San Jose Sharks pride logo

Artworks

I was selected by the San Jose Sharks to create a logo and patch for their Pride Night on March 18, 2023 which featured these designs on the players’ warm up jerseys. My approach to this design was to go simple. Simple and easy enough that a child could understand that this logo represents love. LOVE.

The meaning behind the main logo:

The shark in the middle is the representation of the trans community as it is depicted in the colors of the transgender flag.

The hockey sticks have the progressive LGBTQIA+ tape at the bottom and love written on the grips on the top to represent how the LGBTQIA+ community loves and uplifts each other. The hockey sticks are under the shark cradling it to show that the community is hugging and lifting up our trans community to give them strength and support.

The heart in the back represents San Jose Sharks and the City of San Jose holding space, love, and support for the LGBTQIA+ community.

The crest as a whole represents love, acceptance, and safe spaces for LGBTQIA+ people and communities by having big voices like San Jose Sharks showcase Pride at games to show LGBTQIA+ representation and support to our local LGBTQIA+ organizations.

The meaning behind the Love Wins patch:

Love wins lettering was inspired by the SJ Sharks 1990 word-mark logo. The waves in the back are in the colors of the progressive LGBTQIA+ flag. The water is meant to illustrate the movement towards safety for LGBTQIA+ communities.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Local Color for connecting me to the San Jose Sharks, the San Jose Earthquakes for recommending me to Local Color, and the San Jose Sharks for selecting me to honor our LGBTQIA+ community.

What does being American mean?

Artworks

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This triptych is called What does being American mean? The first image is called “I am Black, I am me.” The second image is called “I am Mexican, I am me.” The third image is called “I am Chinese, I am me.” My work is about being culturally different, belonging neither here nor there. It’s an exploration of having unusual backgrounds and cultures living in America. It’s a statement about what it’s like to be different from everyone around you. I wish to question the social structures of categories and why we are forced to fall into racial categories. To shed a light on stereotypes and show the inaccuracies in them. I want to show that in the end we are all just humans.

This social construct overwhelms my tortured soul

Artworks

This social construct overwhelms my tortured soul, 2016, Silver Gelatin Print

This social construct overwhelms my tortured soul. We live in a stigma, a stigma of innocence. For shame, for grace. Seductively innocent. The age of innocence is nothing but a game. We pride ourselves for living in a free world, when we, ourselves, our molding our youth with fear. We manipulate with fear, crafting robotic minds to continue the cycle of what we believe is humankind. We manifest fear to domesticate human beings into being our ideal models of life. Society works wonders into our minds, fabricating its own belief system into us, poisoning our minds with its own ideals, until we start to believe that its ethics are our own. Are your thoughts even yours? How did you come to believe in the morals you have now? Was it your thoughts or has society engraved its claws into your brain already? How do we teach our youth to be free from this curse, when we have been poisoned ourselves? Insecurity and self-doubt has slithered into our souls, until we are nothing but mindless rats running in a never escaping rat maze.