Chairs in my work reflect my belief that everyone deserves shelter, safety, and rest—a home. Miel, a chair made of beet sugar, is inspired by childhood memories of my godmother’s apartment, where she would make me leche, miel y canela (milk with honey and cinnamon). The melted yellow tones represent warmth, care, and abundance. This contrasts with Chair in My Lobby, a nine-foot cardboard chair that outgrows the hallway where I used to play, suggesting a larger, starker world.

 

As a bilingual New Yorker of Spanish and Irish heritage, I am driven to understand the city’s layered soul—a place both familiar and strange, with a long history of displacement. Windows in my work represent observation through time; overlapping images depicting the Red Maple Swamp, Seneca Village, and Central Park’s Spector Playground, honor Black-owned homes and ecosystems shaped by the Lenape people, and all the ways New York City is home.