Nanay, 2019, Pen, ink, color pencil on paper

This is a portrait of my maternal grandmother. Nanay in Tagalog means mother. This is what everyone calls her. She is everyone's mother, whether in Los Angeles or Manila. It is the face that always welcomes you when you visit, comforts you when you're sad, and feeds you if you're hungry.

Fractal, 2019, Paper assemblage

Fractal is a tribute to the self-repeating patterns of motherhood. In this work, I feature my grandmother, my mom and myself, monarch butterflies, and the handwritten recipe of my grandmother's adobo. I come from a family of amazing cooks and for a while there, I thought the cooking gene skipped me. But by the time my second son was born, someone flicked the switch, and I could cook. My grandmother's adobo was the benchmark of my family. Los Angeles is filled with so many cultures and everyone has their own recipe that's traveled with them both in time and place.