About El Tapia-Kwan

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The catalyst of my life's work has been the experience of growing up in a small town with no visual arts programming. I have deeply understood and felt the impact of non-expressive environments, and the honor of creating new expressive environments for others. I have stood in the footsteps of the confused child yearning for more, the angry adolescent rebelling for stimulation, and the anxious adult navigating the need to keep themselves creatively alive.

After spending 2 years of undergraduate school in Miami at Barry University studying Ceramics and Communications, I left Florida to pursue and complete my B.F.A. in Ceramics at the Rhode Island School of Design by 2017. After graduating, I headed west to San Francisco and Oakland to continue my journey as a burgeoning Performance Artist. Fate had other plans, and I was swept away from my opportunities at both a renowned Dance Studio and a seminal Glass studio by means of a major accident.

I suddenly found myself in another small town to recover - this time in Iowa. And I rediscovered my love for language, for writing, for speaking, and for expressing with my words what my body could not.  I discovered language that made sense of my life experiences, and identities that completed a search for myself that I never knew I was on. 

The next 5 years would be dedicated to writing blogs and making youtube videos about social and personal themes in plain English; sharing what I had learned from escaping my environment for those who felt similarly suffocated, shamed, confused, or distressed. While teaching multimedia fine arts during the day, I was also recording, editing, and sharing "Shameless Stories of Survival" at night on my channel. I facilitated panels, interviewed Black and Brown artists, and found community amongst the marginalized, reconnecting to my root passion of connection and care. I moved several times throughout those years, even back to Florida in 2019.

After several years of attending Art Therapy conferences and classes, I decided to take the plunge of a dual degree in Art Therapy and Counseling. Most of the material was familiar to me from my decade of working in care centers for disabled adults, community art studios, juvenile justice facilities, mental health residential centers, and other spaces where it was not enough to be solely artistic in order to work successfully with the populations served. After a year of credentialed classes, my plans were once again derailed away from the program.

In 2023 I turned inward to find a new release of grief while political fires raged around us in red. Returning to my home town while experiencing housing hardship felt more scalding than suffocating, and I reached out to the unused art supplies that had moved with me for years. There birthed Uppercutt and my ability to create not only for myself, but for my local Florida community experiencing hate and harm upheld by fear and falsehoods.

Now as I experience disabilities that deter me from making manually in the ways I've always relied on for professional work, I am pivoting once more, for good.

I am embracing my experiences, talents, and purpose in assisting fellow Creators find their way back home to self through expression.