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 (1651 18th Street, Santa Monica, CA, 90404). 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 "A Journey Of Time," 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. Featured artists include Beth Dubber, Susan Lizotte, Patrick McMahon, and Caleb Yee (these artists will participate in a panel on 4/13). Rademacher says, "This exhibition takes us on a journey of the fostered and adopted. We unravel identity, travel the twists and turns around family, and share in the artists' cathartic experience of loss, trauma, and resilience. These fourteen artists share their psychic state through vulnerability and courage as they confront what their adoption means to them head-on." For the complete CCAF schedule: https://www.celiacenterartsfestival.org/exhibits-performances/