Sandra Perez

My family in general, on each side, is artistic in a different way. We have musicians, painters, crafters of all kinds. I grew up seeing this constantly. Art was part of my life, really.

I’ve been drawing and painting since I was little. As a serious artist, around 14 years ago I started creating different pieces, and people around me became interested in it. I sold a couple of things. It wasn’t until I moved here, with the winter, that I started creating a lot more. Just being indoors, I needed something to do.

I started creating different canvases, and I had a bunch of canvases around me. I knew Josh Cooper from school because I worked at Parkside at that time. He was doing an auction and he asked me if I wanted to participate and I said, ‘Of course!’ I just gave him one of my pieces. Amanda Wagner saw the piece and wanted to meet with me. From then on, it took off. She showcased my art at Art House. From then on, I started participating in different things

I call it mixed media collage. I’m a paper artist. I like to include paper somehow. I will use pages of a book, airplane tickets, passes to a museum, notes, letters. One of my first creative pieces was love letters that were sent between my father- and mother-in-law. I like the idea of using meaningful things like that. I use a lot of acrylic ink, a lot of India ink. I like to scribble and write stuff. Most of the time I have a message. It’s my starting point, my inspiration point.

It’s a bunch of things – whatever I’m feeling. I don’t follow color wheels or sketchbooks. I don’t sketch beforehand. I just go with my instinct.

The task force I’m part of is helping with the nomination of Goshen’s arts and culture district. It’s made up of a group of people from different backgrounds. The idea is to have different opinions and different views on developing an arts district.

There’s the tourism aspect, and also creating a vicinity for artists, creating a beautiful town. Just putting our name out there so people can say, ‘Oh, let’s go visit! Let’s go see what’s there.’