Today we’d like to introduce you to Maya Ruiz.
Hi Maya, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Creating art has been a passion of mine since the moment I could hold a pencil, but becoming an artist wasn’t something I took seriously until I graduated high school. In community college, I wandered aimlessly and ended up taking about every art class the school offered. At some point, I ended up taking an illustration class. This was the beginning of my dream of becoming an illustrator and I started to build a portfolio to apply for art schools. That’s how I ended up at ArtCenter College of Design.
I took an illustration class with Esther Pearl Watson toward the beginning of my school career and she has become a huge mentor for me. Since then, she has given me the opportunity to become her teaching assistant as well as her studio assistant. Through watching her teach and working with her in her studio, I found my own dreams of becoming a picture book illustrator and teacher. At some point, I wanted to expand my artistic horizons and took a ceramics class with Ari Brice. I saw it as a chance to relax and have fun, but this ended up being the hardest class I would ever take. I fell in love with the craft and its challenges. I have continued to work with ceramics ever since. In my graduating semester, I had a chance to work on a student publication as a part of Lisa Wagner’s class and discovered that I had a passion for writing and collaborating with other passionate writers and artists. This class helped me realize that I wanted to both write and illustrate children’s books. I also wanted to continue working with my friends on collaborative projects and help foster a sense of community within all of my friends that I graduated with.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I think the biggest struggle I had when I started pursuing an illustration career was my complex relationship with my own cultural background. My father is Venezuelan and my mother is Japanese, and I grew up in the very white and conservative suburbs of Santa Clarita. My parents separated when I was a child, and I grew up living with my mother. I learned to speak Japanese fluently and grew deeply connected to my Japanese family and culture. On the other hand, I physically look completely Latino, but I am rather disconnected from this side of my culture. Venezuela had already sunk into turmoil and had become a very dangerous country to travel to by the time I was born. While my father’s sister and her family had moved to Los Angeles as well, I have only gotten to see the rest of my Venezuelan family a handful of times. I forgot how to speak Spanish after my parents separated, and I am just now starting to reconnect with my Venezuelan culture with the help of my father.
I was frustrated by my cultural ambiguity when I first became an illustrator. I didn’t feel like I belonged in any community and I felt like I was not allowed to talk about my own cultural experiences because it felt like my experiences were so vastly different from everyone else’s. Over time, after meeting so many amazing friends and mentors, I have realized that I belong exactly where I am. I have learned that a real community should celebrate diversity and encourage you to embrace your differences. My community makes me immensely happy and inspires me to share my stories with the world.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an illustrator, storyteller, and ceramicist. I like to create colorful and playful art that documents my life on this amazing planet. My passions – including my love for the natural world, family history, science, and food – are found throughout my artwork. Recently, I have been working on writing and illustrating my own children’s books, and I’m quite proud of them! I feel like they really reflect where I am as an artist, writer, and human being at this moment. It has been immensely rewarding hearing my friends’ and mentors’ thoughts on my books so far and hearing that they have felt deeply moved by them or that my stories and artwork made them tearful. Not too long ago, I had no idea that my art was capable of making other people feel so strongly!
I believe my relentless passion for sharing stories about the people and things that I love is my superpower! Through writing a lot and creating lots of art, I hope I can continue to spread joy to the people around me and help people feel loved.
What matters most to you?
Celebration is a word that is very dear to me! I love to celebrate the big things and the little things in life. Rather than throwing parties, I love to celebrate through my artwork. Through my illustrations, I have celebrated the magic surrounding my family and our history. I have celebrated my friends. I have celebrated the mourning doves that live outside of my window. I have celebrated cool rocks that I spotted in a museum, geese, frogs, ducks, and apples. Creating art is the way that I document all the things that I have loved and all the things that have shaped me. It’s my way of thanking the universe and celebrating the fact that I am alive.
In our times, it can often feel difficult to find things to celebrate or to even muster the energy to celebrate something. Still, I think there is something very powerful about noticing something small, like a hummingbird building a nest in a tree, and noticing the joy it brings you and sending a silent “thank you” into the universe.
Contact Info:
- Website: mayaruiz.com
- Instagram: @mayaruizart
