Color pencils, crayons, play dough and paints are the most fun toys enjoyed by all children, sticking their hands in the dirt and churning mud is part of the delight of being a child. Who hasn’t built sand houses on the beach and dreamed of adventures feeling in their hands the seductive material getting wet.

Unfortunately our society cuts that passion and the natural sensibility of our human essence, for a “must be” related to our age.

Passion and madness are out of the equation; singing, dancing and laughing out loud have a very short time span allowed. Society encourages our shyness. We are afraid of being judged and better follow the path of looking like everyone else so as not to expose ourselves to criticism.

Few of us are given the gift of being rebellious and we impose ourselves before the world and criticism, doing things for pleasure and not for imposition. We must be very strong to be able to continue playing, dreaming and enjoying the little things.

Alma Citlalli was born in a cradle of crazy people, two parents dedicated to art and a very special sister who loves the strange, a born researcher, introspective and fond of history and culture.

In our home, we live building castles in the air, in an alternative reality, where imagination outweighs reality itself.

When Citlalli was born, her sister, Aura Meztli, already had artistic manifestations in the area of classical dance and painting. As Citlalli grew up, they both became “muralists”; our whole house had drawings and graphics, and large-scale projects could be seen on the walls of the house; Months before she was born, I prepared her room with a mural that covered all her space, where funny scenes with hippopotamus, fish, birds and toads could be seen, in the middle of a jungle landscape integrated shelves, toy box and furniture, providing a recreation area with materials and interactive games, similar to a Montessori workshop. This transformed an ordinary room into an area that invited creativity and dreams.

As Citlalli and Meztli grew, the plastic interventions took shape in their room and our dining room table, where the whole family gave their contribution, making sketches, notes, forming a collage of ideas and present and future creations.

Our life was a great game while our daughters grew up. They lived art at home all the time; they became fond of books, museums and theaters that were part of their daily life.
For my part, to include them in my creative activity, I decided to work with non-toxic school play dough, clay, and pencils, so as not to put their health at risk if at some point they felt like trying some of the materials.

Her father did the same, leaving the oils and taking the acrylics, which although still toxic, could be more controllable. It didn’t take long for Citlalli to become addicted to painting, participating in the background of her father’s paintings, while Meztli created her own works on the back of the finished canvases.