We recently connected with Zulynette M and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Zulynette thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

I grew up poor, but always surrounded by creativity. I didn’t realize it when I was young, but the arts were and are such vital pieces of my Puerto Rican culture – from music, to food, to dance, to crafts, and more. My grandmother would sew handmade dresses for me and my cousins. One of my aunts could always be counted on to handmake center pieces for weddings, quinceañeras, and sweet 16s. My mom would make dresses for teddy bears that would then be displayed in the window of a mall, do photoshoots with me, my siblings, and our cousins, and later she would take on baking, breadmaking at home, painting, and home decor. I had always been artistic. I’ve been drawing since I can remember and was constantly getting praise and complimented (and sometimes in trouble) for my artistic abilities. All this and I still didn’t think art as a career was possible. It’ not that it was discouraged – it wasn’t even in the realm of possibility, so it was never discussed. I was encouraged – like many poor children – to grow up and be a lawyer, a doctor, a psychiatrist. Something stable, something realistic, something that showed I “made it.” Instead, I grew up to be a researcher. I was introduced to what’s called participatory action research during a summer job when I was 15 years old. It changed the trajectory of my life – I was taught about and given language for oppression, systems and how they impact us, and advocacy. I was shown that research should be done by the people in the community, the people who the issue impacts the most. I stayed in touch with them for over a decade, until I earned my MSW (Master in Social Work) and went to work with them full-time in 2013.

By this time I had already started to perform spoken word and got my name out in Connecticut as a performer. It became something I did when I could, because I loved it so much. Writing poetry and spoken word were a container for a lot of my sadness and rage. It was the place where all my analyzing of the social injustices around me went. As far as my research job, I knew shortly after starting there full-time that it wasn’t for me. The days bled into each other. The meetings about meetings to schedule a meeting were mind numbing. I worked with youth (which I loved!) but even then, the relationships felt superficial – I would be a facilitator, a social worker, an aunt, a confidante, a parent to so many youth, only to then have to leave due to the ending of a contract or funding. I found myself feeling more and more like a hypocrite. I would always tell them they could be whatever they wanted to, meanwhile I was in a job where I knew I didn’t belong. I knew my poetry impacted people, I knew the workshops I facilitated resonated and helped participants, I knew my artwork really touched my community, and I knew the shows I directed were powerful, but I was petrified. I thought I had “made it” – I had the full-time grown-up job, I had health and dental insurance, I had a retirement plan, I had gotten my own apartment and car, but I was miserable. There were days I woke up disappointed I had.

During the years I was at this research non-profit, I was still creating and performing. I started a storytelling show entitled “A Little Bit of Death” which centers the stories of BIPOC and queer community around grief and transformation. I performed in multiple states. I had my first solo art shows and was gaining confidence in showcasing and sharing my work ( a part of myself I had for a long time because knew me moreso for being a poet). I felt like I was living a double life trying to maintain what was my bread and butter within the nonprofit and what was actually feeding my soul with the arts. I couldn’t keep up the juggling act.

Something had to change. What I’ve discovered over time is, that usually means I have to change. I get to decide for myself how this story is going to go. On Monday June 6th 2016 I googled the best day to quit your job and was extremely disappointed to find out it was a Friday. That was straw that broke the camels back – I couldn’t wait that long. At this point, I was starting to have panic attacks at work, sitting at my desk was filling me with wave after wave of anxiety. And so after this google search letdown, I walked into the founding director’s office and said I’m quitting. By this time, I had been planning to quit for months and was saving up money to take the leap and have cushion for a bit, but then I found myself pushing off quitting time and time again. I had to detach myself from the identity I had formed with this job. I had to free myself from the thought that I would be a failure after having “made it.” I had convinced myself I should be grateful to have a job like this no matter how depressed I was. I had to unlearn what I though I knew about the markers of success and fulfillment. I had to remind myself that if being a full-time creative didn’t work, I could always go back to being employed by someone else – because capitalism never sleeps. That Monday and that google search were necessary to give me that final push.

Since 2016, I’ve been a full-time creative. A Little Bit of Death has grown from being a show where all expenses came out of my own pocket, to being a fully funded production housed in theaters. My artwork has sold all over the US and even outside of the US (I feel very cool saying I have art in Australia and Japan). My poetry has reached hundreds of people and to this day I still get to perform in front of audiences that are captivated and held in the moment with me – it still gives me life to be on stage, it still sends electricity through me.

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

I create for people healing from trauma so that we can find the medicine in our stories. With a combination of my background in research and social work (MSW), I utilize the arts as tools for empowerment, personal exploration, and change. I create paintings that serve as reflections of my inner world and as meditations on our own expansiveness. I perform poetry and facilitate poetry workshops that center around sharing our truths, brave/vulnerable self-expression, and our individual stories intersecting with community’s story. I curate and direct community performances and shows that center the BIPOC and queer community, to give us a platform to share our truth in community. I speak to audiences, schools, and organizations about my story as a creative, my identities, the power of art, and the healing that can be had with creativity and self-expression.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think for the most part art is seen as a privilege and as merely a hobby. As a small business owner and as an artist, this is extremely frustrating. When I was younger, I remember the first things that would always get cut from our schools were the creative programs. The support needs to start young. If there are so-called starving artists it is because we all as a society have created those circumstances and keep perpetuating them daily. Young people need more exposure to and involvement with the arts. They need to learn art that is culturally relevant to them, they need access to good art supplies, they need consistent creative outlets. As an adult artist, we need funding and the same protections and care that any other job has. What we do takes time, effort, mental space, physical labor. travel, practice, errors, learning – and yet many people still think artists are people who walk around with their head in the clouds (as if that isn’t fun, by the way. It is!). There is no reason an artist can be tasked to beautify a city they then can’t afford to live in. It’s ludicrous. Artists also have a responsibility to learn business skills if this is what they want to do for work. I had to learn myself how to do contracts, how to negotiate, how to end something if I was being taken advantage of. Reader, support artists, invest in us. What we do is valuable.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

What drives my journey will always be expansion, expression, and healing. A lot of my visual work features outer space themes and it’s a reminder that we are that – we are star stuff, the universe is in us and we are in it, and as the universe keeps expanding so should we. Expression is necessary for connection, for community, for change. If we want a better world, we have to be able to imagine it, and so we need to make room to get creative in our imaginations. Healing will always be central to what I do until healing is no longer required. For now, with so much social and environmental injustice, we need places, spaces, and arts that bring us back to ourselves, that connect us to each other, that asks us to analyze what is happening around us, our role in it, and how we can change it. Healing isn’t just green juice and appropriated yoga involving goats, it’s challenging work that demands transformation from all of us.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.zulynette.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/iamzulynette
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@Zulynette

Image Credits
Too Bizzie Keith Claytor NBC Connecticut Patrick “Rico” Williams Tyler Mithuen