​The Story

In November 2017, after hurricane Maria passed through Puerto Rico Starbucks Puerto Rico launch an announcement for artisans to participate in the camping "Comparte lo bueno" where we have to prepare the Christmas decoration for the Starbucks stores in Puerto Rico. The decorations consists in a Christmas tree, garland and wreath with made with debris that hurricane Maria left. Each set must have a story behind it.
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  • I decided to participated and submitted a design that captures what impacted me the most after this hurricane, almost category 5 passed and affected Puerto Rico. It was how the flora of the island was severely damage with the wind, specially un the east part of the island where I lived.  Also represent the poise part of it that is the recovering process of the nature. Every tree in Puerto Rico was left without leaves and it took a few weeks for the leaves to start growing back again, for some trees.

The Christmas tree was the principal piece of the set. The top, full of dry branches, then as you go down you will find the leaves starting to grow finishing with the blooming of the tree in the lower branches. It included leaves from different species of trees from Puerto Rico: higuero, ceiba, mangrove, maga tree, yagrumo and guayacan. Flowers of maga tree and flamboyant tree.​​ For my surprise Starbucks ask me if I was able to make three sets of this idea and I gladly accepted. During this Christmas Season 2017-18 Starbucks will exhibit the art work in three different Starbucks Stores: Plaza Caribe-Ponce, Los Prados-Caguas, and the recent inaugurated store in UMET- Cupey Campus, San Juan.

​Materials

​The branches of the tree are made with pine tree collected from a street of Humacao. The tree trunk is made with mahogany wood collected from Gurabo and Humacao, and the dry branches in the upper part are from bottle brush and ucar trees. All the leaves and flowers are made of recycled paper hand painted with acrylic. Two of the wreath are made with mahogany roots and one with pine flexible branches. The garland are small pieces cut from branches of mahogany, pine and ucar trees.
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Los Prados, Caguas PR
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Macys, Plaza Caribe, Ponce PR
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UMET Cupey Campus, San Juan, PR