Let’s create something meaningful together.
paula morales
I'm Paula. I was born and raised in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I'm queer, neurodivergent, multilingual, and I've always been interested in a lot of things at once — curiosity has always been how I move through the world.
I am a bridge. Between cultures, between worlds, between the living and the dead, between what's visible and what's underneath. That's not something I chose — it's just what I am and what I've always been drawn to.
It started early. My grandmother knew herbs the way some people know their own handwriting. Neighbors came to her door and she always knew what to give them. I absorbed that without realizing it.
When I was fourteen my maternal aunt — who had been disappeared during the Guatemalan civil war — became someone I needed to find. I started with what she left behind. Letters, stories my family told, fragments. That investigation never really stopped. It shaped everything that came after, including how I became my family's historian, a role I've held for over 25 years.
Photography was my first formal language. I started as a documentary and street photographer and turned that lens on my own family — my grandparents, my grandfather living with dementia, the empty spaces after he died, my mother mourning her mother, the objects people leave behind. Combining my images with the photographs my grandfather and mother had taken became its own kind of archive. That work continues.
In my mid-twenties anxiety hit hard. Getting through it led me to reiki, where I discovered I receive visions and messages. I trained to Level 2. My dreams, which had always been vivid, started delivering something more specific — people who had passed coming through with messages for their living family. In 2013 my mom died suddenly and that opened things further.
On my 37th birthday a Mayan ceremony confirmed what I had been moving toward: I was meant to work as a Mayan timekeeper, using an ancient calendar system to help people understand their energy, timing, and path. In practice it means helping people make sense of what's already happening in their lives.
I came to perfumery through the same questions I've always asked — about memory, loss, and what stays after someone is gone. Scent is the sense most connected to memory and I had to go there.
I work with people using whatever tool fits the moment — the Mayan calendar, herbs, energy work, reading family patterns across generations, oracles, channeling. I think in systems and patterns, I find the thread in things that feel stuck, and I reflect it back in ways that actually make sense. Art runs through all of it too — illustration, painting, jewelry, digital and analog visual work. Making things is another form of channeling for me. It all comes from the same place.
If any of this is speaking to something you're carrying, I'd love to work with you. You don't need to have it figured out before you reach out. That's kind of the whole point.
alexander meinke
Alexander grew up in Demmin, a small town in former East Germany. He crossed an ocean and built a life in a completely different world — that kind of move takes a particular kind of quiet courage, and it shows in everything he does.
He is a leatherworker — precise, patient, and genuinely drawn to the meticulous side of making things. He crafts wallets, keychains, and perfume pouches, and he loves marbling leather, finding the beauty in a process that can't be rushed. He is a bridge too — between old world craft and new world context, between stillness and motion, between the idea and the thing that gets made.
Outside of his craft he's a collector — records and stickers mostly, with a deep love for punk rock and music in general. He's the kind of person who finds something he loves and goes all the way in. He's laid back, kind, and immediately easy to be around. People notice that about him right away.
He observes before he acts. He's methodical, great at puzzles, at figuring out how pieces fit together. He has taught me patience in ways I didn't expect and shown me different ways of seeing things I thought I already understood. Where I design and ideate, he helps with execution — he takes the vision and figures out how to make it real. That balance works better than anything I could have planned.
We met in 2012 in San Francisco through our shared love of Rancid. He won a photo contest, we became friends online, met in person a year later, and got married in 2015. Two collectors, two music obsessives, two people who love films and take making things seriously.
TOGETHER
We are The Pitaya Collective. Pitaya means sweetness, access, possibility — a place where things collide and something gets made.
Together we are a bridge — multicultural, multilingual, rooted in different parts of the world and different ways of knowing it. Between the two of us there is a lot of range — spiritual practice, craft, art, photography, herbalism, perfumery, family history, music, film. What ties it together is that none of it is casual. Everything we make or offer carries intention.
This is for people looking for clarity on something they can't quite name. For neurodivergent and creative people. For anyone who has always felt like they're picking up on more than what's on the surface. When something from us reaches you — a reading, a leather piece, an artwork — we want you to feel that it was made with care. Because it always is.
Mission Statement
Our mission at The Pitaya Collective is to create living objects, experiences, and connections that carry memory, spirit, and story across time.
We weave creativity, craftsmanship, and care into every piece — honoring the cycles we come from and the worlds we hope to tend.
We build not just products, but bridges: between past and present, earth and spirit, hand and heart.
Our work invites joy, reflection, and belonging — for all who find their way here.
Core Values
Authenticity: Honoring our layered histories, and staying true to the rhythms we live by.
Creativity: Shaping offerings that carry story, spirit, and memory — beyond trend or fashion.
Playfulness: Keeping curiosity alive in all we make — joyful, surprising, real.
Quality: Respecting materials, process, and time — making what lasts.
Connection: Creating work that speaks across time, and relationships that honor each person's story.
Inclusivity: Welcoming all who come with openness — across paths, roots, and dreams.
Endurance: Making things meant to be lived with, not thrown away.