Chicago Legend Candida Alvarez Finds Comfort—and Reprieve from Trauma—in Abstraction

“One of the things about trauma is, you don’t know what it’s like until you live it,” Alvarez said. “You don’t know how you’re going to be. It felt like I had lost this connection to family, to the land. I just knew I had to work, but it was driving me nuts that I couldn’t because I had to deal with finding my mother and sister, and I was teaching. But when I walked into the studio, I devoured what was there. I just knew I had to find solace.”