The first time that I started weaving my paintings together, it felt like all of the things that I had taught myself and learned was coming to a head. As I was doing it. I remember thinking, this is going to take over my life. And it did.
My day starts out with my family, my wife, and our daughter, Inti. We have breakfast. And I take Inti to school and then I'll bike to my studio in West Oakland. I turn on some music. This is a good one. I will go over the things that need to be done.
We're just feeling it out right now. Painting is a lot about experimentation. Trial and error. Seeing what works for you as a painter. I'll take it and, you know, cut it into strips and leave it. With what? I don't know.
I was doing an artist residency in Santa Fe. Noticed all of the beautiful indigenous weavings. It reminded me of the textiles that I would see in Bolivia whenever I went to visit my family. Got me thinking, “Maybe I could create my own textile using this material,” and I tried it. When I did these, I started thinking how I could incorporate my own painting into this process.
Like here's Bolivia. Okay, so my parents are from Oruro, so you can see all these different textile regions. Here's an example of a pattern that I have drawn direct inspiration from in some of my works.
The way that I make the woven paintings is I start at the bottom and strip my strip, weave them together until the whole piece is completed. I don't know where it's going to go, but I have to trust that it's going to take you somewhere interesting. Otherwise, why do it?
I have always made art since I was a kid. I really loved drawing and painting. I grew up in the Midwest, so there weren't many role models in the art field. I taught myself to draw Garfield at an early age. I thought I wanted to be a cartoonist.
When it came time to go to college, everyone was saying that because I was good at math and science, I should try engineering. I didn't see, really, a future in art. It didn't seem practical. So after graduate school, I came to the Bay Area and I just loved it here so much.
I was going into work one day and the building manager was hanging up a painting on the wall in the hallway, and I said, “Hey, I paint too. You know, maybe you want to hang up some of my work?” And he said, “You know what? This office space here is empty. Why don't you have a show there?”
Afterwards, I thought, you know, if I really want to make this a living, I have to commit to it and find a way to spend my time doing it. When I told my parents that that's what I wanted to do, my dad was very supportive. Part of why my parents came to the US was so they could get me and my brother and sister the opportunities they didn't have.
This is my daughter Inti. She was the inspiration for the painting at the de Young, and she made this painting that she learned in preschool. My wife and I named our daughter Inti after the Quechua word for sun. The sun plays a very pivotal role in Andean cosmology, and she's the center of our little solar system.
And the particular piece that's in the de Young collection I titled Te Quiero Inti. It really draws some allusions to the water cycle. As I was weaving it, it started to remind me of rain and thunderstorms and lightning. There were rivers and lakes. This is sort of like a metaphor for the generational cycles in our family.
It's really special that it's in the de Young, because now Inti can come to the museum and see it, and maybe even when I'm gone, she’ll will be able to come and remember me through this piece.
Not only am I an engineer, but I'm also an artist. Whereas in the past I didn't feel totally like I could be an abstract painter or that I couldn't, you know, reference my Latinidad. But now, with this way that I make work, I can address both or none. It gives me more freedom.
So I'm taking these sort of two sides of who I am and bringing them together. And this sort of productive confrontation. And when they exist side by side, some interesting things happen.
