About Christina Demetro (with a touch of contact info humor):

Name/s:“Tia” Christina Demetro, wife, daughter, twin SeaStar, professional artist and likely friend to viewers such as you.

Race:  Human race… with respect for all.

Address:  Address is fun to wear. Christina loves to make the world her home and the wild outdoors her playground, so she mainly dresses in comfortable clothes to create. As a professional artist, Demetro breathes in deep inspiration from the ebb and flow of nature, connections with loved ones, and past challenges to inform her artwork. Many see food as medicine and wilderness as medicine… and she sees art as medicine as well. Demetro seeks the therapeutic value of it, both for herself and others. That is why—in over three decades of working with bronze and other art forms like wood—Christina focuses mainly on creating fundraising artwork that either adds a twist of meaningful discovery or draws in the viewer interactively.

Street:  Sunny side of the street or trail, please. Lately, among other explorations, Christina has been adding instruments like hang drums and chimes into her artwork for extra sunshine. Music adds a therapeutic, interactive element. Examples of this can be seen in the large art piece titled Song of Hope, where an Alaskan river turns into a large xylophone of chimes. Or The Peace Crane sculpture, where larger-than-normal chimes are incorporated in the sandhill crane’s outstretched wings. It is Christina’s hope this will become one of her artistic signatures for larger pieces.

City and State: Chooses not to live in scarcity but in a state of abundance. She believes everyone is an artist in some way. Her own art exploration began with sculpting realistic, figurative bronzes from 1992 onwards as an apprentice, assistant and, later, co-sculptor with her father, master sculptor Jim Demetro.
For her own work, she delved into abstract realism. The goal? Adding something surprising in each of her realistic sculptures, like a semi-hidden message or symbol. After a decade of assistant sculpting, in 2002, Christina created her first abstract bronze for a public setting. She collaborates on bronze sculptures, and has also branched out into woodworking, paintings, luminaries, steel, stainless steel and porcelain enamel-covered-steel art, and bronze pieces of her own. Christina delights in the fact that each of these metals and natural materials can incorporate interactive elements or instruments.

Zip:  Zipadeedoodahs over: kids, wildlife, artistic creations, writing, sculpting, swimming, backpacking, painting, song circles, organic gardening, storytelling, humor, fundraising and community involvement. Whenever she can, Christina includes the public in the co-creation of outdoor sculptures as a type of community-building event. Examples of this include:

1. She involved over a thousand participants in 40 classrooms and two public workshops in the towns of Kenai, Soldotna and Sterling, Alaska—where they not only helped co-sculpt The Peace Crane, but also made their own sculptures and xylophone song compositions.
2. She worked with hospital staff on a healing garden artwork project for Providence Hospital.
3. In 2017, Christina included three schools of elementary and middle school students to help co-sculpt the six-foot long, bronze Wildheart The Giving Salmon for Homer, AK.
4. The year before that, Demetro co-led 94 Anchorage Boys and Girls Club kids and Wonder Park first graders to help co-sculpt the five-foot high, bronze Whale Song sculpture.

These children—as they ride on the back of the salmon, or swing from the whale’s tail, or play the xylophones in The Peace Crane or Song of Hope sculptures—have the deeper pride of part ownership in these pieces. The largest group Demetro and her father were involved with had over 1,300 local participants.

Other Education and Work History, or could we say, “Work Herstory:”  Demetro is a life long student of aha and ha-ha-ha moments. With a bachelors of science degree in environmental education and since becoming a licensed massage therapist specializing in neuromuscular massage therapy in 2002, Christina spent over twelve years teaching children in the outdoors for the following organizations, among others: North Cascades Institute, Seattle Audubon Society, Olympic Park Institute/Nature Bridge, Denali National Park, Wilderness Awareness School and Pemi West. She has also co-created programs specifically for foster children from abusive families and youth affected by things like HIV/AIDS, because she has a passion for drawing out the best from children who are in the shadows of society.

Number:  Doesn’t feel numb or number but instead feels alive, alive, alive! She has shared this aliveness by being a mentor to two brothers since 1995, and most recently, to a foster toddler reuniting with his birth mother.

Email:  Email who is very important in Christina’s life is her husband Eric, who has taught her more than anyone else about love, skate skiing, woodworking, dulcimer playing, mountain biking, slot canyoneering, and dream bagging.  They recently moved from snowy Alaska to a sunny farm in Durango, Colorado, with ducks, chickens, rabbits, pigs, sheep and leaping lambs—as well as wild elk sightings across the river.

Website: The web of projects Demetro has set her sights upon currently include:
1. Public mural, details coming soon.
2. Inner Peace Cards: a toolkit for awakening mindfulness and deepening sleep. These are made from fundraising paintings such as Snow Freedom, which raised funds for the Anchorage Community Land Trust. (See photo).
3. Other: writings, luminaries, art/song circles, artwork song pairings, shows, and new fundraising pieces for Demetro Galeria, and UNICEF/other nonprofits.
4. Being a better ally, beginning with the acknowledgment below:

Respect and Land Acknowledgment:

Hello, global family. This is Christina Demetro.
My family and I acknowledge that each of us have a responsibility to help with our culture’s positive transformation. We recognize many of the ongoing, privileged advantages stem from our nation’s history of unjust colonialism and slavery. Having recently moved from the Athabaskan Native Alaskan lands in Anchorage, AK, we are learning from Fort Lewis College and First Nations that our new home of Durango, Colorado is situated upon the ancestral, territorial lands of the Nuuchiu (the Ute), as well as connected to the communal, ceremonial lands of the Dine (the Navajo), the Jicarilla Abache (the Apache), the Pueblos of New Mexico, the Hopi Sinom (the Hopi), the Comanche, the Arapaho, and others of the 48 tribal nations in this state. They were the original land stewards for thousands of years, and, tragically, were compromised, removed or killed via genocide. We extend our respect to include both tribes too small now to be federally recognized, and all of the 574 federally-recognized tribal nations of the lands that make up USA—as well as all of the countless indigenous stewards of the world.

More soon. Please check back or contact me today.

Thank you for your curiosity about the deeper dive of my artwork.