WARA WAO

When Deider Diaz and I were invited to create a piece for the launch of the Puerto Rico adidas Adistar Control 5 at Instituto de Subcultura in San Juan, we had two weeks to take an idea from concept to finished piece.

We landed on the Guaraguao, the red-tailed hawk that is almost omnipresent in Puerto Rico's skies. There is something about its presence that has always felt significant. It watches from above, moving across the island and intervening only when necessary. That presence became the starting point for WARA WAO.

Deider and I began by fleshing out what the piece could be and how we could translate the Guaraguao without simply recreating the bird. We wanted to capture its silhouette, movement, and presence while allowing the materials themselves to become part of the interpretation.

Once we established the direction, architect Juan Serrano joined the process and translated the concept into Rhino. Working digitally allowed us to break the silhouette into individual components and understand how each layer would interact before anything was physically made.

From there, we moved into fabrication.

We selected different hides of leather alongside wood and used a laser cutter to cut every individual component. Once all the pieces were ready, the digital process gave way to something much more tactile. Every element was positioned and assembled by hand, one piece at a time.

As the layers began to build, so did the Guaraguao. Different materials, thicknesses, and placements created depth and perspective, turning what began as a flat silhouette on a screen into a dimensional object.

That balance became one of my favorite parts of the project. WARA WAO moved between concept development, architecture, digital design, fabrication, material exploration, and hand craftsmanship. Each of us brought a different way of thinking and making to the same idea, and in two weeks, we were able to bring those disciplines together into one finished piece.

But the sculpture was never intended to be the end of the idea.

WARA WAO is the first piece in an ongoing investigation into the Guaraguao, exploring how the same figure can take on new identities through different materials, mediums, and forms of creative expression.

This was our first interpretation.

There are more to come.