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 Press & Productions, including Quail Bell Magazine and the Badass Lady-Folk podcast. The author of Desert Fox by the Sea, Belladonna Magic, Water for the Cactus Woman, and other books, she has also contributed to 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 and has held multiple other residencies.
During this pandemic era, Christine is the ongoing AIR at Heartshare Human Services of New York and teaching artist for the Art Deco Society of New York. As an AnkhLave Fellow, she created new work for the Queens Botanical Garden all while completing 17 commissioned murals. Her new books, Heaven is a Photograph, Naomi & The Reckoning, and Hello, New York: The Living And Dead are out now and her films Bottled, Butterflies, and Drunken History are now available on Amazon Prime Video. She is currently preparing her film Sirena's Gallery for the festival circuit. Christine is a member of The Authors Guild and The Dramatists Guild. She earned her MFA from The City College of New York-CUNY and undergraduate degrees from VCUarts. |
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