Recent mixed media work
this house
Prose Sample
There is a house that rests on a plain defying the calculated rays of existing x, y tangents on a land based in lucid dreams that weave values of humane existence.You must follow the road, past the double mountain, and turn left at the light to get to the entrance. Once you arrive, you will enter the space where we forget we came from to see it.
This may hurt a bit.
This is the way to the house with the white picket fence and the gate that takes on the persona of our ancestors. They will remain with you but unseen until you arrive at your chosen destination.
This is house your parents bought with their American Dream.
This is the house you burned down as a cell in your Abuela’s womb, before the time you could remember.
This is the house that was built on the land that belong to no-one and in the night transforms back to the forest.
This is he house that flood after Maria and the wood was soon replaced with metal, the house that that the mud reclaimed when the river were blocked with no place to go or remember the sea.
The sea that the Navy claims as their own.
The house you drowned in where you killed your American Dream and broke free.
The house your Abuelo exchanged for the mountain that reclaimed him before he could hold you in your arms.
This house that no own owns which is why you can’t see it, unless you dream.
Tonight I will go there in my dream.
In this dream I am guided by ancestor’s vision and map that I can not see. I can feel the blades of grass protruding from between my toes. The coat I wear is heavy and faded with ash. I recognize this coat from my Abuela’s hands, which she was hired to sew and could not keep as her own. The pockets are deep. They have sheltered me in memories past, walking in snow.
It is moistened with all of our tears.
There is green grass and in the distance I can feel the horizon. I see a house with a white picket fence. My mind is failing my vision and I can not take hold of the view. I reach into my pocket and there is a letter with faded ink. I can only recognize as embossed fold, my face is sweetened by condensation. The sun disappears and there is a hue of emerald green surrounding me, emanating form the change. The sun is disappearing and I can not comprehend what is happening to me yet I know where I am going.
I recognize the embossed gold lettering from my childhood. I run my hands over the golden flakes that have been melted with time and grow delirious with hunger trying to read the fine ink.
I remember the hands of a small child,
the scent of lavender,
a blue jay’s nest.
I am immediately drawn to and repulsed by the envelope overwhelming my senses. I look up and there is a house in front of me with a white picket fence. I make my way to the door and known on the door, now standing naked, with no coat, no shelter. I sit beneath a a tree to read the letter addressed to me at the house that rests upon a plain.
The letter reads,
“All you need to enter is to make room.”
I Write; I heal Project
2012 Interactive Installation in Boston, M.A.. This canvas scroll is the same size as the project proposal. The interactive element was a stereo with CD’s labeled with emotions. When folks entered the room they were asked to choose a disc and then spend time in the space.
Website Excerpt: Cassandra has been published in NPR Latino and Rest for Resistance. Her most recent mixed media project is a collection of non-fiction on (rican)reconstruction, titled “I Write; I Heal” combining research, healing and ancestral practice and performance in her readings. “I Write; I Heal” is an ongoing project of mending roots of a lineage disrupted by violence and finding home within ones body. As a writer and performer, Cassandra utilizes research on the ways that trauma effects the speech function of the brain and how language is both constructed and deconstructed through the written word and her body.
Surf: Embodied Liberation Video Clip
This is a micro-video sample of my editing style and intended to support the proposal for the ways I will document materials list and process.
Café con Cass 