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Cielo Oreste received her B.F.A. in Illustration from Massachusetts College of Art in 2002. After moving to the bay area in 2003, she spent two years as Art Director of Hyphen, a San Francisco-based Asian American magazine. Since then, Cielo has held numerous positions in hospitality and corporate administration. She is also an avid practitioner of aikido, in which she received her Shodan (1st degree black belt) in 2008 from Kato Hiroshi Sensei at Suginami Aikikai, SF. Meanwhile, Cielo creates and exhibits work as much as possible, and currently teaches at the Academy of Art University.

Cielo is dedicated to the processes of art making and storytelling. She loves inspecting objects and images carefully, capturing the subtleties within them, and then striving to accent her favorite parts of these objects with absolute clarity. She assembles her subjects using transparent layers, intricate patterns, interesting marks, and sometimes collage. Cielo often gleans images from poems, or apprehends the atmosphere of a story or place, and offers it to the viewer. In the process, her work recalls forgotten memories and emotions. It plays on the innocence of lullabies, fairy tales, and nursery rhymes, but adds layers of knowledge and experience.