PORTFOLIO
Vision Beyond
2023 - 24”x43” - Paper, acrylic, watercolor, indigo ink
Inspired by Arms Around You (AAY) and Fresh Start, A New Vision was born of 7 prompts: Liberation, Freedom, Empowerment, Success, Restoration, Temple Vibes, and Healing. I used these prompts as my meditations while working on this piece with the hope that I could invoke the feeling of these prompts through this art. Drawn as a centerpiece for their joint offices in Seattle, WA, this art is meant to help welcome our family members home from incarceration. It is a journey piece inspired by cultural, architectural, and design elements from around the world. The Center of this piece is meant to be an organic sanctuary whose doors open toward the future. Most importantly, I wanted this piece to welcome our families into a dreamscape in which they could feel regal and empowered, while taking a moment to rest, and dream into a journey of their own design.
The Huts
2021 - 9”x12” - Paper, acrylic, watercolor
The Huts represents a color, light, and shadow study. As an autodidact, I use every piece to learn something new. The architectural figure here is a Sudanese straw hut. Known for its ability to withstand heavy rain, it’s built in cooling structure to mitigate heat, and its ability to maintain warmth during the winter. Genius design with a simple look. My intention was to use pinks and purples, while showing light coming from the left, evidenced by its partner shadows. These three huts represent my big brothers and I. Me being the small one.
Galactic Education Zone
2022 - paper, acrylic, watercolor, copic marker - 14”x17”
This piece of peace got its first colors in Oaxaca. In Oaxaca I was exposed to Mexican artists, architects, and muralists whose color palettes were beyond anything I had ever seen.
In the middle at the top and bottom are representations of the Quetzal Feathers of Montezuma’s crown. Quetzal Feathers were worth more than gold. I learned this from our guide at the Pyramids in Teotihuacán.
This piece of peace is my imagining of a Galactic Education Zone lead and controlled by the imagination of Black, Indigenous, and LatinX youth. Every portal of exploration takes you into the beyond. A beyond that only you can see. A beyond that only you can teach. Every portal has secrets of the Diaspora. Majesty that we bring to life as people of the Black, indigenous, and LatinX diaspora. In every portal our young elevate together, side by side. That elevation facilitates a sustainable village where all communities flourish.
Oaxaca opened me up to the power of color as a tool for storytelling. Thank you Oaxaca. The place and the people.
Time Flow
2020 - Paper, acrylic, watercolor
Every piece of peace is a meditation. Timeflow was drawn on my birthday to commemorate my intentions for that year.
Meditation: To flow like water through time.
“You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. become like water, my friend.”
Three Moons
Acrylic on Canvas-16”x20”
Swipe to see a few close ups and a short video scan of this piece. This piece of peace is a meditation on Courage. Courage takes so many forms. Two of the people who came into my energetic orbit while working on this piece of peace were
The honorable Fannie Lou Hammer, and Octavia Butler. Fannie Lou Hammer was a Southern Revolutionary who demanded equity in all manner of life for Black people in the South. This Black woman, was kidnapped by the police, taken to a men’s prison cell, and beaten almost to death. This was done because she, along with Ella Baker and Bob Moses, was building the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party in Mississippi, in 1964. In 1964 my mother was 9 years old.
The Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party was a force that gained national momentum and challenged the established power of the Mississippi Democratic Party, which at the time allowed participation only by whites, when African-Americans made up 40% of the state population. Fannie Lou Hammer was Power. She was brilliance. She was Courage. I have never read Parable of the Sower, a science fiction novel written in 1993 by Octavia Butler.
As I worked on this peace, I listened to the @toshireagon musical interpretation of the novel. It was incredible and provided beautifully moving insight into the heart of the novel. The novel is a poignant evocation of our present day reality. I thank our Ancestor for the courage in her writing. She was an Oracle. “Embrace diversity. / Unite— / Or be divided, / robbed, / ruled, / killed / By those who see you as prey. / Embrace diversity / Or be destroyed.” - Octavia Butler from Parable of the Sower
Power
2021 - Drawn by handpaper, acrylic, watercolor - 6”x9”
Despite decades of mass organizing around abortion rights, those rights are still under attack. This piece was a way for me to channel my rage. A rage that comes from watching those without a reproductive system that may carry life, use their arrogance, ignorance, ego, and desperation for control to legislate against the bodily autonomy of those who do have a reproductive system that may carry life.
To take away choice, is to take away humanity. To take away choice is to control. It is to punish. It is to dictate the future of someone else. It must end.
Power is an ode to full and complete power and ownership over one's own body. Power is a bat signal to all those humans affected by anti-abortion bills around the country. Power is a meditation on peace inherent in knowing that the government cannot control your body. Power is dreaming the ways we will win, and living into the journey toward triumph. Power is a thank you, to all of our fighters.
Springtail
2023 - watercolor, acrylic
Inspired by the Black inventor Alexander Miles (creator of elevator doors), Turkey Tail Mushrooms, octopus eyes, and Springtail insects known for their ability to ride the wind, this piece was a meditative dive into color and story. From top to bottom, I use my interpretation of the above mentioned inspirations to create a world of pulleys, robots, mushroom expanses, and elevator door tunnels…. All accented by the eyes of the octopus. Through its creation, my consistent meditation was a quote from Toni morrison.
“If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.”
California Sunset
2019 - Acrylic, gouache, watercolor, micron pen, color pencil
California Sunset. There is nothing like a California Sunset. Growing up in the South Bay and going to college in Oakland meant frequent trips down the coast to beaches like Carmel, and Santa Cruz. It meant driving up the hill with the homies to watch sunsets. It meant watching the colors of sunrise while hiking in the Bay Area hills. California sunsets meant love, comfort, and friendship. This is my meditation on those feelings. Sidenote: to me, this looks also like a Chameleons Eye if it was a close up of the eye and the side of the face. Does anyone else see that? Size: 9x12 Materials: acrylic paint, gouache, watercolor, color pencil, micron pen
The Fist
2019 - 9”x12” - Copic marker, micron pen
This piece of peace was born as a dedication to Black Freedom Fighters now and gone. Whether in government, on the frontlines of the movement, in the opera, in the classroom, in community, in the church, or on the corner… our very existence is a forced dance with struggle.
This Fist has grown to become a dedication to all freedom fighters in this country. Those who understand that our collective path to freedom can only be found by telling the truth about our distinct and intersecting struggles. In this truth lies the power of connectivity, possibility, and movement built on a shared foundation.
My hope when creating this piece was that it would become both a comfort, and a shield to those taking risks to tell the truth. Those standing by the truth. And those standing in the truth.
I take courage in the words of Fannie Lou Hamer and James Baldwin.
“Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.”
- Fannie Lou Hamer
“Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
James Baldwin
ZLauren AMC Cookbook Cover
14”x17” - Water color, acrylic, azteca fine line marker
My first ever Cookbook Cover! Done for the Allied Media Conference. I am ever grateful to The Allied Media Conference and the folks over at Whetstone magazine for trusting me to draw this cover. Recipes for Radical Hospitality is a digital magazine offering recipes and reflections on feeding resistance and self-determination while facing the harm and injustice wrought by colonialism and capitalism. It is a collection of works by people growing and making food that not only supports and sustains us as individuals, but as communities and movements. This digital magazine is a gorgeous gift released into the world for our nourishment. Get yours at link in @alliedmediaconf bio!
Ling Lingo
2020 - 9” x 12” - acrylic paint, acrylic pen, micron pen
This piece of peace was inspired by a gorgeous earring made by @maynamour. In her words: The bottom symbol is my own interpretation of the ling lingo- a matriarchal symbol found in the Philippines and in form in SE Asia- it is essentially the womb/ fertility. I put a more “futuristic” spin on that ancient traditional form. In creating this peace based on @maynamour’s work I meditated on the power of complete freedom in the feminine form. What that would look like now. And what promises it would bring for the future. This piece required hours on end of gold and copper applications. There are three layers of copper, and three layers of different kinds of gold. Painted into very tight spaces using brushes from the nail salon.