I wanted to tell a story with my art. I wanted to tell the stories of my family members and teach people a lesson. I took the sheets of paper and cut them into polygons. I grabbed a pack of worn oil pastels, and laid out the irregularly shaped paper into the format I saw fit. I formatted it to be reminiscent of the shape of a hurricane, and for each fragment of laid out paper to represent a story I had heard.

Each fragment is a scene, a different story from a part of my family. The center, the eye of the hurricane, represents the most impacting story I heard. My uncle placed his son in a garbage bag and ran up a steep hill while the eye of the hurricane passed over them, with the fear that their home was going to be blown off the side of the mountain. Running up the hill, his child screamed, stating they couldn’t breathe, with my uncle reassuring him that they were almost at their destination, a neighbor’s house at the top of the mountain. Around this are other stories I connected, including my own. The cell phones in the bottom left fragment represent the desperation held in New York City for a confirmation call that all was well.

The bottom right fragments both represent the houses in our family that were destroyed, along with the chaos of their location. The middle right piece depicts my father’s parents, sitting in darkness with only their faith to comfort them in the howl’s of the hurricane.

The top piece depicts my mother’s parents, calling for the dogs they had left out during the hurricane to run in at the early hours of the morning, as the ranch blew away with every powerful flash of rain.

The left piece demonstrates my aunt and cousins, shocked as they finally leave their home after the storm, only to discover they are completely isolated from reaching anyone until the landslide is cleared out.

Different stories that all happened within the same few hours, come together to convey one emotion, one final scene. I taught people what had happened in Puerto Rico, how media had ignored their plea for help, and how different people managed with their situation. I gave a lesson on the versatility of people on an island far away, yet close to the home in my heart.