Tell me a little about your senior project.

I’m doing my project on humanoid avocados. It’s something I’ve been doing since 2017, and it started as a joke. I didn’t expect it to go anywhere. I made an Instagram and a Facebook, and I don’t know where they came from, but people followed so I thought, “okay I guess I’m doing this now.” I’ve got about twenty-four paintings hung in a brewery right now. I did thirteen over four days. I didn’t sleep, but it was worth it. 

For the project itself, I’m mainly focusing on pop culture references and puns: Marilyn Monguac, Elvis Guacly, Michael Guacson. I sold two of the Elvis Presley ones within two hours of posting them. I’m trying to do prints and t-shirts for them. They’re spot illustrations, so they work well because they’re plain backgrounds with the art over a circle. I’m also expanding to movie posters, and have a couple at the brewery. 

What are some of your inspirations for this?

Puns, a lot of puns. The whole thing started because I wasn’t allowed to swear when I worked at Chipotle. We worked with avocados a lot, so when I stubbed my toe I said, “Jesus Guacing Christ” and someone replied “I want that tattooed on my ass” so I then I got the idea for Jesus Guac. There was an inside joke for a while about starting a religion and having “Jesus Guac, Our Lord and Savior.” 

I started to do avocado music: Bohemian Guacsody, for example. I went to a party and someone was drawing a photorealistic picture of a woman spreading her cheeks. I drew that as an avocado and the name “Thick Guac” was born. I wrote the tagline “Thick Thighs Save Lives But Avocados Are My Demise.” 

When I went on trips, I left little dinky avocado drawings at hotels and restaurants with zero context. I made an Instagram page called “A Cado A Day,” solely for the joke of it. It just made me giggle. 

I started going to MassArt the semester after that in 2018 and was doodling them during classes. I sent in a few in my portfolio review and they liked them. After that, 100% for the joke, I dedicated one project per class each semester to avocados. When I transferred here, there were similar results: people talked about the avocados, so I kept doing them. I spent an entire semester drawing avocados by accident because I panicked. When senior year rolled around everyone was convinced I only drew avocados, so I didn’t want to do it for my senior project because I didn’t want to be known as just the Avocado Lady. 

When break happened, a brewery I’d gone to once for an open mic reached out to me and told me that they needed artwork, but most of what I had available was a bunch of the avocado paintings. So, I made more and decided to cut my losses and make that my senior project because the Facebook page started blowing up and got over 300 likes. 

What are some of your favorite artists? Who has been motivating you?

That’s always a real hard question. I like a lot of Webtoons. This is gonna sound silly, but I wouldn’t say any individual artists because I’ve never been motivated by one specific person. I didn’t think I used to have influences, but I definitely do, they just tend to come from my childhood and have more inspired me to explore rather than resulting in me ever trying to mimic a style. My artwork and my storytelling is most influenced by experimentation,  but also by my interests and my life, so a lot of the stories I tell come from my experiences. 

What is your definition of an ‘artistic community’? And how has it helped you throughout your experience, in college?

Throughout most of my life, I didn’t have a community. I didn’t find my community until I started going here. I’ve always been an artist, you know, but I’ve always felt kind of alone in the sense that I didn’t fit in anywhere. I lived in five states. I was always the new kid. I was always that quirky kid with weird interests. I was an artist. I had a weird love for psychology. I was an anime kid. I loved theatre and musicals, but I also wasn’t great at acting. I didn’t fit into any one crowd. I could relate to a bunch of different people, but I never had my own group, if that makes any sense. 

I was bullied really badly. I don’t want to sidetrack too much, but I was bullied for being fat, I was bullied for being in a certain social class. I’ve been on both ends of the spectrums, depending on where I lived. I’ve been on the receiving end of misogyny and bullying for where I come from— you know, I could go on, but I didn’t have a community. When I went to MassArt, I thought that would change because by going to art school, I would be surrounded by creative minds and I was wrong: I was bullied there too. I was spit on in the hallways, people were stealing my stuff because I guess I didn’t agree with them on an extreme level. I had run into another situation where I was the outcast. 

Now, when I came to school here two years ago, I found my community, especially after becoming an RA. I finally met people that actually accepted me for who I was.

I was in an abusive relationship at the time. He made sure I was isolated, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t fit in. I never felt wanted. I had a friend group at that point, but they weren’t really my friends. They were his friends. I had the illusion of community without actually having community because they hated everything about me. It wasn’t a community. 

Now, when I became an RA, suddenly I felt accepted, and I didn’t know what to do with it because I still had all this baggage that I still needed to work on after years and years of being the outcast. I feel like I can finally be myself. Make artwork that brings people together. Because, to me, community is about bringing people together, and I hate the fact that we tend to separate ourselves into our little categories, right? I fit here and nobody can come in unless they are like me. I don’t like that, that’s not community to me!

So, when I think of an “artist community,” I think of getting all kinds of artists together. It shouldn’t matter that we have different ideas! I can disagree with someone and still be friends with them! Shoot, I mean I understand why they live their lives the way they do, but that doesn’t that doesn’t change the fact they’re my friend and they can push me to think outside of the box and vice versa! Community is about challenging yourself and challenging others to continue to push towards progressive change, becoming better people! Pushing ideas, even debating to a degree, because debating is what forces people to think! The second you stop thinking, the second you stop questioning both yourself and the world, is the second that change stops! We can’t become stagnant. We need to keep changing and progressing and growing as individuals, but also as a community! 

I’m hoping that when I get out of college, I can get artists together to start that again. We used to have a community of artists where we all pitched in and took care of each other. I hate the fact that we are so subjected to this idea that artists are always competing against each other, that it has to be all about you. You know, “it’s you against the world!” That’s so stupid!

I’m really hoping that I can get artists together and even pitch in for an office space or something and pool our resources. We could all have different art forms. We could all pitch in money for printers, scanners, we can all pitch in for that “business” Adobe. We would have space. It would be so much cheaper, but not only that, we can actually afford to make contracts, so people don’t screw us over.