HereIn

5 years. 151 artists and writers. It’s been an amazing run and we’re eternally grateful for your readership. All the work we’ve done will stay online at hereinjournal.org to serve as an archive of the truly vibrant artmaking that’s happened here in San Diego during the journal’s time. 🧡 [Image description: A blue, orange, and black graphic that says, “Thank you for 5 years of HereIn. It’s time to wrap it up.”]

HereIn Artist: Maddie Butler Maddie Butler was raised on an island in the middle of a lake in Minnesota. Her highly interdisciplinary practice explores the way machines shape human relationships. Much of the work springs from her research into the evolving material conditions of the image, from pre-cinema animation technologies to AI. In the past year Butler has been a fellow at the Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), the Sass-Fee Summer Institute of Art (New York, NY) and the Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles, CA). She has exhibited internationally and received support from the Qualcomm Institute, the Suraj Israni Center for Cinematic Arts, the Russell Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Butler holds a BA from Yale University and is currently pursuing her MFA at the University of California San Diego, where she also teaches media history and production courses. @mb_00_dm Photo: Deanna Barahona

Maddie Butler, IMG_2925.m4v (wild horses blue), 2025, E-waste, inkjet prints, resin, paint, 5 x 9 x .75 in. Photo: Daniel Lang. @mb_00_dm

Maddie Butler with HereIn “I think what I'm trying to do is tease out types of mediation and understand them as mechanisms of ideology. I look at media technology specifically as this site of intersection between the personal (the internal, the bodily) and the external (the other, the state). So it's about systems of power and culture and intimacy and identity and the devices that bring these things together. How do they influence one another? How do we shape the tools? And then how do the tools shape us?” Read more at hereinjournal.org. @mb_00_dm Maddie Butler, IMG_4548.m4v (I want you), 2025, E-waste, inkjet prints, resin, paint, 16.25 x 9.75 x 2.75 in. Photo: Daniel Lang.

HereIn Artist: Sean Sarmiento Sean Sarmiento is a photo-based artist who manipulates the architectural and photographic norms of a space to challenge what it means for something to be a photograph, flat, or two-dimensional. He works with imagery that alludes to themes relating to the feeling of home and often captures his own body in domestic spaces. His process involves highlighting the feeling of being in between, a recollection of moments and feelings that feel unknown but also familiar. Sarmiento received his BA from the University of San Diego. His debut solo show Somewhere No One Knows My Name was exhibited at USD in April 2023. Sarmiento has received the Associated Students Research and Materials Grant, Associated Students Travel and Research Grant, and the Lang Family Materials Scholarship. His work has been included in group shows at the Athenaeum Museum in La Jolla, Palos Verdes Art Center, and Student Life Pavilion and Metro Building at the University of San Diego. In March 2024 he was an Artist in Residence at Art Produce in North Park, San Diego. He is currently based in San Diego, California. @sean.sarmiento [Image description: A polaroid of Sean, who looks intensely at the camera. He has a mustache and wears a cowboy hat and bolo tie.]

Sean Sarmiento, Claro, 2024, wallpaper, polaroid, and stamp, 8.5 x 11 in. @sean.sarmiento [Image Description: A white background with a thin strip of patterned wallpaper that runs from top to bottom. Partially layered on top is a polaroid of the artist’s torso, wearing a white lace knit shirt and blue striped pants. The bottom right corner has a small antique-looking red and gold stamp that reads, “Col-Claro.”]

Holly Fisher on Sean Sarmiento “In his recent body of work, Sarmiento is unbound by the need to document literal elements of the home.  His current interpretation of home does not necessarily lie in the normative architecture of domestic spaces, but rather in the expansivity of self-discovery. Through experimentation, the artist reaches for the metaphoric, discovering that home is not a static setting, but a collection of experiences that culminate to form one’s relationship to self and their environment.” Read more at hereinjournal.org. Sean Sarmiento, lovely, lonely , 2023, archival metallic luster pigment print, 13 x 19 in. @sean.sarmiento @ladylynne333 [Image description: An ethereal collage of a repeated photo of a living room. An arm is cropped in the middle of the collage with transparent photos of picture frames, blue light leaks, and poetry that is rotated vertically is layered on top.]

HereIn Artist: Christina Valenzuela Christina Valenzuela (b. 1996) is an artist who lives and works in San Diego, CA. She received her BS in Marketing from Indiana University Bloomington, her BFA in Painting from Arizona State University, and her MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Washington. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in Arizona, California, and Washington. In her oil paintings, drawings, and sculptures, she investigates with curiosity the experience of living with narcolepsy—a neurological condition that disrupts sleep-wake cycles—and the physical, mental, and emotional effects of the condition.  @christinavalenzuela [Image description: A photo of Christina, a Latina woman with olive skin and dark hair, sitting against a white wall. She wears glasses, a white shirt and gray sweater, and smiles at the camera.]

Christina Valenzuela, Take pills, 2022, oil on panel with acrylic frame and gelatin capsules, 20 x 18 in. @christinavalenzuela [ID: A painting of hand wearing a red-striped, fingerless glove outstretched on a green background. Three pills sit in the palm of the hand. The top of the painting’s frame forms a container that is full of actual pills.]

Christina Valenzuela with HereIn “It's interesting because I don't want to just say that I'm making paintings about mental health and narcolepsy. You know what I mean? I guess I don't want to box myself into this idea of ‘I make paintings of these things,’ but I want to give myself an avenue out, if I want to change my mind and paint my dog or something like that. But a big part of life has been that my mom is a physician, my fiancé is going to be a physician, my brother's a physician. I'm surrounded by this medical community. And I've always been ‘the patient’ in so many ways. So my experience throughout life is my body, and I really focus on that. It's almost like I can't help it. Sometimes I feel like I'm making all these things I experience in my body–these issues in my head–up. Like, they’re not real, I can't see them. But then I make these drawings of these things that I'm experiencing and they feel so real. It’s like I’m giving them a body. I'm making them into a little person or something. I'm making it real. These things that I'm just so skeptical about, it helps me accept them.” Read more at hereinjournal.org. Christina Valenzuela, Untitled, 2025, oil on panel, 7.5 x 7.5 in. @christinavalenzuela [Image description: A brushy, orange and brown painting of a figure laying face-down on a pillow.]

HereIn Artist: Tarrah Aroonsakool Tarrah Aroonsakool (she/her), is a San Diego-based, second-generation Thai and Lao queer multidisciplinary artist. Expanding beyond traditional methods of painting to create large-scale mixed media sculptures and installations, her mediums include concrete, wire, cloth, and paper. Through these found materials, her art challenges social structures, celebrates countercultural rebellions, and explores unique identity narratives. Aroonsakool received a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art from Loyola University. With over ten years of experience, her work has been exhibited locally at the San Diego Art Institute, the Athenaeum Art Center, The Hillstreet Country Club, and The Front Arte & Cultura Gallery; nationally at Birds Nest Gallery in New Orleans; and internationally at Psicosis Art Gallery In Mexico City. @t.aroonsakool [Image description: A photo of Tarrah, an Asian female artist with short hair, sitting in her art studio, framed by a rich brownish-red velvet backdrop and surrounded by her painted fabric canvases in striking hues of deep red and light pink.]

Portfolio: Tarrah Aroonsakool “In leveraging the viewer’s gravitation towards horrific iconography, artist Tarrah Aroonsakool uses the distorted and dissected to comment on a monstrous transformation of the body that results from economic exploitation. She suggests that under Capitalism, both man and animal are subject to an irreversible stripping of life. That in our economic system, the disenfranchised face a great loss of bodily function and/or selfhood. By resituating the distanced routines of hard labor, the artist brings an invisible suffering into the audience's proximity.” Read more at hereinjournal.org. Tarrah Aroonsakool, Our Skins Crawl, 2023, discarded clothes, salt, and acrylic, 50 x 40 in. @t.aroonsakool @brattydre [Image description: Three narrow, white canvases hung in a row. Each canvas in the triptych has a red, flesh-like form sprawled across it.]