Hollis Citron is on a mission to make creativity accessible to everyone! Hollis is a Creative Inspirer, seasoned art teacher and founder of “I Am Creative” and “Express Yourself Publishing”. Hollis is very passionate about empowering people to own their voice and talents, and wants to shout from the rooftops that being creative is not just about drawing and painting!
She has taught predominately in underserved communities, in both traditional and non traditional settings, ranging from homeless shelters to the public school system working with ages 2-100 and all abilities. What she has learned and continues to learn on an ongoing basis is this key points:
- People want to be heard
- Everyone starts something new from a child like mentality, no matter how old
- People need to feel safe to be able to express
If any of these areas are diminished that voice and passion that is within all of us gets repressed and just creates unhappiness. This passion comes from a life changing event over 20 years ago that is what created the fire in her belly to spread this message. A kindergartener that was a selective mute, he never spoke in class, raised his hand to share during one of her classes when she visited once a week for two months. As he raised his hand one of his classroom teachers that was a screamer yelled at him and said, “ You want to talk, you never want to talk. Go ahead talk”. This poor little boy shrunk and then of course did not speak. Hollis went up to him while cleaning up and bent down and said, “ Sweetie what did you want to say?” He quietly responded and said, “ I like the color blue”. Because of this boy that she does not even remember his name, she does not want anyone to be quieted and feel like they cannot be expressive.
Hollis is passionate about empowering people to know that, even if you are not “an artist”, yes, you are creative. You are creative because you are the only person that can add your gifts to the things that you create. You are creative because only you can express your ideas and greatness with the world. Once this is recognized it all leads to what we want.. joy, happiness & love.