Who am I?
I’m an animation Director + Storyboard Artist + Educator based in Los Angeles. I received my MFA in Animation from USC’s School of Cinematic Arts & BFA from the New York Institute of Technology.
My Work
I explore liminal spaces, our unconscious biases, identity, and how hope is born, lost, recovered and changed. I love coming of age stories and the interplay of larger forces on those who cannot control them.
My Artist Statement
There are certain social norms that I want to break. I create characters with multinational backgrounds and represent them free of their stereotypes. I create animation that explores social cues that we potentially experience as human beings. Love, Pain, Loss, Triumph, Defeat, Envy, Friendship are universal – independent of creed, identity, or race. Technology in the future as well as today creates higher levels of societal pressure shifting our idea of normalcy. While technology on one hand extends and varies our experiences it also increases and varies the idea of normalcy.
The goal in my work is to find equity and empathy despite the constructs that separate us. My posit is that normalcy is a construct of one’s mind and that subconsciously we don’t seek normalcy, but peace with our form of individuality as it relates to our human instinct to connect and gather.
I enjoy exploring liminal spaces, where someone is at the threshold between two realities. This is where categorization is loose and possibilities are endless and only confined by choice. The unexpected outcome of characters overcoming their challenges drives my affinity for coming of age stories. In these stories, choice is often a highlight and is what I tend to explore in my work. These explorations are by far the most engaging subjects in which I can further my artistic exploration. I believe that coming of age can happen at any stage in life and that to me is an exciting position to which I can subvert and stretch ideas into stories worth sharing.