Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you’re majoring in at Parsons, etc.
My name is Amaya Avila, I am from Dallas, Texas, although throughout my childhood I moved around the state pretty frequently, until I transferred to Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in downtown Dallas. Prior to Booker T., I lived with my mom, Katherine, who raised me as a single mother. As a teen, there was a major shift in my relationship with my father and I began living with him my second year of high school. Throughout the years, my father had a major impact on my appreciation for art, design and music. A lot of my interests from today have sprouted from my childhood, the records he showed me when I was a kid, the art in museums I was oblivious to, and the movies I slept through. In high school, I had ambitions to become a costume designer for theatre productions. It was in my junior year that I decided to dive into 2D design, and it was that same year that Parsons had reappeared as a dream of mine. My passion for graphic design was completely self taught, I took it upon myself to learn creative cloud and learn about the graphic design industry. Although I am a Communication Design major, I still have a strong respect for theatre and performing arts. It was this collaborative effort that I indulged in throughout my life that has made me a diverse and open-minded creator.
Tell us about your work and what your interests are.
Overall, I really enjoy pushing myself to explore new mediums and my first year at Parsons has been a year of discovery. My previous passions included costume design and construction, but as a Communication Design major, my work has found a new path. I’m always inspired by music, film, theatre and photography, but my love for typography and graphic design is what led me to Parsons. Hopefully I can find a career that has the potential to marry these art forms, as design is very dependent on cultures of the world.
What are some themes present in your work or what ideas are you hoping to communicate?
My work is heavily concentrated on my identity as a Mexican-American woman and I believe that my pride in my culture is the foundation of my work. I would also consider nostalgia as a theme, my family is very close and there are many times that we look back and reflect on memories. These personal connections are present in my work here at Parsons. I find that the more personal, the more specific my work becomes, the more people feel a stronger connection to the ideas.
What influences your work? To what extent do your influences inform your work or who you are as a person?
My work is completely dependent on my identity, my relationships with other people in my life, my self, my experiences and my environment. Decisions that I make are instinctual and I am subconsciously making personal connections to the objective of each project. Typography has become a new exploration for me and part of this discovery is through past designers and thinkers of the 1960’s boldness and simplicity and the early 90’s grunge and disarray.
Here is my most recent digital portfolio and here is my learning portfolio, which I use for a dump of inspiration photos, class assignments and projects.
Bio:
Amaya Avila, born August 8, 1999 in Dallas, Texas, is an Undergraduate Communications Design Major at Parsons School of Design.
Her interests from an early period of her life in the visual arts, music and dance have transcended her childhood. Her current status as a design student of arts continues to push her drive in further exploration of design and art through a variety of outlets using methods learned through her life as an astute student of the arts.
Driven by her initial passion and interests in the arts, she has committed to pursuing a degree in Communications Design at Parsons School of Design. In her first year she has explored many mediums and challenged herself to design objects exploring and utilizing newly discovered materials. Amaya’s current work is a reflection of her connection to her identity as a female Mexican-American and her personal relationships and their impact on her identity as a woman minority. She is highly interested in the power of typography and computer graphics ability to expand the creation of digital art.