The Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award
soledad romero VErkler
2024 Linda A. Day Endowed Student Award Recipient
Soledad Romero was born in Santa Barbara, California and raised in the nearby, tiny tourist town of Solvang. They are a second generation Filipino-Hawaiian immigrant and much of their work is influenced by the experiences and hardships of a being a mixed individual in small town America. Drawing and painting, since a young age, have been indispensable forms of expression for Romero and necessary for the internal and external processing of the world around them as they navigated divergencies in gender and neurological function. They have worked in youth arts education since high school and continue to do so, currently instructing visual and performance art workshops as a teaching artist around Long Beach.
Soledad began their undergraduate studies in Santa Maria, CA at Allan Hancock Community College before moving to Long Beach and finishing their associates degree for transfer at Long Beach City College. They are currently pursuing a BFA in Drawing and Painting at California State University, Long Beach and in their senior year.
Ballad of Blue Banana, 24” x 18”, 2021
Dinuguan Diaries, 14” x 11”, 2022
Blue Collage (A Night in a World of Indecision and Indigestion), 58” x 47”, 2023
Good and Grief, 16” x 20”, 2023
Artist Statement
The development of my artistic practice is deeply intertwined with the development of my self-image and its inherent fluidity. I convey my experiences of girlhood and early womanhood enmeshing with the dynamic and masculine presentations I inhabit now throughout my work to emphasize the fragility of western gender structures. Themes of decomposition and butchery often appear in my works as proxy for experiences with mental illnesses under societal and capitalistic pressure. The slowness of analog pursuits attracts me as a form of reflection on my own predisposition to go unrushed. Isolation, solitude, and a sense of irony flow through the mixed media I work in. Material exploration drives my practice and I hope to convey to viewers a sense of my process as evidence of the experience we share as artist and viewer.