ARTWORK DECRIPTIONS

Celina Villanueva

Death is an ends on earth however a beginning in the afterlife. Soul Family began with exploring flowers and the connections we make through giving and receiving them, this one in particular I was thinking about flowers being a connection to life and death. The thought one may have while giving flowers to a loved one who is grieving, not only are those connections made on earth but they are also made with the dead, the ones we lost and the family that awaits us on the other side.

Soul Family
Oil on arches oil paper
2025
29 x 22in

Carolyn Cardoza

Memory Care recalls and retells memories with my Grandma Sophie, through recent documentation of her life living with dementia, I was able to explore my own fear of losing ones memory, ultimately returning with a closer relationship with my grandma and a sense of peace after every visit and every photograph. 

Memory Care: Hands on Face 
​Photography
2025
16x24in

Angela Pastor

​The painting is a reflection of making difficult choices in life; having an abortion. It is unfortunate how we can never choose the timeline of our life. No matter how much you plan, “life happens to you, not for you”. There is blood, pain, guilt, and grief. 

Untitled
Watercolor
2023
8x14in

Melissa Huerta

In society, pet bereavement is often overlooked or unrecognized. I made this painting thinking of those that had to make the difficult decision of letting their pet go due to terminal illness. The anticipatory grief, knowing that soon they will have to part ways.The painting demonstrates a tender moment of togetherness between companions for the last time. 

Tender goodbye 
Acrylic on handstretched canvas
20x26
2025

Melissa Huerta

​Many use their faith and religion to cope with grief. This print is my representation of the Aztec goddess, Tonantzin, who many now recognize as La Virgen de Guadalupe. I wanted to merge both ideologies into a being that not only represnts earth and fertility, but also embodies strength, hope, and protection

Tonāntzin
Lino Block Print
30 x 22in
33.5 x 26.75in (Framed)
2025
1/5​

Glow Universe

​My sculpture  is a practice of showing up for self and collective, a reminder that the life within us is both ritual and resistance,
melting all barriers across borders. 
In the collage each sentence becomes a prayer to the sun, as a gentle loving  powerful, reminder that light is both ritual and resistance, each dedicated to someone who transitioned out of this realm, in their native tongue.  

Määy prayer al Sol, Nuestro liberté
Sculpture and framed mixed materials 
2025
10x5x10in, 10x7x10in​

Oralys Polonia

​This piece is about how grief makes you feel like a complete different person ,very strong emotions that feel like will never go away. After speding many weeks in this mindset after processing the negative emotions. I started to see different things in my daily life that brought some joy back, this is represented by the soft pastels colors in the background compare to the intense pick and red.

I’m still here
Mixed Media
2025
3’3in x 26in​

Munchy Waters

This piece is about the complex feelings of losing my mother to cancer and my determination to keep my love and faith alive despite the massive grief that hangs over me. Flamingos feed their children red milk from a gland in their head, representing my complicated feelings on inheritance

grief within faith within love
Gouache on paper 
2025
9x12in​

Kaden Umaña

For all the times my feelings were not allowed to be my own. Fuck the haters and abusers, feel all your feelings without remorse. 
Informed by drag and non-verbal performance, marioneta, mourns past feelings and embraces cathartic emotional release. 

Marioneta
Photographic Print
2025
11x17in​

CJ Calica

​This photograph is of my partner’s grandmother, Nai Nai. I would often hear stories about her husband, my partner’s Yé Ye, and how he raised my partner while caring deeply for Nai Nai. When I first heard about Yé Ye, he was no longer with us, and I remember wishing I had met the person who brought so much love and connection into their family. Through this image, I wanted to honor that presence and to capture the quiet strength and warmth that still fills their home, and the love that continues to live through her. I hope Nai Nai is happy and surrounded by the same care she once shared with him.

Spaces of Care
Photograph, Inkjet Print
2025
16x20in​

Farah Garcia

Soften the Feelings that Harden my Heart 
This piece honors my father’s side of the family, who have long carried the weight of indigeneity, displacement, and prejudice. The photographs I used— family portraits in colonized dress, and a wedding photo of my father’s brother and his wife — are not only records of lineage but reminders of the ways my family’s lives were shaped by systemic erasure and survival. The couple I include here were pivotal in raising my father and I at some point in our lives, and remind us of the love that comes from this inherent struggle and survival. 

I grieve for these intimate histories and for these people, a grief that feels heavy, brooding, and dark. And yet, by layering delicate textures — lace, pressed petals, soft veils of image transfer — I work to soften the weight of that grief. These materials preserve tenderness alongside sorrow, reminding me that mourning can be an act of love as much as it is an expression of loss.
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This piece reflects the contradictions of grief: the ache of displacement, the inheritance of memory, and the quiet beauty that emerges when we choose to honor what has been taken. In placing these fragile layers together, I create a small altar to both the losses that harden my heart and the love that continues to soften it.

Mi Abuelita Jana 
Collage, Mixed Media
2025
15 x 20in​

Jane T- Ramirez

​I was inspired by music particularly sad or emotional songs that have variety of experiences in heart break to grieving a lost of a loved one and feeling those old joyful feelings again that helped me create this piece. In the piece the character is having an intense emotional moment of an delightful memories assuming of someone in the past and grieving since they are no longer there. 

Reminisce of Joyfulness
Watercolors and Gouache with color pencils on watercolor paper
2025
11.7 x 16.5 in​

Socorro Galindo

​In Maya communities, fire and burning are central to sacred ceremonies for purposes of healing, purification, renewal, and communication with ancestors and gods. The image is representation of offerings before the ceremony commences. 

Ceremonia
Photograph
2025​

Juli Perez

In 2023, I returned to El Salvador for the ninth anniversary of my grandmother’s passing.
Grief marked the journey—grief for her absence, for the fragments of memory that distance erases.

I wonder what legacy she imagined for us.
Would she recognize me—my queerness, my transness—as part of it?

Her presence lingers in 
gestures, 
languages, 
recipes, 
faith, 
and memory.

From these fragments I return to her, searching for a place within her lineage that feels both near and unreachable.
Can a legacy built on survival and sacrifice expand to include ways of being that may never have been named in her time?

LEGACY! LEGACY! LEGACY!
Photography print
2023
11x14x1/2in​

Grace Li

When I think of that phrase, Saint friend, I think of an ordinary weekday two years ago, when I called in sick to work. When I told him this in a passing text, my friend George asked if I had a thermometer. I said I didn’t, and he immediately took two trains to bring one to me. That was it. He came up my stairs, took my temperature, left the thermometer on the table, and went back home. I’ve been friends with George for years. We’ve done so much together, but I remember this the most. This inconvenience I caused him, and how it let him show his love.

LEGACY! LEGACY! LEGACY!
Photography print
2023
11x14x1/2in​

Kyung Na Park

​A freeform letter to a friend who passed recently

Dearly Departed
Zine
2025
4x2.75​

Nicole Kiabeth

​As humans we are not immune to the feeling of grief, everyday someone is experiencing grief from death, war, political injustice, a strained relationship, health complications and other events. Grieving is never linear and from my own experience of it I think it's a powerful emotion that has made me feel very small. It feels like darkness, silence and numbness. Through many tears, time and healing I think grieving can also create space for a lot of love. Because we are not alone in our grief. In this painting I tried to capture both feelings, darkness and light in a time of grief.

Grieving is Never Linear
Mixed media, Gouache and Watercolor on paper 
2025
9x12in

Stephanie Hernandez

​A meditation on loss and remembrance, this piece holds the tenderness of grief — where love endures beyond the body and memory becomes a form of keeping.

“Keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever" "Don't forget me in my decent"
Ceramics 
2024
17 x 8 in , 20 x 10in​

Oscar Noe De Leon Robles

​Thinking about what bereavement meant. I haven’t experienced the physical death of someone close in my immediate family since my grandparents passed away.
But I feel like grief isn’t always tied to physical death—it can also be spiritual or emotional. I took an image during a time when I felt like I was letting go of the person I was molded to be, and instead becoming the person I’ve always truly been.
This kind of death isn’t final—it’s more like  shedding. For me, it felt like growth. But for my parents, it felt like loss. They were grieving the version of me they had known, or perhaps the one they had hoped I would become.
In a photo series, I wear my father’s work clothes and gradually shed them, until they are left behind—“trashed.” One image shows the clothes lying on the bed I’ve slept in since I was a teenager.(Image presented )
That setting holds years of personal history, expectations, and emotional weight.
For me, this represents a moment of release: letting go of the need to carry certain expectations, to be someone I’m not. It's a symbolic step away from trying to mirror my father or fit into a mold that doesn’t reflect who I am.
It’s a healing process for me—and a reflective one for my parents, as they grieve the person they thought I was going to be. Presented on found wooded panel. 

Mi vale la Mérida que eres, pero haste responsable 
Image Transfer on wood
2024​

Jenny Payan

​Azteca en el Cielo is a tribute to my dog, Aztec/Azteca, who passed away six years ago. In this linocut, I reimagine him before an Aztec temple, placing him in a sacred realm of eternity and peace. The title refers not to the sky, but to heaven. The linocut process, with its cuts and impressions, mirrors the way grief reshapes us, leaving behind marks that hold memory and devotion. Through this piece, I honor Azteca’s spirit while reflecting on how mourning can transform into a celebration of enduring love.

Azteca en el Cielo
Linocut 
2025
8x11in​

Leah Fuentes

​In Company is an intimate exploration of the innate human experience of grief. The first of the series focuses on Yahira, a single mother of two who has experienced the loss of her soul mate and the father of her children. Yahira and I discuss who he was to her, how he impacted her life, and how she is progressing now that he is gone. Not only do we get to hear Yahira's story, but we also get to interact with a film photo of Yahira that was taken at the time of the interview, marking her grief in time, as it will inevitably morph and change. 

In Company: Yahira
Photo and Audio Portrait
2025
11x14in​

Danielle Del Rosario

​A morning spent writing short stories in handmade journals of grieving a childhood friend, bike rides with loved ones we'll never see again, and re/imaging a place where a flowing river runs through our communities instead of the toxic East LA Interchange

Ang oras ay ginto (Time is Gold)
Collage, Mixed Media
2025
11x14in​

Nova Mejia

​Interconnected Destiny is a piece that reflects how life and death are beautifully woven together. It honors the ways in which we are all inextricably tied together in sometimes tragic, subtle, yet divine ways. 

Interconnected Destiny
3 Color Reduction Print
21 x 30in 
24.5 x 33in (Framed)
1/6
2025​

Nova Mejia

​Creator's Circle is a recognition of the grand symbiotic nature of all beings, including the relationships between predators and prey. It honors native California species and the beauty of the cycle of life. This piece was made as a tool to process death and reflect on grief.

Creator’s Circle
Mezzotint
2024

Victor Reyes

​A quiet farewell in light and shadow. Adiós captureing the stillness of loss , a coffin surrounded by soft candlelight, where grief turns into reflection. The title, meaning “goodbye” speaks to a spiritual release, a final moment of connection between the living and the departed.

Adios
Mezzotint with Oil ink
2025
6 1/4 x 10in​

Javier Carrillo

​A devotional reflection on mourning and memory, created for this exhibition. The central panel presents a contemplative figure holding a photograph of a beloved who has passed away. Flanked by family of burden and solace, the composition is set within stained-glass–like arches that evoke liturgical space. A feathered serpent curves along the lower border, grounding memory in myth and storytelling. The work invites quiet presence, communal remembrance, and the emergence of beauty through grief.

La Muerte Hermosa
Mixed Medium
2025
22 x 28in​

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Aujané Rene

​My poem "Rene's Interlude" is a spoken word poem I revised into a song and prayer for my passed on uncle -- who served as my only father figure. He tragically passed away when I was 18 years old from suicide sending me on a journey of self discovery, generational healing, mental health advocacy, and the beginning of a legacy that outlives me and honors his memory in a loving way that rewrites the tragedy of his death. 

Rene’s Interlude
Song
2022​

Kym Rodriguez

​What do you do when you’re holding on to multiple griefs? When I read about this exhibition, I tried to choose one experience of loss to portray—but I couldn’t. They’ve all come to visit me recently—each asking to be seen. Accompanied by Adagio for Strings, this short film drifts through the quiet spaces of loss and memory—how they echo, overlap, and refuse to fade. I filmed my family in Mexico two years ago, not knowing I would lose three of them since. These captured moments allow them to live beyond the physical realm. Whether you’re grieving a loved one, a relationship, or even parts of yourself, this film is an embrace—a soft invitation to hold what hurts, to let grief unfold at your own pace, always.

no llega el olvido
Mixed media, film/video
2025​

Nova Mejía is a Los Angeles-based Mexican-American artist focused on printmaking and ceramics. Their work speaks on processes of grief, interconnection with the natural world, the cycle of life, indigeneity and liberation. They graduated from UC San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies in 2020 and quickly became involved in community organizing and art as a tool for healing, this continues to inspire their art practice and career path. Exploring many forms of printmaking as a student of Art Division and participating in a ceramic art residency in Oaxaca has propelled them into a thriving art community that they are excited to dive even deeper into. 

Melissa Huerta was born and raised in Los Angeles (in Koreatown). She joined Art Division two years ago and through the program, she fell in love with printmaking and the Art Division community. Lino block printing and mezzo-tint printing are her favorite type of print making techniques. She is happy to be amongst such passionate artists.

Glow moves through the aesthetics of Los Angeles with an Indigenous lens, weaving ancestral memory into printmaking, sculpture, and poetry. In the exhibition The Beauty of Bereavement extends this practice, holding grief as a sacred threshold. Up Zell, Glow’s primary project, is both an art form and a living archive—where candles, gatherings, and crafted vessels become expressions of culture and care.