Artistic Lifeyness: Exploring Place, Body, Art and Identity Across Cultures
In this conversation, three artists based in the Jacksonville area, Jennifer, Shameera, and Thorne, share their unique perspectives on place, embodiment, and art. Based in Jacksonville, Florida, these women discuss how their work is influenced by their identities and their sense of location, both in a physical and spiritual sense. They talk about the dual experiences of feeling embodied and disembodied as artists, referring to the process of bringing ideas from the abstract world of imagination into the physical reality through their art. The artists also touch upon the idea of home and the importance of creating cultural bridges through art. What are the pros and cons of living in Jacksonville as a creative soul? And how do you become more embodied as an artist? Listen up and find out!
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- Connect with host Professor Sarah @book_of_lifeyness on TikTok and Instagram
- Thorn works in graphic design, jewelry making, theater and screen acting, origami and more. See her work and connect with her here: The Urban Atelier
- Shameera Din Wiest is a digital artist, poet, sculptor, weaver, former diplomat and political analyst. See her work here on Instagram: @shameerawt
- Jennifer Chase is a storyteller, musician, professor, producer, and playwright. See more here: jennchase.com
A special thanks to the Community Foundation of Northeast Florida whose Ignite program first brought these artists together! https://www.jaxcf.org/
Episode Outline:
Part I: Introduction inspired by birds, Jacksonville, and the words of Rick Rubin
Part II: Art and Place--We can smell you from here, Jax.
Part III: Embodiment--Make a body for your idea!
Part IV: Take from the spirit world and bring it down to Jacksonville
Part V: Identity--How your own prism informs your work...and pajama party :-)
Part VI: Disembodiment and Embodied Art
Part VII: Taking up space in Northeast FL
And here's an AI-created Timestamp Outline:
00:00 Introduction: The Search for Self
00:21 The Power of Acceptance
00:55 Finding Home in Unfamiliar Places
02:34 Exploring Northeast Florida
03:23 The Role of Artists in Society
03:59 The Struggles of Living in Jacksonville, Florida
04:55 The Journey of Self-Discovery
05:33 The Power of Art and Creativity
06:07 The Connection Between Place and Art
07:01 The Importance of Being Present
07:06 Art as a Form of Self-Expression
07:34 Interview with Three Talented Women Artists
10:54 The Influence of Geography on Art
11:46 The Role of Motherhood and Womanhood in Art
12:45 The Power of Listening and Being Present
16:54 The Impact of Jacksonville on Personal Growth
18:18 The Role of Spirituality in Art
20:02 The Importance of Nurturing in Art
25:36 The Connection Between Art and Embodiment
33:51 The Power of Conversation in Art
35:07 The Power of Listening and Connecting
35:43 The Journey of Self-Reflection
36:17 Shamaya's Artistic Journey and Cultural Heritage
38:19 The Struggles and Triumphs of Shamaya's Life
39:21 The Intersection of Femininity and Art
40:53 The Power of Personal Stories
42:57 The Influence of Identity on Art
46:34 The Power of Art in Public Spaces
49:51 The Role of Art in Society
56:46 The Importance of Embracing Failure
01:06:20 The Power of Art in Building Cultural Bridges
Full script below, generated by Descript
What I've been learning is that everywhere I go, there I am, I am a home, you know, you're, we're always looking outside of ourselves. I think it was Wayne Dyer that, um, said something along the lines of, we're always looking, we've lost our keys and we're looking for our keys outside the house when the keys were sitting there at the front door.
You know, you have to decide that you're going to leave this behind and say just no to it, or you have to kind of change your space. Or, you know, you. Acceptance. You, you have to accept it. Yeah. You have to fully accept it. Mm-Hmm. . And once you do that, then all of that energy that you, that took up your spirit saying, well, I don't really like this town.
Like this isn't, you know, where are all the people, and all of that. Yeah. The people, it goes to another place and you start building it yourself. Yeah. I definitely feel that, like
I'm going through that whole. I don't belong here. There's no one that looks like me there. I can't find my food Like I mean, it's just yeah, it's hard But I am trying to find ways to and no one's telling me to leave this time.
So that's also hard Yeah
And this will be your place in some way, you know, because it was the place where you decided to take care of your people.
It feels like comfortable skin, not just confident, but also pain free, healthy.
Think about the most robust version of your own childhood. This is what Lifeyness feels like, a joyful spirit and a vibrant physical state of being. I'm your guide professor, Sarah storyteller, teacher and wellness enthusiast. Reach into the vitality of your own to supercharge your grownup life.
So I think I'm being kind when I say I live in a slightly dysfunctional city, marked with a lot of cultural blanks. It's this place where. We all just kind of landed somehow or another. It's not really even designed like a typical American city. They say it's a city of neighborhoods, which really means it's a giant, sprawling suburb.
But stay with me. I love this place. And today, on this episode of Lifeyness, I'm going to be exploring Northeast Florida. It is a home for many of us, and we've made it sacred by filling it with our children, artwork, our classes, our educations. Our activities. Like any body, we adorn it and try to keep it healthy, but more than anything, we live inside of it day in and day out, and that is what makes a city a city.
It's what makes a human life have meaning. So welcome back to Lifeyness. This is Professor Sarah, and I'm super excited about this episode and the next, which will conclude the first season. Today, we're talking about place, body, and art. Specifically, how do artists find embodiment both in their work and in their geography?
If you've listened to any of this podcast, you know that staying grounded in your body, staying playful in your space and in your work, and accepting the moment in front of you with a whole heart, these are some of the keys to living the good life and to finding joy. So I'm going to give you a little bit of insight into the place that I live.
I always thought that Jacksonville, Florida lacked a sense of the sacred. And I think to a certain degree, it still kind of does. It doesn't have that ritualized admiration that you see in cities like New York and Toronto and San Francisco, like where tourists go, they know where to go, they know what to love and how to dress.
Northeast Florida in general can feel like a cultural wasteland at first. In fact, not long after moving here in 2007, I wrote a short story about a young woman who had gone mad from the cultural void. Flintstoning her way through the same desolate strip mall freeways, the backdrop always the same tire shop, Best Buy, Walmart, Michaels, and Winn Dixie.
It was not far off from how I was actually feeling about this weird town. To be clear, I hated it. And yet, I managed well enough to get permanently stuck here by way of marriage, children, divorce. Later, I would learn that many of my friends and colleagues have had similar experiences. Jacksonville, the present place, is a liminal space for some, an in between.
Perhaps what we're feeling is that we haven't yet made Jacksonville as sacred as we could. We haven't worshipped it enough, or worked our fingers over it like a sculptor works clay. Rick Rubin, the producer of countless music artists, says that the reason we're alive is to express ourselves in the world, and that creating art might be the most effective way of doing so.
So the quote I'm about to share with you from his book, which is called The Creative Act, it makes me think of the artists that are on the show today. He says, the artwork is the point where all the elements come together, the universe, the prism of self, the magic and discipline of transmuting idea to flesh.
What I didn't expect to hear from these artists today is how a sense of place and their particular sense of place is so entangled with their art and also with this feeling of embodiment or disembodiment. Years ago, I remember a veterinarian who specializes in birds told me that when they are singing or calling to one another, that the gist of what they're saying is simply, I am here.
And then calling to others, asking, are you there? And then of course the reply is, I am here. Are you there? And so on and so forth. And to some degree, I feel like this is what humans are doing all the time. This is all we're saying to one another. Whether it's through a book or a TikTok video or, or whether you're just reaching across the couch to your loved one, it can all be boiled down to this.
I'm here. Look at me. Are you there? Art is the embodiment of a moment in our energetic human experience. It is that emotion and energy of life that's captured in an artwork, whether it's a collection of words, a pattern of music, or a painting. It's basically the artist saying, I am here, just like the birds do, but they're saying it through paint or piano or an arrangement of flowers.
To discuss this idea of art as embodiment and self expression, I'm speaking with three talented women from northeast Florida. Thorne is a passionate activist. She's a graphic designer by training. She's a jewelry maker. She's a community organizer.
My name is Tracy and I work under the moniker Thorne. I grew up here in Jacksonville, um, and I do realize that being from here has It's really made a huge impact on the work that I do.
Um, I do a number of different media. I actually went to school for graphic design and printmaking. I started making jewelry because I wasn't finding what I wanted to wear. And at that point in time, I had just come back from Peace Corps when I first started. And a lot of the things that influenced me at that point.
And her
family's been rooted in this town for many generations. Jennifer Chase is a playwright, a musician, uh, she's a writer and college professor. And her latest book, I Can Smell You From Here, explores her relationship with the city of Jacksonville. But
I grew up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and have been most of my adult life in Jacksonville.
And went back to college as a non traditional, um, adult single mother right here in Jacksonville at FSCJ, where I now teach. Yeah. Like Thorne, um, I did. Adopt a, a pen name has Shaina. Um, so some of my work is under.
And then in contrast we have Shaira Dean Weist, um, she's a mixed media artist. She's a sculptor and a weaver.
Um, and she's been here less than
three years. And I'm an Indian American artist. I came, I'm an immigrant and I moved to the U. S. in 1982 when I was 12 years old, so you can do the math. I create visual performance, poetry, photography, and digital art, and I feel like each of these are embodied in some way with the female, where my choice of imagery in the tapestries, sculptures that I create have elements of woman.
I use my body as a vehicle in performance art. Um, I write poetry that, um, touches on elements of being an Indian woman. And I worked in Washington, um, as a political analyst. Um, I traveled overseas as a diplomat. Today
we're having a conversation in person. In the flesh, at my dining room table together, in downtown Jacksonville, um, in my well loved historic home built in 1911.
So we all gathered here on a winter day, when even in Florida it was chilly outside and cozy inside. Thorne and Jennifer and Shamira are from diverse backgrounds, but they all show up in their art with the bravery it takes to say, I am here. Are you there? Welcome to our conversation about being an artist www.
artistrenjitha. com In a body, in a city, don't forget to connect with me at Book of Lifiness on TikTok, where you can see images and videos of this wonderful conversation and these amazing artists. Let's start with place because I am invited you here to talk about embodiment, embodied art. Right. But I think, you know, like we're sitting here in Jacksonville, Florida.
All together in the same space, which I think is so special considering, like I said before, a lot of my interviews I do virtually today, you know, but you know, we all met at Ignite, right? And that was such a special morning, you know, where we all came together. And, um, so I want to ask each of you kind of how do you use your geography in your art?
Where does it show up in your art? And we'll start with Jen because she had the show the other night. Your story felt so parallel to mine and it made me feel, when I looked around the audience, I was like, how many people here feel this way? And part of that is. Motherhood. I think part of that is being a woman.
Part of that is not feeling at home in Jacksonville because I, I'm not from here either. You know, and I think a lot of us are not from here. Um, but there were so many different like touch points that I was like, Oh, wait a minute. Not only did I feel like now I know you and you were able to tell your story, but I feel known.
Even more. And a lot of that had to do with that, this antagonistic relationship that I've had with Jacksonville, where I feel kind of stuck here. But also this is where I do my nurturing and raise my children and make my, my own art. So tell us a little bit about that.
Well, I think first we have to be sure that we're telling ourselves the truth.
Um, and I had to take a look at sifting through the excuses, the fears, the, um, empowerment of all the experiences that I've had here. Um, I think it's a complicated question because James Baldwin, for example, talked about this idea of cultural assumptions, and the idea that, um, we don't realize the assumptions that we're living under until we live under another set of assumptions, and I bet Shamira has a lot.
To add about that, I'm sure Thorne, too. Ironically, a lot of the, the empowerment and the appreciation of the present in Jacksonville involves the concept of time, which I learned a lot more about in places like Senegal, living in Senegal and living in France for shorter periods of time, but enough that I thought, oh, There's a different way, and it's not related to money, it's not related to earning money.
There's a different way of appreciating the present and a meal and a conversation. And every time I come back from another place where the concept of time involves shutting everything down at two o'clock and having a two and a half hour lunch with your family, I come home. gung ho to adopt that. And I have varying degrees of success with that, but I find that for my artistic expression, for happiness, for real connection and feeling a sense of place, it involves being aware of the present.
being aware of the ability to get outside of the assumptions I've lived under and look back into them and I can see myself in my life a lot more objectively when I'm able to look at it from the outside. And then you come back and you feel differently about your surroundings and you look at things.
and yourself differently. So it can be a painful experience sometimes. Um, when I looked back over 30 years at raising children, one of the lines of my song says, um, these are the days that will be memories someday. And the whole song is just about hanging clothes on the line and watching my little girl who was then three dancing around to a Beatles song.
And the whole song is about that. Yeah. It's called Mundane. Yeah. And now I'm, I just finished re recording that song and I thought, that's funny because these are now gonna be someday the moments that I think That was nice when your husband made you a coffee after work and just looked you in the eye and asked about, you know, and got you a special cloth napkin and a little, the way you put out, it's more about the present and how we view it.
So I think that's my,
my thing. And it resonated. It really did. Thank you. It was beautiful. Thanks. Shamira, do you want to say something about kind of the way that geography informs your art? Yeah,
that's um, I mean, having a fact that I've been moving for, you know, since, since I first moved as an immigrant, almost every three to four years I've moved for the last 34 years of my life, I think.
There is no specific place for me. I mean, I know I think the place that I most connect to is the place I was born and everything is always trying to pull me back to that. You know, having my mother live with me definitely brings that back every day. Um, so It's like I'm not connected to any place and yet I try to make the most of the opportunities that are in that place.
Um, the last place I lived before moving to Florida was China and I was there for three years and I was a complete outsider. Not only, you know, it was either the western community or the Chinese community and then there's me, brown, you know, and they're not sure whether I'm Mexican or where I'm from but, and then having Not having the language, um, and not having, not being able to, or allowed to work because these are the laws of the diplomatic community where you're not, the spouse doesn't work on the local economy.
So either you work in the embassy much lower than your education level, or you. Um, and then I decided to become an artist. So that's what I did. Yeah. Yeah. So that's when I started making art is when I started moving. But so as far as place, I mean, I don't have, I don't feel a strong connection to a geography, but I feel like the personality that I bring to each place taken from another place connects me to everyone new.
And yet keeps me in contact with all my old contacts. And so I keep building these relationships with new people and keeping old people. Yeah. I don't know how that works out,
but we're certainly happy to have you in our community now. How about you,
Thorne? I think it's funny. I'm the only one that's from here.
Yeah. And so, but I have, I've traveled away from here, um, a number of times. I've lived in San Francisco and I've lived in Philadelphia. And then of course, as I mentioned earlier, I was in the Peace Corps. And so, So having grown up in the Bible Belt, spirituality, spirit, gospel music, all the things that you would stereotypically connect to the South are a huge part of my work, huge part of what makes me, me.
I was singing a gospel song with my mom this morning and we were just reminiscing about a church we used to go to. Music is such a huge part of my life, like, Jen, and I just actually got through, not just got through, but recently read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And so understanding, right, really good.
I'm a fan. Yeah. And so understanding that where we are now in this moment is the most important place we're ever going to be. As opposed to leaving pieces of ourself out in the future, you know, where Shamira's going to a new place, or anticipating going to a new place, and thinking about the places where we've been.
And what I have realized is Jacksonville, for me and for, I think, a lot of other people, is this type of place that's kind of metaphor for Where people have a really hard time being, but know that that's where they need to be at the given point in time that they're there. So, you have your reasons for being in this area, Shamira, Jen, you have your reasons.
You have your reasons for staying and being here. I came back here, um, to regroup. I was in San Francisco where I was more of like a she she homeless. I was moving around from hotel to hotel and I also used, um, hostels. I was looking for a place to stay. I was going out there to live my artist dream, believing that you had to be in this specific place to have a life of an artist.
And so once again, connecting back to this. whole idea of being in a specific place at a specific time and I really thought that that was where I was supposed to be. And, um, It wasn't. It wasn't. And I realized it not too long after and this is just, uh, another part of my background, um, that has also fed into my work.
I got back here, if you want to say air quotes, just in time for my mom to be, uh, diagnosed with breast cancer. And so I was right where I needed to be in order to support her in the best way that I could. And a lot of the work that I did When I was taking care of her as well as work I was doing, you know, in the home as well as outside the home comes back to, you know, who I am at this point in time, which is someone who's had to learn to be a nurturer, someone who gets hired, you know, as an actress, because she's seen as a nurturer.
So this space, this place at that point in time, totally shaped, you know, who I've become as an artist, especially as an actress, I'd say. I never saw myself as a caregiver, um, even though I took care of my brother growing up, but I just, I never saw myself as that type of person. And it manifests. in my work as an actress, for sure.
Because that is what people see in me when I'm cast. It's, yeah, we see you as a mom. And it's like, I don't have kids. I love them. I think they're great. And I love the energy they bring to any room, any space. Yeah, uh, just that I didn't really ever think of myself specifically as a nurturer. I feel like Being a nurturer is such a higher evolution beyond just I babysit my brother or, you know, I was helping out at my grandmother's house.
It's not the same thing. Being a nurturer and a caregiver is a totally different level of connection with another person where you're really focusing in on What their needs are at a given point in time and to be cast as a nurturer or to be thought of as a mom when people see me, it's really quite flattering, um, to be thought of, or that my spirit gives off that type of energy.
So, um, and it's so funny to think about my, my work in that way as well. Because once again, I don't think that that's necessarily something that comes across, but if we think of a lot of the work that I do is. Um, I see a lot of my artwork as spiritual practice, and so I could imagine that that's something that comes across as well.
Yeah.
You give birth and you nurture your artwork. Oh my God.
Absolutely. What a wonderful way to put it. Yes. You are birthing. You are bringing into world. You are manifesting. And so that's really important to me to make sure I'm looking at my work clearly, but also Before I'm even taking into consideration the way somebody else is looking at it, I want to understand what I'm doing and what my own personal intention is.
But basically, like, you know, if you want to release that energy, you have to either, you know, you have to decide that you're going to leave this behind and say, just no to it, or you have to kind of change your space or, you know, you have to accept it. Yeah. You have to fully accept it. And once you do that.
Then all of that energy that you, that took up your spirit saying, well, I don't really like this town. Like this isn't, you know, where are all the people and all of that, yeah, it goes to another place and you start building it yourself. Yeah. I definitely feel that.
Like I'm going through that whole, I don't belong here.
There's no one that looks like me there. I can't find my food. Like, I mean, it's just, yeah, it's hard, but I am trying to find ways to, and no one's telling me to leave this time. So that's also hard. Mm-Hmm. And it's your choice. Yeah. . Wow. You're like, yeah. But then we have these commitments that, you know, we have to stick to and take care of the elders that are in our life and not just kind of dump 'em off in a home somewhere.
So yeah, it's hard, but,
and the truth is you don't have these moments back, you know? Yeah. Like Jen was saying, like this, these are special moments. Like, it's just like when your children are small. You know, they're really hard. It's really hard to take care of people, whether they're really, you know, young or really old and you won't have these moments.
And then, and this will be your place in some way, you know, because it was the place where you decided to take care
of your people. Right. Jacksonville is a quiet in between, honestly, like it's not necessarily the place where people visualize. coming to. It's not necessarily the sexy place with, you know, it's not, it's just not, it's like very much a Southern town, you know, people aren't thinking in terms of being cosmopolitan, but it very much is a place where you can find yourself.
I think, I think it's. Quiet enough where you can make decisions there's so there there's a lot of things to do very much nature based But once again, it's the space where you can hear yourself Think if you stop resisting for a minute, yeah, you can hear yourself Think yeah, you can hear the waves crashing on the shore or the leaves the leaves being rustled by the breeze you know, however you choose to To take a moment, and that could be anywhere, and what I've been learning is that everywhere I go, there I am.
I am my home. You know, we're always looking outside of ourselves. I think it was Wayne Dyer that um, said something along the lines of we're always looking, we've lost our keys and we're looking for our keys outside the house. When the keys were sitting there at the front door all the time. Yeah. So, we're always looking outside of ourselves.
For the meaning and for home, when we carry home with us, wherever we go. Yeah. Or the
possibility of it. And it sounds like you're saying we can really take up space here, right? Like we can take up space. So what I want to do is just kind of go around and ask you, you know, what does embodiment mean to each of you?
My podcast, I call it joyful embodiment, but I know that embodiment is not always. Fun or joyful. Um, and so kind of with both of these concepts in mind, geography and art, like where does embodiment come in? What does embodiment mean to you, Jen?
Well, completely and literally for me, the performative aspect of the expression, the artistic expression is present, vital, urgent.
It's not really rehearsed. It's not going to be the same ever. Um, so I would say the process and the performative aspect of my process involves complete utter immersion in the present experience and reaction to, reaction to an audience, reaction to collaborators. Um, so this is flash round, so I won't go there.
Flash round. Ha ha
ha. So I, with me, I mean, the primary art that I make is that I weave plastic. And a lot of my work is very chaotic and messy and raw, like strings hanging out all over the place, the knots are wrong. I used, uh, materials that don't look good together. They're not like pretty little things to put on the wall.
These are like me and everything that I've been through in my life. All the struggles, the losses, everything. So, um, I think that's the embodiment is me connecting with this piece that I'm making. That's all me and all my mistakes or struggles or victories.
I was thinking about this, you know, when you mentioned it, um, and really what the definition of embodiment is to me, uh, it's an idea or something.
abstract that is manifest. So we have these ideas and then it's taking something from our mind and bringing it into the world. Um, in some cases, I do believe it's part of the artist's purpose. to be or to help bring to life the manifestation or incarnation of certain abstract ideas. I feel like that's part of the work that I do is to, um, to help people who've been thinking about certain things, you know, that don't necessarily see themselves as an artist.
I believe everybody's a creative, but not everybody's an artist and, you know, and has the lexicon and vocabulary or the dexterity to necessarily bring those things to life. And I think that's the difference between being a creative. and an actual artist that manifests things. Um, and sometimes artists themselves are perception personified, you know, and so it's our idea to perceive and to look and to bring to life.
Um, and sometimes we're translators or guides to offer a better understanding of something. And, you know, for myself, spiritually, Um, you know, human connection figures so heavily into my work, you know, maybe for me it's that I can possibly help others, uh, see more clearly in that regard in terms of once again, taking the abstract idea of, you know, spirituality and what is that and what does it look like?
And, and bringing that into some, some place in this world, whether it be visual art, whether it be me as an actress, whether it's adornment, whether it's even origami or any type of sculptural work I may do.
That's interesting. Cause it sounds like all of you are talking about taking something from the spirit world in a way and making a body for it in the real world, in the physical world.
And when I think of embodiment kind of like through a wellness lens or a health lens, I think of getting grounded in your body and kind of trying not to get caught up in your mind, not get caught up in the, you know, the, the thoughts that kind of keep churning. And that can be a really good. I don't know, like, uh, a practice to stay mentally well, right?
I know, like, the background of this podcast, the whole reason I started it is because my daughter had issues with addiction. And one of the predecessors of the problem was this disembodiment, this feeling of, like, not being connected, right? And so I wonder, like, taking the idea of, like, you know, bringing art from the spirit world down to our physical world, but also.
You know, being a healthy body and soul, being kind of connected together, um, I wonder how like the being a female artist plays into this, right? Like we are these bodies that can generate new bodies, right? Like we are, we have to be embodied sometimes, whether we want to or not. Like I wonder how this plays into that, um, feeling of being able to take from the spirit world and create.
I think it's not a choice. Yeah, it's definitely not a choice regarding being informed by this maternal, um, whether we are literally parents of children or not. We have these, as artists, I think, and women, maternal instincts of caring, caring, nurturing for each other. Um, I also think that while we are all creatives, I think being an artist is rarely a choice.
It's something we have to do. Um, we don't sit and wonder, I mean, we, against all odds, right? Grant or no grant, money or no money, time or no time, collaborative partners or not, it's just this, you have to, it's a force. A while ago I did an experiment called Words Matter, in which I was really influenced by Marina Abramovich and her.
Mm-Hmm. . Um, I was gonna ask
you about her artist present piece. I'm glad
you brought her up. Um, I was an artist at Cork for 10 years. I had a space and every year they have cork open studios and artist, two things in the gallery. And I'm not a painter or a performer, so I thought, I'm gonna do something.
Marina Abramovich inspired. But it's going to involve allowing the other person to talk and to practice really giving my body, my attention, my soul to each person. For many, that maybe is Just easy to do. Um, so I admire people that are great listeners, but for me, I thought this is a practice I need to, I'm older and I need to get better at truly being present for someone in this.
And I thought to myself. that people, I had a very over inflated idea of how much people would want to hear my wise, sage response. And no one asked. Some sat across from me in Cork and I had a little piece of paper that said, your words matter. I'll listen and you can tell me whatever you want. And I concentrated on listening and people talked for sometimes 45 minutes.
Oh, wow. And never said, what do you think? I know you're not supposed to. Nothing. They were perfectly satisfied. And through that performance art, truly, um, they were the performers and I was the audience. And I learned. That through restricting myself to not, um, say something back, that my mind was totally with them because I wasn't thinking ahead about something clever.
Absolutely. Something clever I could say. Yeah. Some solution. That's where we spend our time. Thinking about what we want to say. We spend our mind thinking like, I'm going to tell them, and I think this is great advice, or I'll tell them this story that relates. I didn't have that. So true. So I was able to really give them and embody that
space.
Yeah.
Wonderful. Well, it shows just how in alignment we all are here because my project for, um, my grant was TalkTalk Convo. And so in this, in the same realm, Except in post height of the pandemic, post lockdown, where we've all been so disconnected and in our own little individual silos, trying to encourage people to authentically.
And intentionally speak and, you know, I felt like I needed to give people prompts to give, to get conversation going because people really were, have been very scared, you know, also taking into consideration, um, where we've been politically, you know, just speaking about this country, not even going around, which is, you know, a whole other bag of chips, but, um, just where we are here.
And people are scared to share their opinions. And there's, we spend a lot of time in fear in general. And so it felt so important to me. And it actually got the idea pre pandemic. Same artist inspired me. She didn't inspire me. She's, she's not in the same way. I loved the way, um, Maria Bravonomic. I always mispronounce her last name.
But, um, the way she was there for people and she. held space for them to just be as opposed to, well, I need to say this, you know, just as you were saying. A lot of our time with other people is spent thinking about what we are going to say next. And it's not about listening and truly, you know, tapping into this other person and their energy and what they're sharing.
And so, once again, I was, I was, uh, moved to do the same thing and truly connect with others. And that was why I had started that project. But I was looking at an old bio this morning. And when the project was in development, it was called Good Advice because I thought, Oh, I have all this stuff that I want to share with people and I have such really great insight.
It was so funny. I was like, Oh my God, look at me thinking about myself. Save your complex. Once again, you know, we were talking about that earlier. And so same thing, you know, when you move yourself out of the way, it's a clearer path to another person. It really is.
What about you, Shamaya? What about being a woman in the
world of sculpture?
I'm so caught up with what you guys are saying that I've not been thinking about what to say. That's perfect. I like what was the first question. Um, so I'll just talk about my most recent. solo exhibition, um, which was funded not by that grant, by another grant, but I got this computer, which I did a lot of work.
Um, it was called The Veil of Maya, and in the Indian culture, Maya is the word in the Bhagavad Gita for illusion. So, like, I've made all these sculptures, um, that are like these white, Fluttery things and nobody really knows what it's from but it's actually like this insidious material that's like choking our planet which is waste plastic and um, somewhere in there is that woman of me as a savior trying to save the plastic but there's also the weaving that I picked up which my grandmother in rural India was um, spinning cotton to earn a living for the family while my grandfather was a prisoner of war in Singapore during World War II.
He, he had, um, so this is India with like, he had five daughters and this is the country where, you know, girls are thrown away because the girl child is not needed. Uh, it's the male that needs to take care of the family. So my grandfather with these five girls didn't have enough money, went to war. Um, and was taken prisoner, but my grandmother earned the, was actually the one sitting at home earning a living weaving.
So I wanted to connect with her in some way with my mother now living with me and my father recently passed away, um, from a lung disease. So all this is happening like while we just moved back to America. And so I just picked up what was right there in front of me, which is the grocery bags. And I'm like, what can I make with this?
And the first thing I made was an Ivy bag because my dad was in the hospital at the time and I couldn't go because it was COVID, you know, and he was in Washington. So, um, yeah, I think that was the time of. Making the art, you know, being a caregiver for my mother, and then I did end up going to the hospital and caregiving for him for a couple of weeks before he left and, um, all these are there, like my grandmother, my stories of my history, um, culture that I'm far from, uh, and I, as I've told you, like, our culture is very quiet.
You know, we don't make big issues about the political things that are going on in our country or the poverty that we come from. Like I grew up Very poor. I mean, we all slept in one room. We all slept on one bed. We had an outhouse toilet, you know, so there's all these things that I've lived through and I just don't talk about it.
I keep moving forward. I educate myself. I get these jobs. I have a good life, but it's all the things that make me and I guess I'm weaving them like my grandmother was weaving cotton. So I think that's where the female is.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a very feminine craft that you're doing.
But I'm trying to also make it masculine because I'm putting in this hard plastic in some of my works to make them into sculptures, which is why I call them tapestry sculptures, um, because I'm sort of like in a world with my jobs as an engineer, as a political analyst, a male.
Dominated fields, which I mean, I never felt that I was lesser. In fact, I felt better than most of them. So that's not a concern for me, but, um Because I, I mean, you know, you educate yourself and you can put yourself in front of people if you know what you're talking about. And, um, I wasn't concerned about that, but yeah.
yeah. That's
wonderful. Yeah. I, um, so we're talking about, you know, identity and identifying as a woman Yeah. But we identify in all these different ways, which you've mentioned. Mm-Hmm. , you know, your background. Yeah. Um, how, how else does your identity, any one of you. Your different, you know, ways of seeing the self inform your work beyond the feminine.
I think we're a matrilineal society. The whole time that Shamira was talking, I was just thinking about, I don't think there's anything more metaphorical and straightforward truth of the stories that you're literally weaving and carrying this. I think, gosh, let me, I'm going to write a play about it. I think that's a
beautiful movie.
Watch out, she will definitely write a play about
that. I'm just, I'm completely captivated by people and their own stories. I would never, I can't act, I don't want to act, but I would. I would encourage you to, oh gosh, I can't stand it. That's such a beautiful story, and I think, That's only a little part of it.
I'm sure. Yeah. But that's a thread. Like, that's a really important, I think it could be so cool to stage that in a, Yeah. In a solo storytelling format. My father was an
actor, so he did, Hm. Yeah. Oh, wow. Probably why I'm drawn to you.
And it brings us all together. Mm hmm. But. You know, we identify on a global level, I think, as women with each other, and I don't know that men do that as much, but I think there's a certain, um, well, there's a certain empathy and understanding and love that women just normally have for each other, regardless of religion, and that's why it's so important to have these solo.
Stories have, because I think the, the hatred that happens in the world happens when we do big broad strokes across individuals and we clump them into faceless, nameless people where we would never do that, um, to some of the historic stories that we've lifted up. And so that's why I think, um, first of all, I think the art that doesn't involve words.
Um, is fascinating to me that the story that you're telling, um, through your art. I think is, it's breathtaking and the visual of it as you're in the process is part of the storytelling, which I think is so cool. Um, so yeah, it's maternal for
sure. Yeah. Yeah. I know. It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.
Um, Thorne, you have identified as coming from the Bible Belt, which I think is interesting. And I think, I think is it probably brings something very different from say like Shamira's background to your art and also being a Black woman in Jacksonville, you know, multi generational Jacksonville. How are these identities shaping or how have they shaped your art?
I'll probably say I felt even more motivated and, um, just moved to. Be me, as opposed to following through on other people's expectations based on the fact that I am of the African diaspora, based on the fact that I am a female. You know, it's forced me to not necessarily do the opposite, just to antagonize other people, but just to, because it's been me, like, I grew up in between two brothers, so I read comic books, which was just kind of outside of the norm.
You know, when I was growing up, I think now it's a lot more People talk about, you know, women who, you know, work in the comic book world or who work in that world. You know, I grew up doing printmaking. I've been doing printmaking since I was in high school. You know, when that type of work was also seen as male dominated.
And so, um, it was so funny. I had One of my printmaking teachers in college, he could not remember my name. I had been in, like, four years of classes, and I was a major. Could not remember my name. But once again, it was because he didn't necessarily see me as someone he needed to take into consideration.
And that's fine. You know, I don't necessarily shape myself by other people's um, expectations of me. Uh, and that's what I've just had to learn. You know, whether it had anything to do with race, or whether it had anything to do with me being a woman. And that's fine. Um, because I think so often we look at the lack or what we don't have as women or what we're not allowed to have or what's been taken away.
And I feel like there's a whole bunch of people around to, you know, study those statistics and all the demographics. And I think that's very important, but what has helped to shape me more often than not is what I've done in spite of the lack or what I've done in spite of the things that haven't been.
available to me as a woman, because I was really thinking about what is it that I haven't had, or what is it that I haven't? known about because I was a woman or because I am, you know, a brown person. It's because I don't know what I didn't know. Exactly. I don't know. Nobody told me. And sometimes, you know, you don't find about it until afterward.
So is it, you know, taking once again into consideration the whole idea of the power of now? Is it? Really serving me to be upset about something that I didn't even know about. And I probably came out on the other end of things a whole lot better having made my way through. Not being given a thing, you know, and so I mean, because I can probably look back a number of times, whether it be, um, you know, grants or whether it be different sets of circumstances where I've asked for resources, and I know that maybe it did have an, you know, Whether it was race or me being a woman and not being taken seriously, definitely had an impact.
But unless people are fully authentic and honest with you, which. A lot of the time, they're not, they, they feel ashamed of those things that really influence their opinions. So, they're not going to tell me, well, I made this decision to not give you this because women aren't good with money. You know? And so, I mean, you know, we found that a lot of female artists just aren't good with money.
So, we have a tendency not to give them the larger grants. Like, you know, and people so often aren't even aware of what their prejudices and their biases are. probably even more proud of myself, um, for whatever accomplishments I've, I've had or made, um, in spite of the lack and, and for the ignorance of, you know, not knowing what was not given to me and what.
Yeah. And what was taken away from me before I even realized it was available.
That's interesting. Cause we talk a lot about privilege now and the privileges that we're not even aware of, you know, and, and kind of like becoming aware of them. It's so important, but it's, I think you're talking about almost the flip side of that, which I think I've experienced this as well, too.
Like not knowing what I didn't have. Not being, cause I'm the same way. I have two brothers. Right. And it's like, when you compare yourself to your siblings, you're like, well, he got this and I didn't get that. So you're like aware of that, but there are some, sometimes you don't even know what's available to you.
You don't know how unprivileged maybe you were and you were just kind of like working through that. Like, you know, Shamira, it sounds like your background, you just kept on moving forward and you kept going. But I think it is important to be aware of, you know, the privileges we have and obstacles also that we've kind of come across.
It's
usually after it's usually, you know, someone else's. You know, um, view of a situation, which is why connecting with other people is so important. And have, and talking to people about your story, and people can enlighten you. You know, as opposed to us being in these silos where we never share our story, which is one reason why Jen and storytelling, I think all of us are storytellers, you know, sitting here today.
Um, that's why it's so important, you know, to find out, you know, though it's not necessarily my focus, because I'm telling you, if I spent, time really getting into the things that I wasn't given. I would do that all day, y'all. I mean, I don't know what else I'd do. Yeah, I would just cry. I mean, I don't know what else I would spend time doing.
And so, it's important to know and to be aware. Um, I'm not gonna say that ignorance is bliss because it's not necessarily bliss. It's simply, once again, I've been made stronger. By having to work harder. And I've had to be grateful for that. Not that I wouldn't have loved for it to the road to have been a little bit easier and a whole lot less bumpy.
And at the same time, I'm so grateful for the person I am today and what these experiences have made me. Um, I wouldn't give it back. Yeah. I want to know once again, I do want to know. And at the same time, I love me. And I'm so grateful for the type of artist I am right now in this moment that I otherwise would not have been if I didn't have this story to share.
Yeah. It occurs to me that there are so many similarities among the three of you as we're talking about just kind of this, you know, this being in the feminine space. It's interesting how many challenges are, are the same, you know, even as diverse backgrounds as we have. But yeah, I mean, I definitely, cause I, I don't rem, I don't know if you guys saw this.
Question because I kind of put it in the body of one of the emails, but I did want to know if any of you have felt a particular time when you felt really disembodied, like really disconnected and maybe if that informed your art or the opposite, like you felt really embodied, like really kind of like moved by the spirit.
So if you have, you know, an anecdote, um, I'd love for you to share that because it seems like those are where. You have some similarities, you know, through the process, you know, you say the process is everything is more, much more than the product.
Um, so I actually, um, I guess I can think of any time when I felt really embodied was I had to do a performance piece, um, at the U S or the Swiss embassy in China, and, um, it was me and another.
Chinese feminist artist who's a performance artist and a professor, and we barely can connect, like we, she doesn't speak much English, my Chinese is very Yi Dian Dian, and like, um, we, we were in the embassy and we put out this long scroll on the grounds, took off our shoes, and she brought this bowl of ink, and we held a thread between the two of us on opposite sides of the scroll and started painting.
And there are all these, like, Swiss ambassador, American ambassador, all these diplomats around us. And here we are, like, on the floor, rolling around with the ink. And then we started tying each other up with ink and, like, put it in our teeth. And she was guiding me because I'm, I wasn't as free as her.
She's, she's done performance art where she's, like, You know, uh, gone into a tank full of water or a tank and then they poured water over her and she stayed under because her themes are about like, uh, the women's issues in China. So she was guiding me through this process, but here we are like talking about environmental issues, women's rights, human rights in China.
At the feet of all these diplomats and as nervous and scared as I was, you know, it was just, it was, I think, a moment of complete embodiment as these two women taking on these like senior figures and, you know, world politics or whatever, and it was pretty cool. Yeah.
That's really cool. Do you have footage of that?
I have. Yeah.
Oh yeah, I've got it. It's on my, it's on the Instagram, but I have a lot more pictures as
well. Can I say both? I feel a lot of the time, like the work that I do. Um, it's something working through me and it's so there's disembodiment and a disconnection because I feel as if I'm seeing myself from the outside and manifesting this because that is my purpose.
Um, and connection when. I'm still here, grounded, and really working to connect with somebody as opposed to letting it happen. So, once again, my project Talk Talk Convo that I finished over the summer, um, I was in those spaces. I created a space. Uh, made from recycled, uh, retail bags, made from probably about 500 or more, I stopped counting, of, of recycled, uh, retail bags.
And I went from library to library, building, building these walls and taking these walls down. I didn't even realize how symbolic it was in that moment. Um, but building these walls, putting walls up and taking walls down and creating this space that was intentionally to interact with other people. And that was their space.
For two minutes, and that was why we were there. That was the only reason we were there. That's the only reason those walls were there. And I wanted to do it in a space that was accessible. Um, you were talking about diplomats and I was at the other end of the spectrum, you know, where it was anybody that wanted to come into this space, uh, was able to come into this space and try to connect if that was what they wanted to do.
And so it was in those moments that I felt more embodied and more. Connected and grounded. And once again, it's, it's usually when I fully released and I let down and let go of the resistance of trying to control things is. So many of us artists are, we are always trying to control the outcome as opposed to letting things happen and we want to know what it's going to look like and we try and plan it.
But I feel like we all have, I think being disembodied might. Get a bad rap, you know, like being freed from and being untethered in being allowed to just Let things be and let things go like what shamira. It sounds like that was what you were doing for sure You were just letting go of what your expectation is and I feel like I feel like a better creative overall.
I feel you know just More connected to the work when I let myself go, not, not in some, you know, erratic way or totally like mentally untethered way, but in this way where you're fully allowing. I see it as spirit working through me in that way. Like I said, I do see art as a spiritual practice and I think that's part of what my purpose is.
So I think both of them. And I think both can be good, you know, depending on how you receive it and how you see it.
That's
why we're called creators. Artists are creators.
Yeah, absolutely. Creating worlds and spaces. Absolutely.
And you work in the imagination which has, is boundless, right? And that's the point of it, you know, it doesn't have a body.
But then you have to pull it into, and I think I, I was sharing that Rick Rubin quote with you guys because I just watched his documentary, I read his book, and I loved how he talked about how it's not so much about the product, it's about the process, and we do create these little artifacts here and there.
And those are kind of like the body part of our vast imagination, right? So when you create, even if it's a beautiful, wonderful, amazing, you know, play. Or book, or novel, or sculpture. It's really just a little piece of your vast imagination. You know, there's so much else going on in there. And your
capability.
And, you know, all that you are capable of doing. Yeah.
Jen? Wild thorn. You want to have a pajama party now? Let's do it. And just stay up all night. Yeah. Let's do it. Let's do this conversation. Well. Yeah, for sure. It, it sounds like if I can paraphrase for what Thorne, what I heard Thorne saying about the disembodiment part and how it gets a bad rap, which isn't a paraphrase.
Um, well, I think about failure. I did a presentation for students last year called Finding Freedom and Fun in Failure. It connects. to I think what we've, what I've talked about as far as listening, it connects to the sense of place where if I had been a single mother writing my first album, In New York, well, it wouldn't have happened.
I didn't have the space and the place to fail and try stuff. It wouldn't have been possible. So, here we have, um, the opportunity to try stuff that works, try different ways, collaborate. Some partners that you're working with might disappear at some point. For some things, not. Um, and, and I do, what I do involves, Solitary work and collaboration often, um, on one project.
And I was thinking back to when I got my Rotary ambassadorial scholar, ambassadorial scholarship to go to Senegal. When I went to the doorway of no return on Goree Island, I saw, well, I'm a white person, um, that carries a healthy degree of. Sadness for hatred and, um, a lot of the periods of, um, of our world history as people who have been incredibly cruel and disgusting to each other.
And so standing at the doorway of no return, where thousands of Enslaved people from the continent of Africa were loaded onto slave ships. Um, that moment, I had heard about a little 13 year old girl who was taken from Senegal and, uh, gone through the doorway of no return and ended up here in Spanish owned Florida named Anna Kingsley.
And I just, at that time, there was a tiny little monograph about her that someone sent me. He said, I've heard you're going to this place, Senegal. Guess what? I think this person, and at the time, no one knew the story in Senegal or here, very few people. And when I went home to my host families, and so I cried for her.
And it was profound. My daughter was lonely, kind of, you know, learning the language. She was in a French school here, which everybody thought I was crazy to put her in Johnny Ford Public Magnet, immersed in French, but, so she could get by fine in French, but, um, you know, she was the only, sometimes we saw, Dakar is a major city, but we went to lots of villages where no one had ever seen a white person before.
And when I wrote the song, I cried for Anta Majigunjai, this little girl, and I thought about my daughter on the beach that day meeting another little girl, a little Senegalese girl, and it brought me back to my best friend. Who we are celebrating 49 years of friendship that I met on a beach when I was 10 and um, and so I connected those two stories and it felt real.
It felt, this is my purpose. I didn't question at all the song that I wrote and brought it to a Senegalese group. And they had tears streaming down their faces, and we collaborated and recorded the song. And I had no doubts. It's when doubt comes in. It's when you say, maybe I don't have a right to tell this story.
I don't, I'm not in it. Or, when those things come in, then, um, I would say you feel disembodied. And the disembodiment is the business of art. It's always the business of art that I, that you question and doubt. And it's so painful because money, When, once money gets involved and you're in charge of it, or you have to promote was
very abstract compared to being in the physical living of world, like of the world, you know, it's like now we have to put a number to everything that we do and that we imagine, but, but yeah, I'm just thinking about the other night at your show.
It was a very embodied audience because. Of the smells, so she passed around the different smells from different like eras of her life where she remembers it, you know, remember there were good smells there, but in little jars, I've been wondering about that, in little jars, yeah, there were mostly, um, and so to me that felt like a way of you pulling the audience into, into their bodies, you know, into their senses.
That was wonderful. Totally taken in there. Yeah. So I guess what we, the way we can wrap up really is let's kind of touch back on the themes of geography and embodiment and taking up space in the city. Like, where do you see? Yourself and your own art and maybe any other organizations that you're connected to, how do you see your, yourself taking up space in?
Yes, I can start. Um, well, you know, we were just having this conversation about, um, me and my role. With art in public places, and I really did see my role as helping people to understand that everybody deserves art, and it should be everywhere. It shouldn't just be in certain neighborhoods with certain, you know, income demographics and certain, you know, um, housing, you know, being 200, 000 and up.
And those are the people that deserve art. And a lot of the time when I work with art in public places, and I was essentially, you know, we can say lobbying advocate or whatever. Yeah. That I harassed a lot of a lot of, um, you know, people that work with the city, including city council members at the time that I was first appointed, um, to understand that there is a space, there's a huge gap, there's a chasm in between where You know, people have access to art there where art is made and then people have access to it.
So much of the time things are in a gallery or in other spaces and maybe in a theater where a lot of people don't even feel comfortable, you know, and I'm not saying that everything should just be, you know, in a grocery store. And at the same time I say, sure, why not? You know, like, why not try, you know, doing art, you know, in, in unexpected spaces.
But for, for this specific, um, goal that I had with Art in Public Places, it was about making the process of art going into the community, one that was a consistent, process and one that was facilitated, you know, by a system because they understood that this w this is a need. And so I, I feel so much of the time that we don't all fully understand.
I think artists, of course, because we're artists, we feel that art is essential, but so much of the time people don't fully understand that art is essential. Like. You know, art that challenges us, art that's pretty, art that, you know, is not only amazing to look at, but art that teaches us. And I feel like that's a huge part of what my work is here.
Not just the work that I create, but also advocating for that type of work as well, supporting other people that do that type of work. And, um, And always working to, to push the idea of arts access forward is a huge part of my purpose.
That's wonderful. I can definitely see that.
I don't have any grandiose plans.
I mean, I think I'm just going to keep picking up everyone's trash and just making my work. That's a part of it, yes. And if there's an opportunity to work with a group setting to like weep together, that would be fun. And have, you know, like, sort of like a weaving circle. We've, we've sculpt with the waste, I think, I mean, that's, I don't have big plans because I'm also going to try to educate myself some more, so.
Those
are big plans, by the way. Changing something that was seen as trash into something. Yeah. Different and useful and giving it a second chance. Yes. Absolutely.
Yeah. I'm uplifting it. I mean, I'm aware of all the, uh, metaphors and themes that go into the work, but I'm just doing, you know, a few pieces at a time.
Trying to do, do my part for
society, so. Yeah, makes me think of mushrooms, because I don't know if you've seen the, it's Fantastic Fungi. They talk about how mushrooms, if we didn't have, um, life forms like that, they'd eat dead wood. That eat, you know, old things and discarded things, then they would just pile up.
It was something I'd never thought about before, but that's almost what you're
doing. You're a little mushroom. You're a cute little
mushroom. Mushrooms are great and have many wonderful uses. Absolutely. Lion's Mane is great. It is. It's
beautiful. What
about
you, Jen? So, um I was listening to a, um, a guy named Jim Carrick, I, on, uh, First Coast Connect the other morning, and I hadn't thought about him in a long time.
I lived in St. Augustine a long time ago. He's a guitarist that knew, The legendary folk artist, Gamble Rogers, and he was doing all these kind of gamble isms, quoting Gamble Rogers, and I already knew this one, that Gamble Rogers said, life is what happens while you're busy making plants. I love that, but I heard a new one that I hadn't heard before, and um, experience is what happens when you don't get what you want.
And I love that. So true. Um, And so I would say my, the geography of my presence and my art and the connection between goes back to those early days where I was instructed as an ambassadorial scholar to create a cultural bridge between Dakar and Jacksonville. And I had no idea. I wasn't inspired at all until I immersed myself there and heard a story.
And so I thought, Okay, you're good at that. You're good at finding connections between people, whether it's I felt like it hurt me to hear you can't find your food because culinary art is so important. Whenever I do an artistic or a performance, I try to include the elements of the senses, the smells and the tastes and the feel, um, and the sounds of a, of a moment or of a story.
And so to me, um, Um, I, I just want to keep creating those cultural bridges that come naturally to me. There's a lot of things that don't, but that's my language and from their home, right? And a lot of what we're talking about is home, right? And what home, how do we bring whatever that home is, or, and then you talked about how you carry home with you, you know, you wear it, right?
Um, all these things. So to me, um. It's all about that. Just finding what our language is and continuing to do it and build those bridges.
That's so important. Yeah, I do cuckoo a lot. I'm coming over
because my mother's there and she can
guide. Thank you so much, Jen and Shamira and Thorne. Thanks for being on the show and gathering here.
It was so special that you were here. Speaking of home, like in my home, what
a great conversation. Thank you, sir.
Absolutely. Thank you for even thinking of bringing us together.
