Why I make art: Adoption, altered books, and the stories we carry.

Sometimes I hate that I don't speak Spanish. I made an altered book a few years ago about my adoption from Guatemala. I still pick it up when I need to remember why I make art at all…

THE BOOK

I made this book during a time when I was searching for my biological roots. Trying to find the thread that connected me to a country, a language, a mother that fell off the face of the planet. It was one of the most honest things I'd ever made, not because it was beautiful, but because it was true.

I don't make art to be impressive.

I make art because I will no longer apologize for existing.

I make art because some things don't have words yet, and a brush, a page, and a torn document get closer to the truth than anything else I know.

"I was adopted before I could speak. But I was still able to take in what was happening around me."

That's the part that doesn't get talked about enough in adoption conversations. The body knows before the mind does. My eight-month-old body knew it all. The nervous system records everything, the displacement, the transition, the loss, even when there's no language for it yet. Even when everyone around you insists you should be grateful. Even when you are.

Where It Started:

This is where it started for me. Processing what couldn't be said out loud.

The not-belonging. The feeling of unworthiness that I will always have to sit with, but now know how to work with. The love that still had a hole in it. The questions that adoption leaves you holding for a lifetime, with no clear place to put them down.

Art became the place I put them down.

Not because art fixes anything. It doesn't. But because the act of making, the layering of paint, tearing paper, pressing a word onto a page until it means something, gives the body somewhere to put what the mind can't hold alone.

This collage came later.

I took my own adoption documents and photocopied them. These documents defined my beginning before I had any say in it, and I made them part of the work. Torn, layered, painted over and through. Not erased. Not hidden. Present, the way the past always is.

There's something that happens when you take the thing that hurt you and make it into something you choose. It doesn't undo the hurt. But it shifts the power dynamic in a way that nothing else quite does.

AND NOW:

Now? I paint it. I build it into collages. I teach others how to do the same.

My therapeutic art journaling workshops exist because I know what it feels like to carry a story that's too heavy to keep inside and too complicated to just say. I know what it feels like to sit in front of a blank page and have no idea where to start. I know what it feels like when something finally moves through you onto that page, and you think: there it is. That's what I've been trying to say.

That's what I hold space for. The thing underneath.

A Quiet Riot

This painting is called "A Quiet Riot." A woman. Eyes closed. A crow in flight above her, wings spread wide, colors fracturing into the background. Something arriving. Something is being received…I know it, I feel it.

It's where I am right now. Quiet on the outside. I've put a lot on hold over the past year, stepped back from teaching, turned inward. But everything is happening underneath. My art is still flowing. The graphic design work is expanding. Photography has found a new direction for telling more stories.

The story I've been building through the art, through the workshops, through a graphic novel character named Onyx who knows a little too much about not belonging, is finally starting to take shape.

The quiet was never stillness. It was an accumulation.

If you're carrying something you haven't figured out how to say yet , that's exactly what the art is for.

WHATS COMING:

Therapeutic Art Journaling Workshops: returning this fall. Mixed media, no experience required. Just honesty and a willingness to show up for yourself.

Trauma-Informed Yoga: Also relaunching this fall. Slow, intentional, held in a space that's safe and judgment-free.

Fine Art Originals & Commissions: Available now in the shop. Including Soul Animal Guide paintings, custom commissioned work built around your energy and your story.

Merch Design, Graphic Design & Photography: Open for new clients. Bold branding for businesses done playing it safe, and photography that actually looks like you.

My website is back up and running, and if you've been here before, you'll notice it's been rebuilt from the ground up. More intentional. More me. More honest about the full range of what I do and who I do it for.

Head over, take a look around, and subscribe for updates. The fall workshop announcements, new originals, and a few things I'm not quite ready to talk about yet. But all of it coming soon.

Thank you for being here. For reading this far. For carrying your own story with as much courage as you can manage on any given day.

That's enough. It's always been enough.

🖤 Cristina