School/s: Spelman
Classification: Senior
So you think Spelmanites have no fun? Think again, and while you’re at it, look for Renaissance woman and Harlem, NY native Jessica Spaulding the next time you’re on Spelmans’ lushly landscaped campus.
This senior is not only an artist, poet, and author, but she also owns her own publishing company and has been known to host a show or two around the AUC.
Spaulding, whose arrival at Spelman is attributed to her trips to Atlanta in the summer during her formative years, said she chose the institution because of the “aesthetic”, and was looking for a “metro city with a slowed down feeling”.
How influential has Spauldings’ choice been on her creative output? Who’s to say, but when it comes to inspiration Spaulding says she draws the most from “regular shit….my life” She says: “When I was [young] I tried to find shit outside of myself to inspire me then I realized I had more than enough to keep me going.”
When talking with Jessica it becomes apparent that perhaps no one thing has kept her going more than her drive and innovation. As a freshman at Spelman, Spaulding made history along with a few of her other peers when they started “Thursday Nights at Jazzmans Café”. The weekly show turns the Morehouse Barista into a lively poetry and music showcase, and many notable names have stopped through the venue since the shows inception. 5 years later, the event is cementing itself as an AUC tradition.
Of the accomplishment she says: “It was really just an eye-opening experience. Being a woman, hosting that [at] an all male institution, and at the time being the only woman apart of it…As a person it just let me know I could handle it. It opened my eyes to my ability multitask.”
And multitasking she’s been doing ever since. Spaulding started in the creative vein as a painter, and would incorporate some of her writings into her projects. Realizing the featured poetry was actually good, she decided to go the spoken word route and found much success as she began being featured not only at her own venue of Jazzmans Café, but alongside some of the most prominent female names in the Atlanta poetry scene, including Queen Sheba. Spauldings’ latest project, a therapeutic memoir about her love life, is as she describes it: “…an essay. This book that was a paragraph to help me go to sleep [laughing], has turned into my life’s’ work.” She says the book is about her relationships before and throughout college and how they’ve affected her. Spaulding believes the emphasis placed on being an educated woman in todays’ society causes “unprecedented” strain on many women’s’ lives, not just in the romantic realm.
“As a whole, we haven’t really been taught how to navigate relationships in this world.” She says.
“…So I’m trying to get a little bit more [into] activism, teaching both men and women how to love each other.”
One of Spauldings’ largest hopes for the project is that it will help prevent the sense of anger and hopelessness so many women seem to face in the realm of romance:
“How do we prevent the 40 year old ‘angry black women’ from getting there? They were 21 once. I wanna prevent [that] anger.”
If any one’s equipped to do so, it would be Jessica Spaulding. Aside from the book, in the upcoming year she says you can expect to see her “…having a lot of fun, or not seeing me at all.” Spaulding will be graduating in May2010 as an English major and plans to attend NYU next fall. Of her overall experience in Atlanta, she says the city “is one of the places you make the best of it…” She continues, “The thing I enjoy about Atlanta is the ability for students to do things for free or at discounted rates …If you really took the time, you could have a really quality experience and you can have that, if you want it.”
She advises getting an email account to stay abreast of happenings throughout the area. And if you wanna know how to stay informed about Jessica and what she has planned next, add her on her Facebook screen name; Jessica Maria or follow her on on twitter @ JaytotheEssica
No comments:
Post a Comment