Quick Facts
Biography
Trinidad Escobar (Born July, 1986), also known as Nicole Escobar, is a poet, muralist and illustrator active in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also an educator at the California College of the Arts, as well as a featured author and artist in several publications, including Tayo, Rust & Moth, The Brooklyn Review, Mythium, Red Wheelbarrow, Solo Cafe and The Womanist. Her graphic memoir Crushed, which mixes nonfiction with anecdote and myth, is to be published by Rosarium.
Early life
Trinidad was born in July 1986 in the Philippines during Super Typhoon Gading. She was adopted by a Filipino-American family in San Jose, California in the United States. Upon her adoption, her name was changed from Trinidad to Nicole Escobar, though she would revert to her birth name for published works. The fact that she was adopted was not a secret; she had been aware of this from an early age. Her relationship with art and storytelling also began early, with Trinidad writing and drawing throughout her childhood to combat PTSD associated with the adoption.
Education and artistic influences
Exposure to various pieces of media during her childhood would later inform Trinidad's style, including the works of Octavia Butler, Stephen King, Lynda Barry, Gary Larson (The Farside Gallery), X-Men, Dragon Ball Z, and Aaron McGruder (Boondocks). She was creating portraits as early as age four, and kept a written journal onward from age six.
Trinidad attended San Francisco State University to study creative writing, and would subsequently become a creative writing grad student at Naropa University, and would again become a grad student at California College of the Arts for an MFA in Comics. Mentor John Jennings assisted her with her first time publishing, recommending her to an associate who was an editor.
Body of work
As an adult, Trinidad reverted to her birth name and sought out her birth family in the Philippines, with whom she reconnected. With assistance from her partner, Jay-Ar Isagani Pugao, who is fluent in her family’s native dialect of Waray-Waray, she was able to have a clearer understanding of their stories and history, both nonfiction anecdotes and local mythology. This would compel her to create her graphic novel memoir Crushed, self-described as a piece of “biomythography”. Presently, she is the co-founder of artist collectives Orpheus Forge and 3 Realms, as well as the Director of Operations and Strategist of her partner Pugao’s vegan Filipino food truck, No Worries. She also teaches a course entitled Race and Comics at California College of the Arts.
Trinidad creates work such as poetry, comics, illustrations and murals. Her creations have been featured in public galleries and events such as Rust & Moth, The Womanist, The Walrus, Red Wheelbarrow, Solo Cafe, Mythium Tayo, Maganda Magazine, the anthologies Walang Hiya, Over the Line, and Kwento. She has also spoke at the San Jose Museum of Art, Filipino Komix Expo, LitQuake, and the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. Most of her comics are based on her true experiences such as Undertow which is about her father as a fisherman that is also a metaphor for divorce. Escobar has also created a comic called "A Geography Of My Own" that was published in the Pin@y Radical Imagination Reader. Aside from comics, Trinidad is working with the 3 Realms Collective which is a mural project in Oakland, California that contain the elements of spirituality and that art is magic. The 3 Realms Collective released a Go Fund Me for an event in October 2016. It raised 3,000 dollars out of a 6000 dollar goal. Trinidad Escobar is currently working on a graphic memoir titled Crushed. Crushed is about Escobar's journey as an adopted child finding her birth familyAside from her family, it explores Philippine lore and history. The initial release date was meant to be in the Spring of 2017 but has been pushed back to Fall 2017.
ISBN 978-0996769280
Process and philosophy
Trinidad has expressed an interest in art since a very young age. While initially pursuing a higher education in literature, she came to combine her interest in both visual art and writing in the form of comics.
Trinidad describes her creative process requiring her complete mental presence. For her, writing and creating art is both spiritual and technical in that she strives to create a finished product that both grants new insight to the viewer or reader, as well as being therapeutic for herself.
Her work, including her upcoming graphic novel Crushed, largely consists of themes of personal identity, particularly focused on her identity as a transnational adoptee. Family history plays a crucial part in her work, and she had expressed interest in creating works inspired by her father in the future. In addition to autobiographical elements, her work is also laced with elements inspired by her Filipino heritage, including both lush, colorful mythology and some of the more brutal and violent aspects of her homeland.
Outside of personal work, Trinidad also partakes in the creation of community art. She is a co-founder and artist of the 3 Realms Collective, a two-woman team of muralists, and also hosts community art workshops with the goal of providing mental and spiritual healing through art.
Her goal is to diversify as well as decolonize comics.