:: An informal interview with Yurieli
What are your preferred pronouns?
She/Her
Where do you call home?
Dorado, Puerto Rico
What is your program and year of graduation?
Illustration MA, 2021
How has this scholarship impacted your thinking and process during your time in graduate school?
I have had the opportunity to interact with people from different backgrounds and ideas. I have formed a tight community within MICA where we learn and grow from each other. In this community, I have been able to use my voice as a Puerto Rican and bring forward a minority perspective in many conversations. This scholarship has allowed me to take an incredible step in my future and in my growth as a person and artist. It also has allowed me to be constantly challenging and understanding my voice and the illustrations I create to keep finding ways to be able to bring authentic representation to women, and Puerto Rican and Latinx communities.
What have you been working on? Share the driving questions and inspiration that informs your work as an artist, designer, educator and/or activist.
I’m currently working on pieces from my Spring proposal. For this project, I am working on two original character designs, an expression sheet of these characters, and different animated illustrations of the characters in different environments. These characters will form part of an original fantasy and romance story that I am writing for my Creative Writing course. The story will be about how they overcome different barriers, life circumstances, and a curse, to be together. I chose to draw my characters as people with diverse and underrepresented ethnicities to bring forth representation. Another project I recently finished was a piece of two Puerto Rican women table tennis players to represent Puerto Rican women in sports and empowerment. I also started working on spot illustrations of an existing middle-grade book that contains diverse characters, where I am enjoying illustrating the fun daily life of twin sisters.
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