We recently connected with Chrishonda Smith and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Chrishonda thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

The name of my brand is Visually Speaking. I came up with the name Visually Speaking because it was the perfect marriage between my passions, writing, performing, and photography. Through my photography each photograph tells a story i.e. Visually Speaking. When I write and perform poetry I am telling a story that you can see through my actions and hear through the passion in my voice. Visually Speaking is the perfect mix of me.

Chrishonda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

On the writing and poetry side of my craft, I started writing when I was very young in elementary school. I loved writing and telling creative stories. As I got older I really got into writing poetry, I would journal and write all of the time. However, I never shared my poetry. In the church I was attending back in 2008, I was in poetry writing small group, we were meeting and working on some poetry at this coffee shop and we stayed to listen to a poetry show. The leader of the group signed everyone up for the open mic without us knowing. This was the first time I performed anything I had written, I was nervous and scared but loved the fact that I finally shared my work. From that moment on I continued performing poetry all over the city of Houston and beyond. A poetry accomplishment is being apart of Word Around Town, which was a premier poetry tour around Houston. I also won some poetry competitions around the Houston Area. On the photography side of my craft I always loved taking photos, I used to have a little point and shoot and would take pictures of family and friends all of the time and post them on social media. At church my Pastor at the the time let me use his “real” camera professional one and I fell in love. My cousin who is a professional photographer showed me some of his skills and I started assisting him on gigs. I bought my first professional camera in 2010 and went on picture taking frenzy and have not stopped since. People start booking me for jobs and I continued to hone in on my skills by studying professional photographers and assisting any time I could. In 2013 I entered some of my photography work into a selection process for the Museum of Fine Arts Citywide for African American artists. Two of my photographs were selected. I was so excited. 2 years later, I had 2 more of my works selected for the Museum of Fine arts Citywide again, in 2019 and 2022 as well. Each year I submitted I had work selected. These are some of the biggest photography accomplishments I have. I also am very proud of an event that I put on bringing awareness to our Homeless Community in Houston, Cover The Night. I started this event in 2010. I was do a photoshoot in the park with a friend, and a homeless gentleman came up to us asked if we had any cash, he said he was trying to get a room or a spot at the Salvation army. Unfortunately, at the time we did not have anything to give him. He said he was so cold, this was in November, he gets so cold at night and didn’t even have a blanket to cover up with. I said wait I just did laundry and gave him a comforter I had in my car. He was so thankful for the something to cover up with a night. Cover The Night was born from this encounter. I got several of my poet friends, musicians friends, singer friends, and comedian friends to perform and we collected blankets, coats, clothes, shoes, toiletries for the homeless. This became an annual event. We missed doing during Covid and came back in 2022 to do the 10 year anniversary show. This is one of the things that I am most proud of.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is when someone tells me that my words, my story helped them with a situation they were dealing with in their own personal lives. I did a poem once about a domestic violence situation that my sister unfortunately did make it out of. A weeks later I had a woman come up to me and tell me that me sharing that poem helped her get out of a similar situation.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

Non-creatives may not understand how artists live out their passion through their work, specifically how I live out my passions through my words and photography. Its about the feeling you get when you finish a poem and recite it over and over again, critique yourself until you feel that is just right.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: visuallyspeakin
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chris.crawford.

Image Credits
Chrishonda Smith aka Chris Crawford (My stage and photography name)