About Me

Ariel Velez is a queer, Boricua, vegan, artist born and raised in the Lower East Side of New York City. Ariel’s artistry is influenced by their upbringing and her ancestry. Growing up, they used art as a form of release, self expression and sense of belonging. At a young age Ariel was told she would be different and was put into special education. At home they witnessed their family experience hardships and in school they felt like they did not fit in and dealt with feeling outcasted. By the time they were in High School their mental health was struggling and so was their schooling. During this time, they had come out to their parents and were diagnosed with depression. 

Their high school year was the start of their artistic identity and played a pivotal role in what kind of artist they would be, which carried through adulthood. Ariel found that Art class helped them communicate to the world what they were struggling with and could not express to others. They started writing raw emotional poems and created paintings and sculptures that would portray their feelings of alienation and frustration with her circumstances. When she got into college she wanted to help make a change and Ariel chose to focus her attention on community work and local politics. In 2021, she was inspired to create an art community event for Black Idigenous and Latine  artists. They applied for a city grant and decided to facilitate an art exhibition dedicated to BIPOC artists called Liberating Our Souls with the mission to highlight artwork that deconstructed colonization. Soon after in 2022 she became a public servant and started thier rollerskating journey. 

Today, Ariel has now one of NYC's finest Roller Skaters and upcoming artists from the Lower East Side. They go by SpicyVeganSk8s on social media. Being persistent on the 8’s has led Ariel to rollerskating at skate jams internationally, appearing in music videos,commercials, and co-founding an Afro-Latina and Queer led crew called Liberty Girls NYC. Within the past two years, Ariel has dedicated their time to also their art. They have performed at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and have founded an open mic called Claiming Space and hosted several open mics. In 2026, nine of her art pieces from her Taino series were exhibited at the Center for Wellbeing, part of the community art exhibition Our Hood: Our Stories and Cultural Survival in the Lower East Side. Today, they continue to expand their vision and have plans to curate their own art show in their near future.