Introduciones

Hola Amigos,

mi nombre es jenni, pero tambien me llaman jen o jenn o jenny.

no me gusta mucho mi nombre en si pero me gusta porque mi mama me lo dio. 

derepente, encontrare otro. 

I am a transfer architecture student in her final semester, originally from San Diego. 

My parents are originally from Puebla, Puebla, Mexico and they moved to San Diego in their mid-20's. It fascinates me that my parents, when they were only a little older than me, gave up everything to move to a different country. It was my father who had itchy feet and my mother who loved him enough to follow. 

Since I was in the womb of my mother, my father would play the flute and sing to me. Music runs in the family both in having talent and in being passionate about it. Not everyone has both but everyone enjoys it. I played flute in school and at church for ten years and looking back while I do enjoy the familiarity and ease with which I can play from years of practice, I am not too passionate about it. I am passionate about singing, a talent that has often been put on the back burner in order to succeed in academia. I love to perform, not just sing, I love to tell a story through my voice. And music cannot be without dance, without movement. I think most things can be described through movement.

I have never taken a real class in my life. I have learned to make things by trial and error both through my major and because of my curiosity. I express myself through making. My brother often jokes how up until I was 18, I spent my summers reading and sitting on the bedroom floor gluing things together. It’s pretty accurate.

Spanish was my first language but all my formal education has been in English so my Spanish is limited. It is very sacred to me as it is the language with which I use to talk to my most-loved ones and the language I used for my faith growing up.

I look forward to this class that combines two of my favorite things, making and movement (music).

Here are a few of my projects over the years:

FINE. a collection of jewelry made out of xacto blades and broken glass. fine refers to the the fine tips of the blades and to how things that we say are "fine" are actually so close to hurting us. 

Some b&w film photography

En Vida (In Life)

The assignment was to choose something that we collected and curate it in a box like a mini museum. This is my collection of memories and stories presented through a collection of altars made up of random objects I had collected throughout the years. It is a collection of collections.

This is a more organic and feminine take on the Latino tradition of Dia de los Muertos altars commemorating loved ones who have passed away. It is symbolic of my own personal journey to become my own person while still retaining my roots and past. All the women I have included are female family members of mine who have died prematurely, and while we may be sad when loved ones leave us, the quote on the top offers some advice: Never visit cemeteries, or fill tombs with flowers. Instead, fill hearts with love, in life brother, in life.

LA VIRGEN. Calavera. one of the altars I staged with my drawings for a magazine I helped run for a while.