Christine Stoddard has been traveling east for four years from Brooklyn to Long Island to showcase her story — as the daughter of an immigrant and a journalist — in films, paintings, writings, and sculptures.

Growing up with an immigrant mother who was learning about American culture by going to art festivals and museums, Stoddard, 35, sculpted her passion for the arts at a young age. Living in Arlington, Va., for the majority of her life, Stoddard grew her brand as she became immersed in filmmaking, artistry, and writing. In recent years, she’s been working with local theaters, art museums, and libraries in Washington and New York to showcase her body of work.

“My father was a broadcast professional,” Stoddard said. “He was director of photography for national news programming and documentaries.”

Stoddard said her American father Mark met her mother Lidia, who is from El Salvador, in the Central American nation when he was covering the first half of the country’s civil war, which lasted from 1979 to 1992. She said there was a lot of conflict there that made them decide to move to the United States and eventually start a family. After Stoddard’s father received a job offer to be the director of photography of USA Today’s TV show called “USA Today,” Stoddard’s parents moved to Arlington. 

Stoddard grew up in the outskirts of Washington, D.C., in the 1990s, which she said is why she later felt a connection to the suburban life of Long Island. Since she lived close to D.C., Stoddard would go into the nation’s capital about once or twice a week for different cultural events. This was due to her mom being really interested in American culture and trying to discover the many traditions within this country. 

“She would take us to all these art festivals and museums and libraries and I would say that’s when my interest in art started,” Stoddard said. “I really can’t think of a time where I wasn’t interested in art and creativity.”

With Stoddard’s dad working in television and her mom trying to assimilate into American culture, Stoddard said it was kind of impossible for her not to be interested in arts. This interest continued through elementary school, as she was involved with integrated arts, which combined crafts and culture.

“Elementary school definitely encouraged me and I was fortunate to be at a school that had very strong creative writing and arts programming,” Stoddard said. “And then in middle school, it was more of the same. In high school, it was tougher to stay engaged in the arts because I went to an AP school, honors school, so everything was super academic.”

Stoddard made it her mission to make arts a priority outside of school. She continued to write stories, make collages, create comics, and submit her art to different competitions. She worked at a local art center and also was involved with the Arlington Connection, which is a weekly newspaper.

At Virginia Commonwealth University, Stoddard started making her own films, such as a documentary called “The Persistence of Poe,” which premiered on Virginia PBS stations. She then worked for Virginia Living Magazine as an assistant editor. She graduated in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in film and English.

“Largely, I freelanced and that’s the life that I’ve had for quite a while,” Stoddard said. “Being self-employed, doing a lot of different kinds of artist residencies, pitching my own book and film ideas, applying for grants, doing client work that related to my creativity in one way or another, acting, doing all kinds of theater and some film work for others.”

Stoddard moved to Brooklyn in 2016 to attend The City College of New York. She also worked at the Broadway Comedy Club and through a connection there, she met artist Megan Meehan. They made the most of being stuck at home during the pandemic and their first collaboration was a play called “A Soul to Squeeze,” which won a few awards.

“We took that play to Bethpage in September 2020 because the Long Island Theater Collective had an outdoor festival,” Stoddard said.

Stoddard said she was so excited to be involved in that play because she was desperate to get back into the world during the pandemic in a way that was safe and responsible. She said because Long Island isn’t as densely populated as New York City, where she was living at the time, she started doing more work on the Island.

In 2021, Stoddard and Meehan went to Westbury Arts to perform a different play that was called the “Values of Gold, Silver, and Bronze.” Meehan wrote the play and Stoddard said she was really excited to perform it at Westbury Arts.

“We did it indoors and they had a limited audience and asked people to wear masks, so it felt safe and responsible,” Stoddard said. “And I think seeing how the Westbury Arts Center had so many creative things going on and witnessing Megan’s thrill and enthusiasm, it just got me thinking, ‘what else is here? What else am I missing?,” Stoddard said.

The arts center motivated Stoddard to get more involved with different art programs on Long Island. She said that after her show there, she started taking more initiative and made a short film called “Bottled,” which premiered at the New York Long Film Festival, where it was nominated for Best ‘Short’ Short.

Last year, Stoddard displayed her artwork at the Syosset Public Library, where she was artist-of- the-month. Her recent Queens Botanical Garden solo exhibition is now at Baldwin Public Library.

“So there are 29 total pieces and there are 13 paintings on the wall,” Stoddard said about her exhibit at Baldwin Public Library. “There are canvas type paintings, mixed media, and then there are three cases that contain small sculptures or sculptural paintings.”

Stoddard said that her sculptures have acrylic paint as the base with some paper pulp that is used from recycled newspaper, cardboard, and flyers. Some of her sculptures also contain glass.

“There are a lot of plants depicted in the work, all fairly abstracted, but you can still make out what they are,” Stoddard said. “There is a unicorn, which is Scotland’s national animal, and the torogoz, which is the national bird of El Salvador.”

Stoddard’s great-grandparents on her father’s side emigrated from Scotland, which is why she chose to incorporate a unicorn in her art. She said this painting speaks to the union of the cultures on her dad’s side and mother’s side. 

On WorldOfChristineStoddard.com, Stoddard said that her work plays with “decolonizing notions” of power, memory, identity, belonging, and truth-making. These interests are all tied to her desire for social change. Via fiction, non-fiction, and parafiction, she explores possibilities in contemporary, historical, and future societies and imaginations.

Her style, which she described on WorldOfChristineStoddard.com as both “poetic and playful,” embraces tension.

Stoddard said she always has something going in her work. She will be performing in a comedy play in September and she has a few non-fiction video projects that are currently under post-production. She is also going to be studying film and documentary at Columbia University.

To view Stoddard’s art work or to learn more about her, visit WorldOfChristineStoddard.com.