A lifelong friend and brilliant artist Rosy Petri once called what I do
“Conjure.”
My flavor of conjure comes from a mixture of practices my Abuela taught me using common household items like water, oil, fire, bread, paper, and ink combined with prayer and intention, and the mental-focus-based practices and work ethic my Momma taught me. Cue the invaluable academic resource YouTube, and my photographs were born.
Materials that we take for granted—paper, fire, water—can be exchanged for (your subjective) value within the measurable timeline of your life if you know how matter and the disembodied energy in the nonvisible spectrum and ultrasonic vocalizations outside of the limits of sight and sound (to start with a couple factors) work at a subatomic level.
Or you can just buy some chemicals and process negatives in your dining room.
Negatives that begin as silver halide crystals on a piece of polyester that you can now see projected as big as a wall and as bright as the light you can supply.
Is it really so crazy to think that a lightening bolt is hotter than the sun? All you need is some extreme temperature, strong pressure, and electric fields
and plasma can spontaneously exist.
Hello photons striking silver halide crystals.
Hello Ghostbusters.
Since that is the case, how can I use gravity to bend light using the extreme mass and energy of my desires?
Stranger Things, Storm, or Stone?
My take: Right now we don’t believe in what we can’t see because science and tech has not learned to model a facsimile of a comprehensive reality that is an easily perceivable 4D and time-based (at least) mock-up within the context of the frequencies and wavelengths of light we can see and sound waves we can hear. (I’m not sure how far virtual reality has gone tbh.)
We can see the way our actions cause an effect if the effect is within our immediate visible vicinity, but what happens when we can see how our thoughts cause an effect at a distance because someone finally put those two physically separate timelines together and made it visible?
Separate but together.
The immaterial and the material.
The unobvious.
The intuitive, the invisible, and yes, the mysterious—and how it interacts with the material, visible world.
Light is made of electromagnetic waves, which don’t need air or any medium to travel.
Sound, on the other hand, is made of mechanical waves, which travel through air, water, or solid materials.
(I.e. invisible.)
The light we see and the sounds we hear are tiny slices of much broader wave spectrums that extend only in our imagination.
Recent-ish studies have shown that “the development of visible image super-resolution (SR) using deep neural networks (DNNs) has achieved impressive results. The advancement of non-visible light sensors, such as acoustic imaging sensors, has attracted much attention, as they allow people to visualize the intensity of sound waves beyond the visible spectrum.”1
Once SR allows us to model the reality of something invisible like sound with fidelity, and we expand it to the other “invisible” senses like smell, touch, and taste, are we really that far away from people taking for granted the holistic value of everything that exists because they’re quantifiable in more ways to our brains?
This is what I call my
Conjure.
PubMed for the win:
Almasri, Feras et al. “XCycles Backprojection Acoustic Super-Resolution.” Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) vol. 21,10 3453. 15 May. 2021, doi:10.3390/s21103453
Concurrent Long-Term Projects
(reverse-chron and in-progress)
2022-Present - Short Film Grant Project - Rewrite 8 - July 16, 2025
2018-Present - Textiles
2015-Present - One of One Human Being
1994-Present - Photography
1992-Present - Writing (and Writing)
Selected Exhibitions
2022 - Then as Now, Woodland Pattern, Milwaukee, WI
2022 - Integral, Green Spaces, Denver, CO
2018 - SOLO It’s Your Face: Masks of Trauma, Sunset Art Studios, Dallas, TX
2018 - Vignette Art Fair, The Women’s Museum, Dallas, TX
2018 - PEELINGS, Sunset Art Studios, Dallas, TX
2018 - HOMEGIRLS, Sour Grapes Studio, Dallas, TX
2018 - Super Women, Deep Vellum Book Store, Dallas, TX
2013 - Making Connections, A Juried Exhibition of Alumni, MIAD, Milwaukee, WI
2013 - El Corazón, Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, TX
2012 - Concrete Roses, Oak Cliff Cultural Center, Dallas, TX
2010 - SOLO Discard, Part Time Gallery, Chicago, IL
2009 - Portfolio Review, Kettle Art Gallery, Dallas, TX
2009 - Hecho en Dallas, Latino Cultural Center, Dallas, TX
2009 - Movements in Printmaking, Grava Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
2009 - Night Vision: Printing Darkness, Col. Eugene E. Meyers Art Gallery, University of North Dakota, Fargo, ND
2009 - 35th Annual Juried Art Show, UWM Union Art Gallery, University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI
Awards & Honors
2022 - Keepers of the Inn Short Film Contest Grant Winner
2022 - The Murray/Reese Family Award, Family Equality, Los Angeles, CA
2021 - Honorable Mention in The Ghost Story’s Supernatural Fiction Contest
2018 - Artist in Residence, Sunset Art Studio, Dallas, TX
2018 - Selected for the Muralism Program, Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas, TX
2015 - UTD Travel Award to attend the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference in Minneapolis, MN
2014 - UTD Travel Award to attend the AWP Conference in Seattle, WA
2012 - Featured Artist on Imagen Latina Radio Program 990 AM, Dallas, TX
2008 - Selected to be artist in residence at The Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Otis, OR
2008 - Featured in Women of Milwaukee Hour, Poetry Marathon & Benefit, Woodland Pattern Book Center, Milwaukee, WI
2006 - Featured Poet, Redletter Reading Series, Woodland Pattern Book Center, Milwaukee,WI
2006 - Featured Poet, Educated Leading Lady Association (ELLA), University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
2005 - Poet of the month for Women’s History Month, Lyrical Sanctuary, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI
Publications
2023 - The Waiting Room, "The Metamorphosis: A Poem in Four Parts," Pico Rivera, CA
2022 - Commusings, “Conversation With the Universe,” Los Angeles, CA
2021 - The Ghost Story, 21st Century Ghost Stories, Vol II, “Elegua," (short story) Digital
2011 - The Screamer, FIVE Annual Art Book, “Blood in Blood Out,” (work on paper) Austin, TX
2010 - The Screamer, 4OUR Annual Art Book, “Umbrella,” (work on paper) Austin, TX
2006 - Poetry from Page to Stage, Milwaukee Poets Chapbook, Milwaukee Public Library, Milwaukee, WI
Selected Readings
2024 - Emeritus Professors and Selected Alumni, Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Milwaukee, WI
2021 - Elegua, Lit Night, Chocolate Secrets, Dallas, TX
2014 - Café Latino, ALTA (American Literary Translators Association), Milwaukee, WI
2008 - Thresholds, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design Student Union, Milwaukee, WI
Selected Presentations
2024 - Gender Expansive Parenting, Family Equality, Zoom Webinar
2022 - The Power of Questions, Guest of Honor at the Family Equality LA Impact Gala, Los Angeles, CA
2015 - The Big Rip, RAW (Research-Art-Writing), University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson,TX
2014 - Bilingual Writing or Self Translation, AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs), Washington State Convention Center, Seattle, WA
2014 - The Unreliable Narrator, RAW (Research-Art-Writing) University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX
Selected Community Involvement
2020-2023 - Independent Podcast Creator, Adult Papers, Dallas, TX
2021-2022 - NFT Artist and Host of Basement Studio Film Club, LunarMaria, Remote
2014-2015 - Fiction Editor, Reunion-The Dallas Review at the University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX
2014 - Art Editor, The Boiler-A Journal of New Literature, Dallas, TX
2014 - Volunteer, Dallas Literary One Night Stand, Dallas, TX
2014 - Volunteer, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Dallas, TX
2014 - Donations Coordinator, Better World Book Drive, Sigma Lambda Gamma DFW
2014 - Alumnae Association, Dallas, TX
2010 - Assistant to Director, Icehouse Gallery, Dallas, TX
2010 - Group Facilitator, Latino Cultural Center, Dallas, TX
2010 - Studio Teacher, Oak Cliff Art Crawl, Dallas, TX
2010 - Volunteer, The Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, TX