We were lucky to catch up with Valeska Populoh recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Valeska, thanks for joining us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I attended art school and hold a degree in fine arts, yet learned so much about my craft in a different kind of school – my extended puppetry and parade community. Seeing my interest in political activism, environmental issues and performance, a college professors encouraged me to apprentice with Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont. I was accepted to the apprenticeship program in 2005 and spent five weeks working with this renowned political puppetry and theater company, learning about papier-mâché, large puppet and mask making, the art of stilt walking, devising theater collaboratively, incorporating contemporary issues into performance, and taking performance into public spaces, protests, and the streets. I have collaborated with other parade and puppetry artists over the years, including Nanaprojects, All the Saints Theater, Great Small Works and Black Cherry Puppet Theater, among many others, all of whom have taught me about ways of making and performing that inform my own work. I try to carry on this generosity by making spaces in which to share the skills I have learned with my own community in Baltimore.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I worked in environmental activism and policy for some years, then chose to get more involved in hands on aspects of this field by apprenticing on organic farms and working at farmers markets. Throughout those years, I was contributing to various campaigns and public education efforts through my art work, including illustrations and photography. I returned to school to develop my studio skills in fine arts and to get certified as an educator. My path has led me into a field of work that no guidance counselor could have told me about, but that feels deeply aligned with my values and passions. I work as an educator and cultural organizer in Baltimore. I teach in the art school here, and also support a variety of community based initiatives through arts and culture. I organize and facilitate parade builds and parades, community gatherings and celebrations. I support social movements for justice by helping to develop materials to be used in protests, rallies and actions. I develop and produce performances that engage people in issues related to environmental justice and collaborate with musicians and other artists to tell stories about our sense of place and our connections to the animate earth. I draw on my experiences working in the field of environmental activism, farming, the arts and teaching to facilitate experiences that build connection and community and help a group of people collaboratively build an event that is larger than the sum of us.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

While our society is imbued with all aspects of the creative arts, we seem to lack the collective capacity to adequately recognize the labor, time, and commitment artists and designers must commit to producing excellent work. In my experience, so many artists struggle to maintain their creative practice while also meeting their basic economic needs. Many artists compete for minimal grants in their respective fields or geographic communities, competing against their fellow artists, commiting significant amounts of time to grantwriting and searching for opportunities, instead of being able to focus this time and energy on their creative work, which is already pushed into the margins of their lives too much of the time. In my experience living in Baltimore, there are so many artists who are not commercially successful and do not even strive for that kind of success, because they are focused on practices that are highly experimental or because they resist the idea of commodifying their work. (They would like to be paid to make work, but not have to turn their art into a commodity. They are interested in sharing their work with a broad public and making art as a public good.) I am moved when I meet people from other countries where there is a greater abundance of support for artists to spend their precious days developing their craft, collaborating, making work and then sharing this work with the public. Experiencing a diversity of arts practices, especially ones that are accessible for free, without the barrier of having to pay for the experience, that serves as a kind of spiritual sustenance for so many people in our community. I wish our society placed a greater value on artists and the arts.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

So much of the art making process, in my experience and in the lives of the many artists around me, is a kind of gestation. For many, their art making process extends over a long period of time that requires musing, reflecting, wondering, wandering, taking in experiences, talking about them with others, metabolizing events in the world, making sketches, writing drafts, pounding out some notes on a keyboard, and overtime building an art work, while discarding a lot of first attempts in the process. This helps us make the works that actually need to be made. If you have had the experience of encountering a piece of music, art, writing or theater that really changed your perspective, gave you hope, made you smile, helped you heal, connected you with another person, then you know the power of art. This is truly a gift each artists gives through hours of their lives spent working through feelings and events in order to produce something that can be transformative and impactful and beautiful for so many others in other times, other places, and from other experiences.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.valeskapopuloh.net
• Instagram: @valeskapopuloh
• Facebook: Valeska Populoh
• Linkedin: Valeska Populoh

Image Credits
Jennifer Strunge