Polo — See Me Because

One of my earliest and favorite childhood memories is going to the park and being on the swings at night with my mom. Those were some of the times that we’d spend closely together. I’ve lived with my mom my entire life, with three brothers, including me, my entire life, and my fourth brother immigrated from Mexico about a year ago. All are under the same roof now.

I’m very grateful to be born and raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. I associate a lot of my Hispanic roots with it, and it's the only place where I feel like many different cultures call home. You'll be on 82nd Street having Ecuadorian or Salvadorian food, then you go to 74th Street and you have Indian food and around the corner Middle Eastern food. It's all ten blocks away. You don't find that anywhere else. My mom worked a lot, so I'd stay with a woman who lived directly below us. This woman was my babysitter and became a part of our family. I would get invited to her family parties and holidays. There were so many traditions. Their family cooked a lot of Mexican food. It was always so good. That's what my childhood was.

I'm really inspired by my supervisor where I work. I'm just inspired by his ability to pursue what he wants out of life. He puts a lot of effort and care into his work. The way he's taught me stuff now feels like how I want to teach others. I didn't necessarily think about teaching in any way, but he's engraved the whole teaching thing into me. I feel so appreciative because I've never had a supervisor who asked me, "What do you need to feel better and more confident for yourself?" I would never have an answer, but he still asked and he still does. I never put those two together as a student, until I happened to be on the other side and be like, “Oh, that's what makes a good teacher.” I'm thankful for that. Those are good lessons.

I respond a lot to spiritual art, like churches, mosques and other religious structures. But also in a more modern sense, how people create their own spirituality and what that looks like for other people. From that point of view,I look into those structures that were made in the past and see how I can connect to them, even though I'm not necessarily following the religion that goes along with that motif. I focus on the iconography that comes up in that religion. It's a mixture of surrealism, just like my thoughts. You realize you're doing something or you're trying to draw something that maybe doesn't exist in the real world. You have to make it exist in this 2D form and still give it a shape and purpose.

New York City, 2023