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The Lives We Carried
A public art and storytelling project about those who came to Los Alamos because of a partner's path.
Through personal stories and painted portraits, I explore the lives we bring with us, the choices that shape us, and the ways we begin to belong.
About the project
Every arrival holds a story.
Moving because of a partner's work or opportunity can change more than an address. It can reshape a career, a sense of identity, and the meaning of home.
The Lives We Carried brings these experiences into focus through conversation, portraiture, and public art. The project connects an electrical box mural in Los Alamos with an online collection of voices and stories, creating space to meet the people behind the painted faces.
THE MURAL
A public artwork taking shape through portraits and the stories that inspire them.
THE STORIES
Personal accounts of moving, adapting, and building a life in Los Alamos.
THE ARCHIVE
A growing digital home for selected interviews, photographs, and the artistic process.
Why I'm making it
A story that connects with my own.
I am an Argentine-born artist living in Los Alamos. My portraits of Oppenheimer grew from living in a town where his image and legacy are everywhere. Painting him became a way of responding to this place.
But I also know what it means to arrive somewhere because of a partner's path. That experience draws my attention to the person beside the more visible career: the life they had before arriving, the choices they made, and the life they are building here.
This project grows from that personal connection and from a question that reaches across generations: what stories do we miss when we focus on only one person's achievements?
The people
The voices behind the portraits.
There is no single story of starting over. A move can bring loss, possibility, uncertainty, belonging, or all of these at once.
This project makes room for people of different genders, generations, and partnerships to describe their experiences in their own words, without assuming what moving meant for them.
The creative process
From conversation to portrait.
Listening guides the artwork. Rather than beginning with a fixed visual idea, I look for the details that make each experience distinct: a remembered place, a meaningful object, a turning point, or a way of describing home.
These conversations guide the development of the portraits, connecting each painted face with the life beyond it.
[Espacio opcional para bocetos y fotografías del proceso.]
The mural
Individual lives, made visible.
The mural is being developed for an electrical box in Los Alamos, bringing personal stories into an everyday public space.
The proposed artwork includes up to four expressive portraits. Its colors, imagery, and meaningful details will grow from the interviews and the surface itself.
The painted box will offer an introduction to the larger project, inviting visitors to discover the voices behind the portraits.
[Dejá espacio para una foto general del mural y una galería de detalles. Mientras tanto:]
Photographs of the painting process and completed mural will be added here.
Shared with care
These stories belong to the people who tell them. Public excerpts, photographs, and portraits are shared only with their permission, with respect for what each person chooses to keep private.
A project by Margarita Ryan · Los Alamos, New Mexico