Born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. Cristina Sosa Noriega understands San Antonio culture to a T. It shows in every piece of her art. That is why she was specially commissioned by South Texas Blood & Tissue to create a mural for our newly renovated Southeast Donor Center. Cristina is the newest addition to our BioBridge Global Art Collection.
Cristina’s mural depicts actual donors and recipients that have come through our doors, including Uvalde shooting survivor Mayah Zamora and her donor hero, 17-year-old Adrianna Garcia.
“She’s [Mayah’s] in there as well as other donors of different backgrounds, just to show anyone can be a donor,” Cristina said. “You can be a woman, a man, you can be old, you can be young, and it’s not hard…It’s a pretty simple thing and it’s totally worth it.”
The Sacred Heart in the center of Cristina’s piece is symbolic in Mexican American culture. The arteries connecting the donors represent not just the spiritual, but physical connection that donation entails.
Cristina said she wanted people to see the vignettes of donors and feel a “sense of joy.”
Since youth, Cristina wanted to be an artist. She attended university and got a job in advertising and marketing. It wasn’t until 2005 that she decided to dedicate her life to art for the first time.
She and her husband Victor moved to Alpine, Texas, where they sold snow cones out of a historical building in the Hispanic side of the town. The family decided to move back to the Alamo City, where Christina landed her dream job as the Marketing Director of the DoSeum, the prestigious children’s science museum.
Life was good, but deep in Cristina’s heart, she knew she wanted to do art again. She recently began her full-time venture back into her craft, and she’s never been happier. She is a wife, mother, portrait painter and muralist.
Some of Cristina’s work can be seen at UTSA Downtown’s School of Data Science, and down the street at 114 Main Plaza, where she showcases the Girl Scouts centennial. Cristina also has connections in Uvalde, where she painted a larger-than-life depiction of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, a casualty of the Uvalde shooting.
