We recently connected with LUSMERLIN and have shared our conversation below.

LUSMERLIN, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I am very excited about the 2025 Janet & Walter Sondheim Art Prize Semifinalist exhibition coming up The Peale Museum during Artscape 2025 in Baltimore. However, for a past project, I would say… “The Uncatchable Ciguapa” materialized in 2024 after several years thinking about some of my childhood experiences—fantastical tales, memories of going barefoot to the backyard, and memories of being immersed in the sheets of laundry that were line drying by my grandma’s house . I wanted paintings that would hang just like the clothes on the line, so that I could walk through or around them. This thought turned into the idea of painting a forest. Separately, my hair, and my body were already such strong topics in my work and personal history, that all of these seemingly unrelated parts converged into La Ciguapa: I was going to paint her world, except people would walk around to see paintings all around them.

The Ciguapa is a folklore mythical Caribbean figure: a siren-like woman covered in her own hair, with feet that face backwards, making her nearly impossible to track. She must remain free—if caught, she dies. She is usually portrayed as a temptress but in this installation, she has a full life – friend Ciguapas, baby Ciguapas, and her natural environment, the woods and forests. The installation guides visitors through a dreamlike forest where layers of painting, abstraction, and poetry combine to create an alternate universe. Sounds and lights increase the tension between wanting to discover and preserving mystery.

What makes this project meaningful is how it became a vessel for my own immigrant journey. Just as La Ciguapa exists between the tangible and mythical worlds, I’ve lived between cultures, languages, and identities. The backwards footprints symbolize how immigrants often feel we’re moving in reverse while actually progressing forward —confusing those who try to track our paths. I like working large scale: The installation is variable size and has been installed to a size of 30x15x7ft.

The fact that visitors talked about their own childhood stories, their feelings of being transported to another reality, made me realize this piece evolved into a conversation about freedom, transformation, and the power of stories we carry across borders. “The Uncatchable Ciguapa” isn’t just my most personal project—it’s touched on the universal feeling of being caught between worlds, struggling to remain uncaught, and being true to one’s essence. I am open to exhibiting at new venues and can be reached over social media (@lusmerlin) or infoATlusmerlinDOTcom) for this purpose.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is LUSMERLIN, and I am a nationally exhibiting multidisciplinary artist, practicing in Greater Baltimore and Philadelphia.

My work is a full blast of color, energy, and abstraction primarily in the form of pastel and acrylic paintings. I call my process “controlled chaos”, I let my emotions and intuition drive a very complex process of multiple layers of paint and composition. Every single piece has a story because all work comes from my own photo references of moments of life, travel or my self- portraits. It is extraordinarily exciting for me, when a collector acquires a piece, that I can tell them the background story, so much more than meets the eye, and they take with them not only artwork they love, but a piece of me and my history.

I pour myself into every piece. In my work, I explore my life stories, womanhood and identity: the presence of the body in space; the richness and baggage of my complex heritage -African, Arab, Spanish, Taino-; and my immigration experience since moving to the U.S. in 2016. My other media – installations, photography and impromptu performances – are a way for me to research myself and generate new experiences – they all inform my practice. I am often described as a high energy person and I think this same translates to the work – it shows my whim, my joy, and my drive.

Professionally, I am a chemical engineer with experience in textile and cement manufacturing and have taken on many exciting challenges. In both areas, I am in a space of creation, problem solving, and technical exploration. I am very process oriented. I am a 2024 Philadelphia Mural Arts Fellow, a 2025 Sondheim Prize semifinalist, and a grant recipient from the Baltimore Office for Promotion of the Arts, and the Frederick Arts Council. Beyond art, I am deeply committed to community engagement, regularly participating in public facing projects.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Become an ambassador. Every single person has the power to become an ambassador for creativity—not just a consumer of it. This means showing up. It means attending exhibitions, performances, readings, and pop-ups not just once, but consistently. It means sharing our work enthusiastically and repeatedly, even if it’s not the “trendy” thing, even if it challenges or confuses you. Your voice, your repost, your presence, your recommendation—it all matters more than you know. If you like the work you see, get in touch and be a friend 

If someone’s work brings you joy, wonder, healing, or even good discomfort, then that’s a relationship worth investing in. Art is labor. It’s research. It’s vulnerability. If you derive something meaningful from someone’s hard-earned creativity, we should return that with compensation, with open doors, with introductions, with space to grow. Buy the artwork. Tip the performer. Write the recommendation. Offer the opportunity. Invite others in.

But beyond individual support, we need to collectively remember that art is not just decoration or entertainment—it is freedom. It is the freedom to think expansively, to challenge norms, to make visible what is hidden, to imagine what hasn’t been imagined yet. And that freedom must be protected—even when the art makes us uncomfortable, even when we don’t fully understand it. Especially then.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

I live so fully! And I get to share it with others. Making art gives me a depth of presence I had not reached before… of paying attention to my emotions, my surroundings, my history, my imagination. Art demands that I show up with honesty, curiosity, and vulnerability. It keeps me awake to the world and to myself.

There is something incredibly powerful about turning internal experiences into something external—something others can witness, feel, or even be changed by. That moment of resonance, when someone connects to something I’ve made—that’s magic. That’s a kind of fullness I wouldn’t trade for anything. I love sharing my work, my stories, my words.

I believe we each come into the world with specific gifts and unique stories—and I would like to live my life knowing that I pushed them to the limit. I want to be my best self, and to leave things around me better than I found them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.lusmerlin.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/lusmerlin
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/lusmerlinart

Image Credits

Pictures 4, 7, 8 are photos by Desmond Johnson @picturesofusdotnet