatriated into Mexico were citizens of the United States of America; a great portion were children. We still repatriate children into countries they’ve never been to. Those we don’t repatriate are thrown into cages. Our history books, another form of paper and documentation, rarely cover this part of our history.

The large and expansive work I created for my MFA thesis exhibition was created in a large and expansive studio space. After graduation, that large and expansive studio space went away. Access to the tools and materials I used to create my work also went away. This reality forced me to re-evaluate how I approached my art-making. I worked part-time and lived in a small apartment in East Dallas. I never felt comfortable in that apartment. The kitchen was infested with roaches. The AC leaked water into my restroom and the neighbor’s bed bug infestation eventually made its way into my apartment. I didn’t have the paper to afford a better apartment. I didn’t have the paper to afford a studio rental. I didn’t have the paper to buy the same type and quality of materials I used in graduate school. My work returned to my sketchbooks and dramatically diminished in scale. The changing dynamics of my own existence as a newly minted MFA ran in parallel with my artmaking. In order to earn more paper, I had to take on additional jobs. This compressed the amount of time I had to make new work which further affected the dynamics of my art-making. In addition to less space and fewer materials, I also had to contend with making work with less time.

In the last decade, I’ve continued to utilize paper in my work. Paper is used as both a surface and a medium. The fragmentation from the large cardboard paintings I made in grad school returned in the series of collage-based works produced during the pandemic. In terms of access and material, I’ve also immersed my work into the digital realm through the use of digital platforms. These platforms allow me to produce work at a minimal cost and a minimal need for storage space. The work moves between physical material and the pixels of these digital platforms, but they still remain small. I can work out the problems of a composition in the digital environment and commit to certain decisions in the physical object that result from this process.