The non-profit organization Celia Center will present its second Celia Center Arts Festival (CCAF), featuring the work of artists – from diverse backgrounds and across many mediums – who use creative expression to explore their personal experiences as individuals who were adopted and/or in foster care. There will be performances, readings, workshops, an artists’ panel, children’s activities, and a multi-media art exhibition. Titled “Adopting Resilience, Fostering the Spirit of Creativity: The Voices of the Fostered and Adopted,” CCAF takes place Friday, April 12 and Saturday, April 13 at Highways Performance Space, which is a co-presenter of the festival in partnership with Celia Center.
Celia Center was founded in 2012 by Jeanette Yoffe, a child therapist with a special focus on adoption and foster care issues. She was driven to do so because of her personal story of moving through the foster care system and being adopted. She also wanted to merge her previous career in the arts as a dancer and actress with the cause about which she has become so passionate. Celia Center brings members of the adoption and foster care constellation together through adopt salon support groups, workshops, and events throughout the year.
The festival kicks off April 12 at 6:00PM with the opening reception for CCAF’s visual art group exhibition, curated by artist and adoptee Nicole Rademacher. This free, public reception goes until 8PM, and the show remains on view through April 28. All works in the show are by artists who were adopted and/or in foster care.
Festival programming includes evening performances of “Voices from the Past to Present” at 8PM each night, “Writing the Unsaid,” a writing arts workshop at 4PM on Saturday 4/13. These events require tickets to be purchased: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/celia-center-arts-festival-2019-tickets-51995221106.
For the complete CCAF schedule: https://www.celiacenterartsfestival.org/exhibits-performances/
