 When I found out that it was impossible to pursue what I wanted to do after high school, I became depressed. I couldn't get a driver's license, couldn't get a bank account, like I was like stuck. The way I finally got out of that depression was I started creating stencils on cereal boxes. I literally stole my brother's like exacto blade and I bought like a $30 canvas and I actually sold that like on Etsy. My name is Sarah Sandoval and I'm a spray paint stencil artist. I always knew I wanted to do art for a living. In high school I went to go check out Cal Arts and fell in love with it. I decided okay I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to do animation. I ended up finding out that I was undocumented. DACA wasn't in place until 2012 and I graduated in 2010. So that kind of canceled all my plans after high school. The way I got into street art was I watched a documentary. I ended up googling more about street art, watched a couple videos on YouTube and how to create multi-layer stencils and from there that's when I started creating like my style. It's really hard for me to stick to one style. Doing the same thing over and over again, I get too bored and I have to like switch it up. I've used markers, brushes, one-layer stencils, multi-layer stencils, doodling, murals, illustrations, done filming, YouTube. I've even tattooed myself. So the first step, I'm gonna be cutting out all these individual islands. This one is almost completely cut out so ends up looking like this. Each section has its own different colors so it's really hard to explain and you really have to just see it to kind of understand it. The act of cutting out stencils feels very meditating to me. Just sit there and listen to music and I just feel like I zone out completely. Spray painting it and seeing it come to life is like one of my favorite parts. I never wanted to show my feelings on pieces because like my art was usually a place to escape all that stuff, like to escape like being undocumented, being gay or being a woman and it wasn't until the last four or five years I started feeling like I needed to speak up. So I've been working on a series dedicated to essential migrant workers, the people who pick the fruit and people who are struggling just to be their family and make sure that they're safe as well. Every month I was like okay how am I gonna do this, how am I gonna be able to feed myself, feed my dog and be able to pay rent. I never had a safety net. It's either this or nothing, like there is no plan B, there's only plan A. I was gonna do anything I can to like be able to make it. The moment I moved down here one video just like went viral. I did a piece with a famous rapper on it. The rapper himself posted my video on his Instagram. That day my phone was just non-stop ringing like emails, messages from everybody asking like I want to buy this piece or I want to buy a print and I was so overwhelmed and didn't know how to fill all these orders for everyone. A company reached out to me and decided to make prints for me and sell it on their website but I was sharing their URL to all my followers and that's when I realized like yeah that's I don't like that. I need my followers to go to one website that will lead them to all the other different websites. I think what I love the most is just how easy it is, I know it sounds cheesy but it's just like so simple and I like with GoDaddy I had so much control over every little thing. As I met all these different artists they started asking me like hey I have this mural would you like to learn how to like paint in a bigger scale and get paid for that. I was like yeah of course. The first few murals is really scary just like being on a lift or on a tall ladder cutting stencils like right on the wall and just creating a huge piece I've never done before and the more I did it the more I like went with like friends and helped them out with their murals. I got so busy that I ended up realizing it's already been like four months that I was there without even looking for another job and that's when I started realizing like yeah I think I can do this full time. My advice is just to keep going just keep producing keep making connections and just have fun with it and don't feel like you need to create something to please other people and just create what you want to create.