The Art We Make in Between

My grandmother, Maria Célia de Andrade Poppi, was a nurse, a caregiver, a wife, and the center of a busy household. But somewhere between caring for others and caring for a home, she painted.

Her paintings are scattered throughout her house, hanging on its walls and filling the spaces she has lived in for years. Growing up surrounded by them, I often found myself staring at her paintings and wondering: how many other people live this way?

People whose days are shaped by work, family, responsibility, and routine, yet who continue to create whenever they find the space.

The Dona Célia Archive is a collection of those stories.

It documents artists whose creative practices exist alongside their professions and everyday lives. Teachers who paint after school. Nurses who write on weekends. Engineers who photograph between shifts. Parents who create after their children fall asleep.

The archive is interested in the space between who we have to be and what we choose to make.

Because being an artist does not always mean making art for a living. Sometimes, it means continuing to make it anyway.