TAMPA, Fla. --  

Gonzalez moved to the states to go to college, leaving her family behind in Puerto Rico.

After leaving Puerto Rico, Hurricane Maria hit and all contact with her family was lost.

She didn’t have any communication with her for at least a week and a half, until she saw her mom on the news.

“Someone sent me a message like this is your mom,” Gonzalez said. “And then I watched it and it was her, and it was my mom crying on the news, and I was like, ‘Well I'm glad I have an update on my mom,’ but also it was pretty traumatizing.”

She decided to use her talent and appreciation for art to express what she was feeling during this experience in her life.

Gonzalez says, “Everything I do, everything I talk about and everything that I try to read and I just try to relate it back to this island like that’s like what made me.”

She has created an interactive exhibit, titled Fabrication of Self, that was displayed this past week at the HCC Dale Mabry campus.

The art exhibit is Gonzalez’s reaction to Hurricane Maria, shedding light on such a time of crisis.

“I feel good that this conversation is still happening and I know it’s like because you’re not confronted with it on the daily it could be easy to forget, but I don’t want to do that. So anything I can do to make like the island of Puerto Rico represent then I’m going to do, whatever it takes me,” explain Gonzalez.

Not only is she using her art as a form of healing, she is “ providing just a little bit of comfort for people I don’t know, it makes me happy. It makes me feel like I’m doing my job.”

Gonzalez plans to take her exhibit to other spaces across the country over the next year.