During their three week residency, they have been working on creating an adoption dossier molded after Andrés actual adoption file. While they specifically began working on this project 6 or 7 years ago, printing the file has taken place over the last year.

“I have a wall of Post-it notes with ideas of things that I knew I wanted to include in this project, and I’m taking it one Post-it note at a time. I had studio experience before this, from my time working at the Center for Book Arts, so I have an idea how the space works at the Grand. Not every studio has the same fonts, so it’s been a lot of comparing and contrasting that I wouldn’t normally have access to,” Andrés said.

The idea of the project came from Andrés sorting through their adoption file, which they gained access to in 2019. The project is also rooted in research and reading different books on adoption. One about how to talk to your child about adoption.

“The book is from the 90s, and it’s different snippets, quotes, and things. “The Primal Wound,” by Nancy Newton Verrier was an important book,” Andrés said. “But most comes from text, my own archive. And the emotional breathing space comes from my partner.

Samples from the Andrés collection of an adoption file; their goal is to have at thirty copies of a very thick folder. Eventually, the document case might be created from homemade paper by Andrés.

“My partner is chronically ill, and they’re in and out of the hospital. We spend a lot of time together in the hospital, just hanging out and playing Scrabble, and it’s really beautiful that connection. It has been beautiful and grounding. Trusting love is a big part of that.”

For Andrés’ process, they usually find a specific bit of text and then decide how they want it to look, with a photo or in color. After that, they hand set the type and put it through a press. Andrés likes to run copies through on a Vandercook Proof Press, first, a commercial printer from the 1950s, which makes a copy of the work to be sure it is correct and how they want it for printing. Since they have been the Artist-in-Residence at the Grand, Andrés have created about half of the creative adoption file. Which was seven or eight new prints.

“My being queer, being trans, is a big part of it, thinking about the fact that I will never be the daughter that I was when I was born to my birth mother, and the fact that my adoptive mother wanted a girl and she raised me to be a daughter, and that’s not who I am,” Andrés said. “Both of them have been very accepting of me, but both had to grieve and reckon with a little bit. That was a little hard, but also just thinking about the sense of ownership that both have over me and the fact that I am my own person, too, simultaneously not being either of their children; being my own person and coming into myself.

Another wave of emotion comes from Andrés cultural identity. They were raised in Minneapolis by their adoptive parents in an American white culture and part of that makes them think over and again about the alternate persona or other life they would have led, and what it would have looked like if they were raised in Columbia by their birth parents or by Columbian adoptive parents.

“I like to say that I was raised white. My adoptive parents are both white and that is the culture that I have known my whole life, so I know very little about Columbian culture. I have some connections, but it’s pretty limited. And I don’t love that that’s the case. That’s definitely the criticism that I have with it,” Andrés said.

Charlie Andrés has fond memories from the book, Are You My Mother, by P.D. Eastman from their childhood. Andrés demonstrated how the proof press works with carbon paper.

“This was a wave moment: I remember being 12 or 13 years old and I was standing in the kitchen, and I was trying to cut a mango and truly no one ever taught me how to cut a mango,” Andrés said. “How cutting a mango is something I should know how to do. If I was still living in Columbia, I would know how to cut a mango.”

Much of Andrés’ criticism of adoption is based on its construct of transnational, trans-racial adoption and the power dynamics there.

“The main idea of adoption, the leading, guiding principle of it, is for adoption to be in the best interest of the child,” Andrés said. “But again, I have all of conflicting feelings thinking about the life I would have led if I wasn’t put up for adoption.”

Andrés did end up finding their birth mother by combing through their adoption file, which was a confusing half typed, half hand-written 100 pages of text. And that is the feeling they would like others to have as they sort through the creative adoption file they are creating.

“Grief in general comes in waves, creativity comes in waves. I’ve had to reckon with that in this residency. And remember that I can’t be making things all the time. I can, but I can’t–it’s exhausting from point A to point Z there’s a lot of steps in there, for the first few days of my residency I was making a lot of prints, really cranking them out, which is great, I was excited to have that, but not only is it emotional work that I am doing, but I was getting tired and it was a big reminder that a huge part of this residency is to remember to slow down and be intentional of rest,” Andrés said.

Charlie Andrés cranks a Vandercook printing press from the 1950s to create a sample proof of their creative work.