Sundays with Stella is a weekly, reader-supported newsletter where I turn to photography, collage, and storytelling to work through the tender, complicated moments that make up a life.
I work through creative questions, life's deeper meanings, and moments where past and present intersect. Current projects and works-in-progress mix with older photographs and collages as I make sense of both.
My writing tends to land in the spaces between joy and melancholy - those bittersweet moments where life reveals itself most honestly. If you're someone who finds meaning in the unresolved, who's curious about how creativity can be both refuge and reckoning, you might find yourself at home here.
This is creative practice as emotional archaeology, one Sunday at a time.
The WHY behind Sundays with Stella
Growing up, I discovered those conversations at the adult table were more interesting than at the kids' table. I usually walked over to where my aunts, uncles, and grandparents gathered after meals and listened as they told stories, cajoled, and bantered together.
For years, I've written down in my journals tiny details of everyday life and pieces of conversations I've heard or picked up. Anything that sparked my curiosity or touched me deeply, I tried to record.
"When are you writing a book?" my good friend Gail always asked me before she was diagnosed with dementia. We used to exchange emails regularly and chat on the phone for an hour or two. We had long conversations on her backyard patio or in her living room during my yearly visits to Santa Barbara, California. She kept insisting I had something worth sharing with the world. She encouraged me for years until she couldn't anymore. Each interaction became precious as her memory faded, and now she no longer knows me. But her years of encouragement live on in this work.
I don't know if I'll ever write a book. It is daunting just thinking about it. Maybe, Sundays with Stella will do for now. We'll see where this goes... will you join me on this creative journey?
Four ways you can support this newsletter:
Engage with the work. Clicking the heart, commenting, or sharing helps other readers and fellow creatives discover Sundays with Stella.
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About Stella
Born in Manila, Philippines, I grew up gravitating toward the grown-ups' conversations, always curious about the stories people tell when they think no one is listening. That curiosity eventually led me through Communication Arts at De La Salle University and then to Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, where I studied photography.
My work has found its way into the New York Times, Gastronomica, and Wine Enthusiast, and onto gallery walls from Singapore to San Francisco. My time as a Photo Editor at Airbnb was cut short by the pandemic, but it's a direction I'd like to return to.
What keeps pulling me back isn't the accolades but those in-between moments: overheard conversations, forgotten photographs, the daily details that somehow add up to a life. From my home base in San Francisco Bay Area, I'm still that curious kid trying to make sense of the stories unfolding around me.
