In this newsletter:

• Thank you for supporting me in 2025

• 2026 Theme: Arúkawa Anaké Waôni

• Big Announcement: Borikén Mail Club 📣

• Things I’ve Been Enjoying

Buiti/Buenas!

I've been realllly quiet this month, spending a lot of time reflecting on the year and making plans for 2026.. and I want to start off by thanking you.

Thank you for supporting me. Following me. Buying from me. Sharing my work. Sending me love notes. Every single dollar, every sale, every bit of encouragement, every bit of growth and momentum helped me survive this year. And will help me survive the coming year. I can't thank you enough for being here 🖤

2026 Theme: Arúkawa Anaké Waôni

Every year, I have a new theme that comes up for me. Something that applies to everything happening in my life and art, something that acts as a focal point or mantra to return to. Something I hope you can relate to or apply to your year in some way. For 2026, the theme is:

Arúkawa Anaké Waôni

It's in Taino language, but before I translate it, let me explain...

Modern Western culture associates "island" with isolation.

Desert island.

No man is an island.

Lonely island.

There is the assumption- the "knowledge"- that if you're on one island, the water separates you from the islands around you. Land connects you, water separates you. Modern Western culture further creates a separation of and from water with the fear of what is in the water or how dangerously water can behave.

Our Indigenous cultures have a different worldview, a different perspective. As Taino people, we have a relationship with water, as we do with all of the elements. We cherish it, respect it, understand it. We recognize water as life, as powerful. It's sacred. It has significant presence in our creation stories. Our stories show us that our sustenance comes from the water through fishing. Our stories show us the importance of hurricanes. Our turtle stories show us that we can traverse the water the same way we can traverse the land.

Water has an important place in our migration story. Our pre-island Arawak ancestors migrated from the Amazon Basin and the Orinoco Valley (present day Venezuela) throughout the Caribbean up through Florida. There are stories of our presence in Louisiana and as far north as New York. We have evidence of trade with what we now call Central America. How did we physically do this?

Water.

Our worldview and our experience as Indigenous people, as water people, is that water doesn't isolate us, it connects us. Water isn't an obstacle. Water is not separate from the land; you can think of it as an extension of the land. As our ancestors rooted our communities into each of our islands after migration, we were not separated or isolated from each other. We traveled- easily- to visit each other via our water highways and canoa'no (yes, the word canoe comes from us); just up the mountain from my home next to the Río Tanama is a community space called Caguana where people from all of the other islands would visit regularly to spend time together, to hold ceremony and ritual, to play ball games and have festivals.

If you want to view it less literally and more figuratively, water is also a medium of communication. We have petroglyphs- writings, messages- that are carved on rocks that get covered by river water at certain times of the month or the year; and as the river flows with those messages into the sea and into the water of the islands around us, they carry those messages to our family and spirits on other islands.

Just look at this beautiful circle showing how this region of the world.. the Caribbean.. is so closely connected through our shared water.

And it isn't only life and sustenance and connection that reverberates through our water. When you input colonialism, murder, war, greed into the water, those messages reverberate just the same; like a highway, the element doesn't discriminate, it's neutral, it moves the vehicle regardless. As of this month, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean has at least 15,000 new U.S. military personnel splashing about our waters, more than a dozen U.S. warships targeting our cousins in Venezuela. 95 of our fellow humans have been murdered in our Caribbean waters with bombs. Our sacred waters are being poisoned physically and metaphorically by force. And those of us sensitive to our lands, to our waters, we can feel these reverberations.

Arúkawa Anaké Waôni¹

(ah-(r/d)OO-kah-wah, ah-na-KAY, wah-ON-ee)

To move closer because of our water.

Not despite our water. Because of our water. Not isolated because of our water. Connected because of our water.

This theme, this focal point, this mantra for this year is surfacing to remind me- to remind us- about connection. For me, this reminder- like the turtle teaching us to traverse various terrain- applies spiritually, artistically, physically, politically, in my business, personally in my life. Maybe there is some aspect of your life where this applies as well.

My Ko-fi is changing to Borikén Mail Club📣

I've been on Ko‑fi for a year and- as with all things I do- I've been testing to see if it's a platform I wanted to stick with. There are so many things that you just can't know- about using a platform, starting a business, introducing a new product, playing with a new art style, even making a new friend- until you get into it. There have been some great things about Ko-fi, but there have been some things that I'd hoped would be better and things that I'm not sure will ever improve.

Then, over the past few years, I've watched my email newsletter provider- Buttondown 👋 hiii- continue to be responsive to feedback, constantly updating and expanding their functions, and even reached out to feature me in their blog because they support what I do.

So with that, I'm going to be anchoring what I've started on Ko-fi to my website and newsletter as the Borikén Mail Club! 

The basic parts aren't changing much- art will be still mailed quarterly, discount on shop & commissions, etc.- it's just the digital content will come in email form to your inbox 1-2x/mo rather than posted randomly on Ko-fi. My commissions have already moved into my main shop and previous Ko-fi/Borikén Mail Club postcards can be purchased in the shop on my website as well. And as a result of this move, I’m going to be sharing more tablet and phone wallpapers with all newsletter subscribers moving forward.

For current Ko‑fi Monthly Supporters, here's what the transition process looks like:

• Your next payment for Ko‑fi will go through as usual.

• That day, I'll gift you one free month to the Borikén Mail Club. You'll receive an email about it.

• If you haven't canceled your Ko‑fi subscription by the week of your next payment, I'll cancel it so you don't get charged again.

• When your gift month is over, you'll receive an email that will include a link to join the Borikén Mail Club as a paid member moving forward. (I use the same payment processor- Stripe- for the Borikén Mail Club as I do Ko-fi, in case that is important info to you.)

Please let me know if you have any questions!

And you still have time to get December’s postcard by becoming a new member of the Borikén Mail Club by December 31st!

Things I’ve Been Enjoying

The Sequential Artists Workshop "...worked with two teachers in the capital of Tehran who guided their students into 32 marvelous stories about freedom, lack of freedom, frustrations, desire, hopes, family, and all the kinds of things that everyone experiences, but under a specific, totalitarian pressure... the submission deadline was the weekend of the ‘12 day war’ between Israel and Iran and our editors, who had to go into hiding, wrote us and said, ‘whatever happens, put out this book.’ We at SAW are honored to put out this book, Young in Iran, for them. We urge you to support these brilliant young artists living in difficult circumstances by ordering at least one copy of this book. This book is ready and will ship to you when our orders are compiled."

SAW will be launching a Kickstarter for this book soon, so if this is something you’re interested in, keep an eye out there!

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has an amazing, relaxing YouTube channel. Check out their Littoral Relaxocean playlist or Krill Waves Radio | Ocean Animals To Relax/Study To. I mean, they have a 2 hour Lo-fi nudibranch video. Just... incredible.

This account does amazing shorts that are little bite sized lessons for developing AI visual literacy (being able to spot AI videos), especially as they get more convincing at a quick glance.

This short video in particular explains really well the concept of dataset training crossover between different kinds of animals and how once you understand it, you can use that knowledge to immediately spot fake animal behavior in AI videos.