About
Artist Statement
I tell stories and explore storytelling modes and traditions across cultures. My interdisciplinary projects include books, films, performances, photographs, paintings, and other imaginings often merged across genres and media. My work spans the fictional, parafictional, dramatic, comedic, and poetic. Regardless of form, I am interested in the concept of power and how it manifests itself in individual and societal contexts. Often my protagonists are those struggling to find power: marginalized people, animals, and other beings in situations they desperately want to control. I am particularly invested in telling women's stories and am deeply influenced by my Salvadoran-American background, upbringing in the South, and current life in New York City.
General interests include the environment, technology, history, immigration, and disability. Commonly, I use animals and nature to examine these themes. Nature holds a lot of power that can teach and inspire us, as evidenced by all the folk tales involving animals. Making art of all kinds helps me think about how we get along with animals and how we can change our lives to be more like them. One of the many things animals have taught me is to be adaptable—to change with my environment and to make art that changes with my environment, even using materials from it. Like a bird making its nest! But another lesson from animals is that of stillness, as I've been reminded during the United States' ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
General interests include the environment, technology, history, immigration, and disability. Commonly, I use animals and nature to examine these themes. Nature holds a lot of power that can teach and inspire us, as evidenced by all the folk tales involving animals. Making art of all kinds helps me think about how we get along with animals and how we can change our lives to be more like them. One of the many things animals have taught me is to be adaptable—to change with my environment and to make art that changes with my environment, even using materials from it. Like a bird making its nest! But another lesson from animals is that of stillness, as I've been reminded during the United States' ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Artist Bio
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Christine Sloan Stoddard is a Salvadoran-American writer, artist, filmmaker, and theatre-maker. She is the founder of Quail Bell Magazine and the author of Desert Fox by the Sea, Belladonna Magic, Water for the Cactus Woman, and other books. You can find her words, images, and videos in Ms. Magazine, Bustle, The Feminist Wire, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, Yes! Magazine, Digital America, Native Peoples Magazine, and beyond. She has shared her creations and talents with audiences at the New York Transit Museum, the Queens Museum, the Poe Museum, FiveMyles Gallery, the New York Poetry Festival, Theater for the New City, and elsewhere. Previously, she was the first-ever artist-in-residence at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House in Manhattan and has held multiple other residencies. She earned her MFA from The City College of New York-CUNY and undergraduate degrees from VCUarts.
During this pandemic era, Christine is the AIR at Heartshare Human Services of New York and runs Quail Bell Press & Productions. In June 2020, she installed a new work at the Queens Botanical Garden for its July re-opening, thanks to a fellowship from AnkhLave Arts Alliance. Her new books, Heaven is a Photograph, a poetry and photography collection, and Naomi & The Reckoning, a novelette, are now out. Her films Bottled and Drunken History are now available on Amazon Prime Video. Christine is a member of The Authors Guild and The Dramatists Guild. |
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