We were lucky to catch up with Sasha Marie Speer recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Sasha Marie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents created an environment that nurtured my high energy and curiosity. They encouraged me to travel the world alone from the age of 15 onward, to meet new people, to explore new places, to live fully. They taught by example to be fully in life. To do the things you want now versus waiting until you retire or have the time/money/whatever. They taught me that life is my creation. And as I create that life, to love others, to trust, to fail forward, to enjoy the experience and adventure in all of it.

My dad passed away in 2012 and his absence is still felt . He was the one who I would call with some crazy idea and he would listen and support my decision. If I needed money, he would help brainstorm ways to make it. He never told me something was impossible. His only measure for success was – “Sash, are you happy?”

Sasha Marie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve always seen the world through a lens, framing things and taking mental snapshots. Noticing the light dance off of the trees or someones face. I never thought it would become a profession until I ended up on set one day and was handed a camera and told, “You know what to do”. I was terrified, but they were right. I did, and I haven’t looked back.

Sawübona is a culmination of my background in photography, my love of traveling the world and spending time with other cultures, and my love of contemporary art.

In so many of my travels I have stayed with families, which really gives you a whole different perspective of the people and the place. In Los Angeles, I spend time with different people and communities – really getting to know them – and highlight their spirit and true essence through immersive art experiences and film.

The thing that sets me apart is in how I listen. I come from nothing. No agenda. No, “What am I going to say next”. Just pure space. That allows for the other person to be authentic and share themselves fully. It’s that spirit that I then inject into each project.

One of the recent films I was hired to do was on someone’s life. They wanted their accolades, I wanted to listen. So after two separate interviews, totaling about 5 hours, I realized that while many people already new of this person’s accolades, very few actually knew him. I asked if we could take a different approach and highlight who they were as a person and what it took to get where they are today. The unseen hours. They said yes and the resulting film was not only a successful portrayal of their life – they were also changed and moved in the process. They got healing from it.

Sawübona means “I see you” in Zulu, and that’s what I aim to do with each film and art experience.

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?

My background is in medicine.

When I tell people that they get so confused.

People in general have a tough time understanding that someone can be a doctor AND an artist. But in my experiences in medicine, so many in science are also artists, they usually just choose the more sure path to financial stability.

So my message to anyone who is a closet artist or to those who think they aren’t creative at all is to TRY. I have friends who have incredible sense of style and a way of putting together their wardrobe and home – that is ART. Writing is ART. Dancing is ART. Medicine in so many ways is ART.

To those people, I challenge you to pick up a camera. Take a painting class. Sing. Do whatever it is that you used to love or have been too scared to try. And share your work! Your soul will feel so much more alive. We all need each others creativity. For without it we have a very dull world.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Art requires resilience. If you’ve seen those graphs that go through the trenches of “This is awful,” and “I’m not good enough,” etc. Those are just the beginning. Art requires trusting in something greater than yourself. That’s the toughest part. You can’t think your way through it. You have to listen to your intuition and feel it.

It took me a lot to share my work with others, and even then, after each film or art experience, I go through an almost mini postpartum depression. Every time.

And yet, I show up again and again, because without it I feel I am living a shell of myself. Art gives me the beauty, the soul, the feeling of being alive.

In addition, art defies convention and you have to stand by that. One of my first shows was about women who have been through domestic violence – this was before MeToo – people said I couldn’t do it. That it wouldn’t work. To this day, the show is still one of my largest shows to date – attended by men and women from all different backgrounds. It created the space for so many people to find community and healing with their shared wounds. And it didn’t require talking. You just had to be there.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sawubona.us www.sashamariespeer.com
• Instagram: @sawubona.us @sashamariespeer

Image Credits
Jenny Baumert Diana Fiel