A Burnt Orange 🧡🤎

by my aunt Ydalia Diaz, who's been painting ever since I can remember I took a photo of this in 2009 when I visited my grandfather in the Dominican Republic, please excuse all the blurriness.  I’m showing a close-up of the painting first, then the full photograph so that its scale becomes more clear.  Here you can see a family member sitting beside it on his phone, bizarrely perched on a stack of four lawn chairs. Nevermind him. Or actually, do mind him. That strange detail is exactly why I took the picture in the first place.  I have always liked photographing strange moments that catch my eye. During my visit, there were a few: a kitchen sink overflowing with limes under running water, a can of roach spray twice the size of any I'd ever seen, a towering statue of ceramic Jesus standing on a bathroom counter.  So in a way maybe it makes sense that one surreal image ended up next to another. Ydalia's ability to create tender, life-like portraits always impressed me....

  Librarian on Trial, 2021 Whether the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation Facebook page approved this drawing I submitted (submitted for approval? 😉) or discovered it elsewhere, they recently shared it on their page with a black heart emoji, followed by about 100 likes and a handful of kind comments.   I wrote back (DM) simply to say thank you, and from that small exchange came an invitation to potentially participate as an artist vendor at SerlingFest , an annual event held in Rod Serling’s hometown of Binghamton, New York. The idea that some of my work- pieces inspired by The Twilight Zone episodes- could exist within a space that actively celebrates Serling’s legacy is both thrilling and humbling. I’ve since been in conversation with the organizers, and as of now, the possibility of having a table there feels very real. What’s especially meaningful to me is that this opportunity sits right at the heart of two identities I’ve carried for years: -Longtime Twilight Zone f...

The MoonMen Before You , October 18, 2021 One of the Inktober prompts in 2021 was Moon . Instead of drawing a picturesque moon floating over a purple ocean and sky, something I’d done before, pop-culture me barged in and took over- much like when I chose a Pikachu theme for the Ash prompt in 2019. I thought of the little MTV Moon Man instead, the astronaut who would gradually shape my visual aesthetics and train my musical ear growing up, (right after my dad’s old jazz). The Moon Man was originally a bravado announcement: a shiny new cable channel staking claim on unexplored terrain. Here I give it a colonial jab. The original one flag became many. By the time he arrives in my drawing, others have clearly been there before. As if to say: You think you’re first? Cute .  MTV showcased videos full of quick cuts and color jolts, beauty and chaos dancing in the same frame. It debuted in 1981, when I was four years old. Both sets of my grandparents had the channel before we did. My gra...

  For this Burnt Orange blog, it feels especially fitting to share my small experiment with oranges as part of my winter solstice observation. I’d seen dried oranges appear again and again in winter imagery and seasonal traditions, so I wanted to give that a whirl. One suggestion was to make a garland: slicing the oranges, baking them low and slow (200–225℉ for about two to three hours), and letting the house fill with that bright, citrusy scent. At the same time, I’d been reading about Yule and winter solstice traditions - the honoring of the sun at its lowest point, and the use of citrus, evergreen, spice, and fire to call light back in. I intended to make a garland from the baked oranges, but without twine on hand, I placed them temporarily in one of my small orange bowls. Then added a cinnamon stick, a couple of star anises, and ground nutmeg and cloves to the mix. That was when the arrangement took on a different gravity. What began as decoration shifted into something deeper...

  Nov 6, attempting hex #EA7800 and #E65D00 - A quick nod to a certain Stevie Wonder album I've always cherished This November, I dove into my very first Huevember challenge. I loved the rhythm of it. Something about waking up, meeting the hue of the day, and seeing what could emerge. It felt gradual, organic and instinctive. But the part that caught me off-guard was the community- or rather, the lack of one. Huevember is supposed to be a shared challenge, (right?) A hashtag party and a month-long of, “Hey, look what I made too!” I noticed it early on. Not just that my posts weren’t getting much engagement, but that everyone’s Huevember pieces seemed to be floating in the same lonely algorithm. I’d scroll the hashtags (#Huevember2025 and #HuevemberDay1 for example) and see gorgeous work from artists I didn’t know, and their posts were sitting there with two likes, maybe four. Little comments. Sparse conversation. Just color after color posted into the void. It made the contrast w...

  Ornament For a couple of years, I'd scroll past Inktober drawings on social media. Eventually, in 2019, I decided to try it myself. Ornament is not my first one. My first prompt was ring . I tried to twist it into something spooky, appropriate for October. It ended up being a rough sketch of a woman forced to wear a wedding ring, the band scraping her skin until blood welled up. An evil laughing man hovered in the background. Maybe even a haunted house on a hill. Messy, crude, melodramatic and currently misplaced. I can’t find the original hard copy nor the digital versions anywhere. It seems I deleted the drawing both on my Google photos and social media. Why did I delete it? Was I embarrassed by it? Probably.… But if my first Inktober taught me anything, it’s that the first bad one (or any one for that matter) isn’t the end. It’s just a steppingstone you encounter before things get good. The “worst” day is often just the beginning of something better. If you stay with it, th...