Ariana Prado is a first generation Mexican-American, born in Staten Island, New York in 1993. She grew up in the Bronx, New York and lived in Cuautla, Mexico during her childhood. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Sculpture at Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts of the University of New Haven in 2016.

You can see more of Ariana's artwork on her website arianaprado.com

This is a portrait of my maternal grandfather, Jacinto Senen Solano, who passed away in September 2015 in Cuautla, Morelos in Mexico. His passing caused a lot of grief for our family in Mexico and in the United States. The only way I could cope with being so far away from my family members during such a hard time, was to depict them and give our grief tangibility. In Mexican culture it's common to create an altar for the loved one who just passed during the celebrations of  Day of the Dead. As a way of grieving my grandfather's death I constructed an altar for him and framed this portrait printed on fabric.

With the political climate in this country, I find it crucial to depict my family members and preserve their humanity. Printmaking, specifically block printing has made this possible with stark dark shapes and contrasting whitespace. It has given me a new perspective on seeing drawing as something other than line. The edition on Kitakata paper was printed by hand, burnishing the image with a wooden spoon through the paper from the linoleum block, taking special force on the parts with the ink.