There was a moment, not too long ago, where Linda Litteral just didn’t have it in her to do her art.

Sure, she would dabble here and there, but she admits the work “wasn’t that good.” To hear the San Diego artist tell it, she was tired, exhausted rather, and fresh off one of the most difficult projects she’d ever worked on.

“It was still a very difficult process,” says Literall. “I’d work on it and then go home and sleep. Those hours would completely wear me out.”

Artist Linda Litteral stands with her work in her East Village art studio.

(Sandy Huffaker/For The San Diego Union-Tribune)

The project in question was “Show and Tell: Healing from Trauma Through Art,” a book she says was more than 20 years in the making. Part harrowing memoir, part self-help guide, the book recounts Litteral’s early life as a victim of rape and incest, to her continued journey as a survivor who channels this trauma into visual art. The book also includes pictures of her work over the years, which range from abstract, hyper-colored paintings to evocative sculptural works.

“Twenty years later and I was finally able to do it,” says Litteral, who originally had the idea for the book while attending graduate school at San Diego State University in the late 1990s. “I had to heal that much, do that work on myself before I actually could write it.”

“Wedded Bliss: in memory of Mary,” a 1999 procelain sculpture by Linda Litteral.

(Courtesy of Linda Litteral)

Litteral goes on to explain that she may not have finally started the writing process had she not casually mentioned it to Lynn Susholtz, who owns Art Produce, the community art and performance space in North Park.

Susholtz ended up giving Litteral a space that was generally reserved for visual art within the building to serve as something of a writing studio. Even during the COVID-19 lockdowns, Litteral says she went every day for four months to plug away at the book. The result is a visceral and moving account of survival and the power of art to help us cope with our respective traumas.

Portion of Linda Litteral’s oil painting series “Timeline 1955 to 2022: Three images.”

(Courtesy of Linda Litteral)

“The glass domes denote an important thing. The glass gives the feelings a sense of reverence in that they were very important when they were happening during my childhood,” Litteral writes in the book, reflecting on a series of glass dome sculptures she produced. “As I look back it is important to honor that little girl and the feelings she had.”

She likes to downplay the accomplishment of writing the book, but Litteral says that her story, much like the art she produced specifically to include within its pages, was something she just had to get out into the world.

“It probably could be better written, even now, but it was what I had to say when I had to say it,” Litteral says. “The whole process was pretty magical, but I’m still recovering from it.”

“Armor: Protection series #11,” a 2015 porcelain sculpture by Linda Litteral.

(Courtesy of Linda Litteral)

She has, however, been getting back into the swing of things. Most recently, she has her work up at different group shows throughout San Diego County. First, she has some sculptural work displayed at the “Allied Craftsman of San Diego: Hands on Design” exhibition at the Oceanside Museum of Art, which runs through August 18. Down the road, at the PHES Gallery in Carlsbad, Litteral also has some sculptural work within “Roots,” a group show (on display through June 15) that explores culture and the natural world.

And while both of the exhibitions explore cultural interconnectedness and the sometimes communal, collaborative nature of art-making, those themes are most prominently on display at “Women Work Together,” which opens Friday, May 3, and runs through September 6 at the Mandell Weiss Gallery in Liberty Station.

Artists Kirsten Aaboe, left, Linda Litteral and Mary Pennell are collaborating in Feminist Image Group’s “Women Work Together” exhibit at Liberty Station.

(Courtesy of Linda Litteral)

The group exhibition was organized by the Feminist Image Group (FIG), a local coalition of artists who stage group shows and support fellow women creatives. Litteral has been involved with the group since its inception in 2009 and has served as the director for the past five years.

As indicated by the title of the exhibition, the works on display will be collaborative works between two or more artists. Litteral found herself teamed up not only with painter Minnie Valero, but also with two other artists (Kirsten Aaboe and Mary Pennell) on a three-pronged sculptural piece called “Uncomfortable Spaces,” which combines collage, painting, decoupage-style crafting and sculpture. The result is something of a mixed-media mobile, with sculpted houses hanging and decorated with each artist’s rendering of locations that may trouble them.

Detail from Linda Litteral’s 2002 stoneware sculpture “Storyteller #4.”

(Courtesy of Linda LItteral)

“We all were talking and realized that we all came from uncomfortable spaces in our childhood,” says Litteral, who painted “houses on a house,” which was meant to convey the places in Michigan where she spent her formative years.

It’s surprising to learn that art hasn’t always figured into Litteral’s life. It wasn’t until she was well Into adulthood that she says she took a ceramics class while living in Charleston, South Carolina.

“I think I always felt like I was creative but didn’t know that I could be creative,” Litteral recalls. “ I never felt like I could. I seem to remember thinking I wanted to be an artist when I was a kid, but I didn’t known what that meant.”

After moving back to San Diego from the East Coast in the early ‘90s, Litteral says she dove into art, finding that it helped her confront traumas that had long been buried, including the years of sexual abuse she suffered from her maternal grandfather.

“I don’t know if I really realized it could help,” Litteral says. “It was definitely more of a catalyst that eventually made me go into therapy.”

“Artwork kind of makes you show the truth whether you want to or not,” she continues. “I might have known that on some level, but I couldn’t do it until the art came.”

While some of her work is more abstract in nature, she still does well to address the issue of trauma and abuse head-on, like in pieces like in the “See, Hear, Speak” series, which feature childlike drawings tucked within ceramic sculptures of eyes, ears and mouths.

“I don’t know if I ever intend for a piece to be vague or weird, it’s just what comes to me in the moment. It makes sense to me at that moment,” Litteral says. “There weren’t a lot of places to find works about these sorts of topics when I was going to school, even if it was only 20 years ago.”

She eventually channeled this “in the moment” logic into teaching art and helping others with similar traumas or who may be suffering from PTSD because of past abuses. Almost 10 years ago, she started Healing Art Process, which offers therapeutic art classes and workshops in various San Diego correctional facilities and high schools.

“I did see a lot of changes in behavior when I did these classes and you know that a lot of people there have been abused, whether it was physically, emotionally, verbally or sexually,” says Litteral, who got her Art 4 Healing certification shortly after completing her master’s degree in fine arts at SDSU. “I always noticed the changes in them even if it was just them realizing they could actually do this.”

It’s hard not to see these accomplishments and the completion of “Show and Tell” as Litteral coming full circle along her own journey, but as any survivor of abuse can attest, the healing journey never truly ends, it just transforms.

“This all developed over many years and really came out of my own work on myself,” says Litteral. “It informed me that this can be a healing process that you do. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, it’s the artistic process that makes it healing. The end product makes no difference to the healing process.”

BIO BOX

Name: Linda Litteral

Born: Jackson, Michigan

Fun Fact: In addition to spending years writing “Show and Tell” and producing new art for the book, she also recorded an audiobook version, a process that she describes as even “harder than writing it.”

Combs is a freelance writer.