Sculptural Installation: For the Starry-Eyed, For the Healers

For the Starry-Eyed, For the Healers, was inspired by the Pokeweed growing in a patch of dirt in front of the gallery. Exploring aspects of interconnectivity, this piece asks participants to interact through touch and rest, with instructions reading, “Sit on the rock. Listen to the rain. Touch any-thing with the softness of a bee’s foot and the kindness of a ray of light.” The large plush rock-like sculpture in the center of the piece can comfortably seat multiple people. This installation provides the possibility of pleasure in softness, beauty, and play.

For the Starry-Eyed, For the Healers. Photo by Ace Lehner

Installed at the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, NYC
Fabric, armature, polyfill, essential oils, 12’x 8’ x 5’, 2023.

For the Starry-Eyed, For the Healers. Photo by Ace Lehner

Photo by Ace Lehner

Photo by Parisa Mah

Photo by Ace Lehner

Sculptural Installation: Still Living (With)

Still Living (With) is a still-life interactive soft sculpture installation that includes over 40 soft sculptures made from upcycled fabric sewn and stuffed to emulate my living room couch view. Many objects hold personal significance symbolizing key aspects of daily life and creative practice to highlight how objects and their materiality can define our social and cultural identity. Viewers were invited to sit or lie on the handmade rug and “enjoy” a soft sculpture plate of food, including a banana and two cookies.

Watch a virtual artist talk here.

Virtual tour of the installation here.

Still Living (With), 2022

Installed at Burlington City Arts (BCA)

Fabric, vinyl, chicken wire. w6’xh8’xd6
Photos by Sam Simon

Sculptural Installation: Fertile Ground and New Growth: Dreaming in the Plant Realm

Exhibition Statement:
Fertile Ground and New Growth: Dreaming in the Plant Realm is a 14’ long, hand-sewn, soft sculpture installation and love letter to these North American resilient plants for aiding in my Long-COVID recovery. I want to give sincere thanks to Pokeweed, Witch Hazel, Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchids, Dragon's Mouth Orchids, and Turkey Tail Mushrooms.

Read more in an interview with Julia Whyel in the SPACE Reader here

Fertile Ground and New Growth: Dreaming in the Plant Realm

SPACE Window Gallery, Portland, ME. Photo by Carolyn Wachnicki

Fabric, vinyl, chicken wire, w14’xh8’xd3’, 2021.

Sculptural Installations: Por Vidx

Por Vidx is a collaborative interactive sculptrual installation project to reinterpret the altar for Día de los Muertos. These altars use many materials, including traditional and untraditional objects. Combining the found and made materials in unique ways creates a sculptural object that is unidentifiable and familiar all at once.

Sweet Blue

Installed at El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY. Photo by Dave Jeffers

Tin foil, fabric flowers, fabric, light, sequins, handmade tassels, fringe. w6’xh10’xd4, 2020

DJ-151-2020-El-Museo-Del-Barrio-Dia-de-Los-Muertos-Artist-Profile_030-scaled.jpg

Sweet Blue Installation Artist Talk at El Museo Del Barrio

Club Kid Corazón

Installed at The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY. Photo by Ace Lehner

Disco ball, fabric flowers, handmade pom poms, doilies, tin foil, tinsel, sequins. w10’xh10’x10’, 2018

Futurx

Installed at SOMA Arts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA.

Handmade pom poms, fabric, handmade tassels, sequins. w6’xh10’xd4’, 2018

Untitled (Alter Vault)

Installed at the Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center, Kingston, NY.

Lights, fabric, crystals, pom poms, fringe, mirror, cloth. w6’ x h8’ x d10’, 2017

Performance Series: Li-Bee!

In the pop-up performance series, Li-Bee!, I utilize absurdity, including camp aesthetics and my collaborative partner, Cookie, my three-pound chihuahua, in an attempt to investigate interspecies connectivity. Calling attention to the interconnectedness of real and imagined ecosystems, cross-pollination is humorously played out in unusual and unpredictable ways.

Interspecies Interconnectedness: Cross Pollination of E. 9th Street, New York City

Performance still from a 2022 public performance on E. 9th St, New York, NY.

Interspecies Interconnectedness: Cross Pollination of E. 13th Street

Performance still from a 2022 public performance on E. 13th St, New York, NY.

Interspecies Interconnectedness: Cross Pollination of E. 13th Street

Performance still from a 2022 public performance on E. 13th St, New York, NY.

Interspecies Interconnectedness: Cross Pollination of University Pl., New York City. Street

Performance still from a 2022 public performance on University Pl., New York, NY.

Interspecies Interconnectedness: Cross Pollination of University Place.

Performance still from a 2022 public performance on University Pl., New York, NY.

Busy Bees!

Still from a series of pop-up performances for SPACE’s, Portland, ME, 2021 in which Cookie, my chihuahua and I, cross-pollinate my a soft sculpture installation, Fertile Ground and New Growth: Dreaming in the Plant Realm.

Assemblage Series: Lo Que No Sabrías (What You Wouldn't Know)

Lo Que No Sabrías (What You Wouldn’t Know) is a portrait intervention project I started in 2017 centering my Mexican and Mexican-American family members. The assemblages are a visual interpretation of my familial diasporic narratives through found and made objects and intricate beadwork.

Chingona AKA Libby

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures. 12”x9”, 2017. Photo by Bob Wagner

Chingona AKA Libby

Detail shot

Margarita AKA Cookie

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures. 12”x9”, 2017

Margarita AKA Cookie

Detail shot.

Arturo AKA Sonny

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures, antique platter, Milagros. 12"x10", 2018

Arturo AKA Sonny

Detail shot.

Nacho AKA Paloma

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures. 12"x9", 2017

Nacho AKA Paloma

Detail shot.

Familia

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures, antique platter, Milagros, jaw bone. 27”x20”, 2018

Familia

Detail shot.

Familia on the Cover of La Voz

Señora Godinez y Guadalupe

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures, antique platter, Milagros, 20"x20", 2018

Señora Godinez y Guadalupe

Detail shot.

Vivo

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures, antique glass plate, ribbon, Milagros (metal), 20”x20”, 2019

Arturo AKA Art

Photograph, beads, miniatures, antique platter, Milagros. 17"x13", 2018

Tia Tia

Photograph, glass beads, miniatures, antique saucer, Milagros, jaw bone, 5”x5”, 2018

Video Series: Misery Loves Company 2020-2021

In the video series, Misery Loves Company 2020-2021, I utilize performance in a variety of settings to capture the intensity, vulnerability, and survival of living with severe Long-COVID for 20 months. After contracting COVID in March 2020, I was left chronically bed and grief-stricken ridden often with limited mobility and cognition.

Sick View

Sick View, 2021, 3:10

Besidedness

Besidedness , 2021, 3:44

Holding Grief

Holding Grief, 2021, 5:43.

A Dance with Pain

A Dance with Pain, 2021, 5:16

Living Flower Bed

Living Flower Bed, 2021, 4:12

Brainwash Waterfall

Brainwash Waterfall, 2021, 6:36

Just Tryin To Live

Just Tryin To Live, 2021, 8:09

Drag Performance: Nacho

I have performed as Nacho, a drag king, since 2005 most often drawing directly from aspects of drag tradition, my upbringing, and masculine cultural surroundings. Over the years, Nacho has done comedic performances at queer bars, roller derby bouts, magazine launches, and museum exhibition openings. Nacho is a poet, falls in love easily, and is obsessed with Johnny Cash.

Nacho is Unprofessional

Performance still from Unprofessional Variety Show, The Parkside Lounge, NYC, 2023. Photo by Ace Lehner.

“The top thing you have to know about Nacho is that I’m a road dog”

Nacho and the Beautiful Birthday Lady

Performance still with artist Maya Suess, from Unprofessional Variety Show, East Village, NYC, 2023. Photo by Ace Lehner.

“I got you a hat for your birthday, but I wasn’t sure how big your head was.”

Performance still from Men’s Bathroom Show, 25 East Gallery at Parsons, NYC, NY, 2023.

“All should be able to use the bathroom whenever we need to. We all just need to let stuff out of our holes.”

Nacho Knows About Art

Performance still from the opening of Collecting Local: Twelve years of the Hudson Valley Artists Annual Purchase Award at the Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, NY, 2020.

“I consensually followed a dessert witch here.”

Nacho Knows About Names

Lip sync to Boy Named Sue, Hudson Valley Hogtied, Kingston, NY, 2019. Photo by Ace Lehner.

Islands in the Stream

Performance still from lip sync with Lynda James at Hudson Valley Hogtied, Kingston, NY, in 2019. Photo by Ace Lehner

Nacho Knows About Dikes

Performance Still from WMN Magazine Launch at Molasses Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY, 2020.

“Dykes are good for animals.”

Nacho is a Poet: Muscle Meat

Nacho is a poet and was published in WMN Magazine, Lesbian Art & Poetry, Issue 1: Season of the Dyke.

Nacho knows about Love and Meat

Still from a performance at the Vermont Studio Center, VT, 2019.

“It is normal to be wildly and sexually aroused by Nacho.”

Nacho Washes Dishes for His Stay

Still from a performance at the Vermont Studio Center, VT, 2019.

“What is art and why do you do it?”

Lipsync: A Boy Named Nacho

A Boy Named Nacho, 2019, 4:14

Nacho Knows About Laws

Performance still of Nacho doing crowd work at the Roller Derby for the Oakland Outlaws in 2005 at the Fruitvale Arena, Oakland, CA.

Sculptural Installation: Sit On My Biscuit

Sit On My Biscuit centered a 3’x5’ collage that speculates somewhere in the clouds could exist a world wherein all animals are offered the chance to sit on a biscuit, fly in a hot air balloon, or wield a dangerous tool without serious consequence. Similarly, viewer collaborators were invited to eat biscuits while sitting on giant soft sculptures of biscuits, all provided by a strangely cheerful gatekeeper with many purses.

Sit On My Biscuit

2019 interactive installation and performance for Parson’s Open studios, New York, NY.

Mixed Media: Conscious and Unconscious Thoughts

Conscious and Unconscious Thoughts is a soft sculpture and large-scale painting that seeks to visually and abstractly interpret the thought process of my right hemisphere.

Conscious Thoughts

Fabric, pompoms, fringe, 3’x5’, 2019

Unconscious Thoughts

Acrylic and oil paint, magazine clipping, 6’x10’, 2019