Through my ongoing Blends project, I explore the liminal spaces of cultural identity, creating a cartography of connection rendered through layers of luminous abstraction. From the stories people share with me about their cultural and ethnic backgrounds, I create composite portraits that conceal and reveal topographies of personal and collective memory.

Pigmented epoxy resin is my primary language, a translucent medium that allows me to speak to the complexity of hybrid experiences. Working responsively between the words of my contributors and the shapes their stories evoke, I stack layers of colored resin to develop unified compositions. As I mix pigments and layer organic shapes in response to inherited narratives, I am tracing invisible genealogies in the subtle migrations of color and fluid boundaries. As I work I enact the stories I receive of cultural intersections, allowing disparate abstract elements to merge and ultimately transform.

My process is deliberate and contemplative, mixing paint into resin with a slow meditative build that mirrors the gradual revealing of personal histories. As light illuminates the layers, shapes become simultaneously individual and part of a blended whole, a metaphor for the way human beings are unique individuals with cultural identities that flow into and enrich one another. The surfaces are reflective, allowing a play of light as viewpoints shift to subtly change what is simultaneously mirrored and perceived.

Reflections on encounters and conflict in my own experiences as a mixed-race woman informed the initiative of this project, prompting introspection about the navigations of living with mixed identities in the United States. Through abstraction, I celebrate the beauty in human complexity while creating space for empathetic discourse. Each painting, exhibited alongside its anonymous story, becomes a living document of the intersections between cultures, inner and outer landscapes, and what is remembered and what is imagined.

These Blends paintings are intimate conversations about displacement, resilience, and the profound joy of finding oneself between worlds. Each piece is a contribution to the beautiful tapestry of humanity through its exploration of how we perceive and honor our connections to each other.