SISTA LUNA || Dust To Dust
About Sista Luna
I am an artist born and raised in Colorado, currently living in Steamboat Springs. I play with a variety of mediums in my work, exploring cycles of death/rebirth and creating space for internal transformation through honoring grief, change, and loss for myself and others. These themes are the consistent threads weaving throughout my artwork, while their physical manifestations include drawing, painting, mixed media, sculpture, or interdisciplinary performance.
My subject matter can speak to these death/rebirth cycles - such as animal skulls, flora, and fungi in my weekly ink drawings. Other times my process and materials carry the entity of transformation and grief. Through the alchemy of using my old artwork as a medium in making new art, I tend to the loss of beliefs, patterns and connections; giving myself grace to build from the ashes anew. In this process coined, Artwork Alchemy, I destroy my old artwork by either physically tearing it up and using the paper pieces to construct a 3D work, or introducing new marks, mediums and forms to transform the original piece, giving it new life. This process uses the catalyst energy in an act of destruction to then flow into creation with the pieces of the fallout - a tangible ritual engaging the death/rebirth cycle.
While Artwork Alchemy started as a very internal, contained practice, I have been lucky enough to share and grow this work beyond my personal process. In 2016, I participated in a collaborative, immersive exhibition; Palettes: A Feast for the Senses, showcasing interdisciplinary artworks appealing to multiple senses. My co-collaborator and I invited audience members to write/draw an internal aspect of themselves or their past that no longer served them on provided paper, to then be released through the tearing and casting of their papers in a ritual of communal catharsis. After the performance ended, I gathered the torn pieces of paper of release and have since used them as a medium in creating new art. This Paper Alchemy process is a continuation of that communal catharsis, honoring participants’ intent of release by transforming it into a new form as mixed media artwork. For me, this work acts as a microcosm of a cultural macrocosm we are collectively seeming to reckon with, for we are not beholden to the original incarnation of any belief, system, idea, or tradition – we have the power to change it.
I’m just out here trying to stay interested and connected in a world that profits off my apathy and division from others. Making keeps me connected and growing, for creative growth cannot happen in a vacuum. Community is integral for creative development. Through co-founding YBC, a nonprofit artist collective in Routt County, Colorado, it has been my honor to help provide support and space for fellow makers to grow creatively and collaborate on larger projects, performances and events. We all just want to be seen and to connect with those that resonate with our marks, so let’s get to making some.
For the curious wondering about my name, it is pronounced “See-sta” - the “i” makes a long “E” sound. It’s Spanish and a family name, from my paternal grandmother, Sixta Luna. She was born in Mexico, her family was very Catholic, and her birthday fell on the day of Pope Sixtus IV (IDK, I guess the Catholic calendar had a pope or saint for every day of the year). My parents decided to change the “x” in “Sixta” to an “s” and, voilà!