Episode 5: Breaking barriers between people and art
In this episode of Imagine A World, Jaelynn Walls (2021 cohort) opens up about their cautious optimism for the future of art education, turning passion to action, and their number one piece of advice for anyone considering applying to Knight-Hennessy Scholars.
Resources
- Art in Color, Jaelynn's YouTube channel
- How Imagine A World began
Guest
Photo courtesy Micaela Go
Jaelynn Walls (2021 cohort), from Houston, Texas, is pursuing a PhD in art history at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. She graduated from the University of Houston with a bachelor’s degree in art history and minor in African American studies. Jaelynn aspires to increase accessibility to art and art education for marginalized communities through alternative and digital spaces. She has worked in curatorial and education positions with The Blanton Museum of Art, Sugar Hill Museum in Harlem, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, and is the current Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
She independently curates exhibitions across Texas centering marginalized artists and created and hosts Art in Color, an educational art history video series focused on increasing knowledge and resources related to the works and lives of contemporary artists of color.
Hosts
Imagine A World is hosted by Willie Thompson, left, and Taylor Goss, right.
Taylor Goss (2021 cohort), from Lacassine, Louisiana, is pursuing an MA in music, science, and technology and an MPP in public policy at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. He graduated with college honors from Louisiana State University with bachelor's degrees in music and entrepreneurship. Taylor aspires to connect musicians and policymakers, using the arts to communicate societal needs and provoke policy change.
Willie Thompson (2022 cohort), from Griffin, Georgia, is pursuing a master's degree in business administration at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse College with a bachelor’s degree in economics and a minor in Chinese Studies. He intends to create and contribute to organizations using the arts as a conduit for community building and intercultural education.
Imagine A World's theme music was composed and recorded by Taylor Goss. The podcast was originally conceived and led by Briana Mullen (2020 cohort), Taylor Goss, and Willie Thompson, along with Daniel Gajardo (2020 cohort) and Jordan Conger (2020 cohort).
Special thanks to Sanaa Alam, Rachel Desch, Sydney Hunt, Chan Leem, Kara Schechtman, Takondwa Priscilla Semphere, and Rahul Thapa.
Knight-Hennessy scholars represent a vast array of cultures, perspectives, and experiences. While we as an organization are committed to elevating their voices, the views expressed are those of the scholars, and not necessarily those of KHS.
Full transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.
Jaelynn Walls:
When I was writing on Wattpad, I just felt like, oh, I wrote this really dramatic poem about missing my friend who moved away. And people are responding to it and saying, "Oh, this reminds me of the death of a family member," or, "My relationship with X person." It's like, oh, wow. All these strangers from the internet have feelings about just a very personal experience that I was having. And I don't know, I think I caught the bug of the early, not early internet, but well, kind of. Early internet bug of like, oh, I'm communicating with so many more people than just the people at my tiny school that I go to.
And art can be something beyond a school assignment. It can mean something to many different people beyond myself. So I think that was kind of the start of my needing to share and create work.
I'm Jaelynn Walls, my pronouns are they/them. I'm a member of the 2021 cohort, and a third-year PhD student in the art history department. I study contemporary Black portraiture and its relation to early Renaissance. I imagine a world where kids of color can see themselves represented across art forms.
Willie Thompson:
Today we're speaking with Jaelynn Walls, a PhD candidate in art history. During our conversation, you'll hear Jaelynn's experience exploring creative writing and how it led to an interesting curation, developing a space to discuss contemporary artists of color, breaking barriers between people in art and so much more.
Taylor Goss:
Welcome to the Imagine A World Podcast from Knight-Hennessy Scholars. We are here to give you a glimpse into the Knight-Hennessy Scholar community of graduate students spanning all seven Stanford schools, including business, education, engineering, humanities, law, medicine, and sustainability. In each episode, we talk with scholars about the world they imagine and what they are doing to bring it to life.
Jaelynn, we really appreciate you joining us today for this episode of Imagine A World. Thanks for using your time and for being willing to share a bit of your really cool and really interesting story with us. I've really enjoyed our conversations we've had over the past couple of years about our shared perspective on art, and excited for you to be able to share that with the broader world.
Jaelynn Walls:
Thank you so much for having me. It's just so exciting.
Taylor Goss:
How's the week been? Are you getting things kind of wrapped up for the quarter at this point? Do you have finals?
Jaelynn Walls:
Yeah. I gave three presentations this week, and now I have to come up with the papers related to those presentations. And so I'm writing a paper on a film called The African Desperate by the artist Martine Syms. And it's basically a satirical look at the MFA art school experience-
Willie Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Jaelynn Walls:
... for a Black woman.
Willie Thompson:
Hilarious.
Taylor Goss:
Wow, topical.
Jaelynn Walls:
I would say it's a very triggering film-
Willie Thompson:
Sure it is.
Taylor Goss:
Oh, yeah.
Jaelynn Walls:
... personally,
Willie Thompson:
Hilarious.
Taylor Goss:
Okay.
Jaelynn Walls:
But I'm really excited to write about it and how nature factors into the sort of cinematic landscape.
Taylor Goss:
Okay. Have you seen any of Rowan Ings' films?
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh my gosh, yes. I love her so much.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, yeah. Her film was really good.
Taylor Goss:
So Rowan Ings in the 2021 Knight-Hennessy cohort. Dear friend of mine and a documentary filmmaker.
Jaelynn Walls:
She studied the whales-
Willie Thompson:
Whales!
Jaelynn Walls:
... and how they explode the whales.
Willie Thompson:
Exactly.
Taylor Goss:
Exactly, right. So all these whales that die along shipping channels in the Bay Area. And so the film was called Sentinels. And I did the sound design for it.
Jaelynn Walls:
Really?
Taylor Goss:
So all the sound was audio from whales sort of messed up beyond recognition. And then a little bit of whale song in there just to give the people what they want.
Jaelynn Walls:
That's the Knight-Hennessy way.
Taylor Goss:
That's the Knight-Hennessy way.
Jaelynn Walls:
The collaboration.
Willie Thompson:
It is. Really is.
Taylor Goss:
Collaboration
Willie Thompson:
Between you, Karishma. I mean, we're getting a lot of the arts here.
Jaelynn Walls:
Arts, yeah.
Willie Thompson:
And which I feel is probably a little bit different than what people expect from Stanford. I'm pretty sure they would probably would've thought, we get the engineers in here, which-
Taylor Goss:
We have them.
Willie Thompson:
... don't worry, guys. Don't worry.
Taylor Goss:
We have them and we love them.
Willie Thompson:
We got y'all. You'll be here. You're on the docket. But it's really good to have folks from the arts world here.
Jaelynn Walls:
It is a skewed perspective, though. We are the minority in the-
Taylor Goss:
This is true.
Jaelynn Walls:
... Knight-Hennessy community.
Taylor Goss:
This is true.
Willie Thompson:
Karishma brought that up, and she also mentioned how helpful even being in an interdisciplinary space can be, even though being in the minority from a topical perspective is reality at the moment. So glad to have you here with us.
And before we talk about your imagine a world statement, which is very thought-provoking and is even reminding me of K's imagine a world statement from the first episode. But again, we'll get into that. Let's talk about the world you're born into and the world you've experienced thus far. So, Jaelynn, where are you from and what was your journey here?
Jaelynn Walls:
I'm from Houston, Texas. I was-
Willie Thompson:
H-Town.
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes, H-Town, get down. I was born and raised there. I was born in 1998. Amazing year.
Willie Thompson:
What a great year.
Jaelynn Walls:
Thank you. A lot of good movies. A lot of Disney and Pixar films were really popping off at the time.
Taylor Goss:
Golden era.
Willie Thompson:
Wait, you've mentioned movies and Pixar.
Jaelynn Walls:
Yeah.
Willie Thompson:
What are the ones that come to mind for you when you think about that year?
Jaelynn Walls:
I don't know that year specifically, but growing up, Toy Story was the most important film to me. I think the scene where Woody has to get fixed up by the toy repairman pretty much defined who I was as a person.
Taylor Goss:
Yes.
Jaelynn Walls:
I was like, something about the cotton getting sewn in was so important to me.
Taylor Goss:
Visual ASMR.
Jaelynn Walls:
Early, they were so avant-garde. The Lion King. I was homeschooled actually. Not by my parents, but we called it homeschooling because I had like six classmates. And whoever did the best, both socially and also in academics early in the day, got to pick the movie that we watched during lunch. And I was unfortunately always doing wonderfully, and I would pick The Lion King every single time until one day this girl, Kiana goes, "We're not watching The Lion King, Jaelynn."
Taylor Goss:
Wow.
Jaelynn Walls:
"I don't care. We're not watching-"
Taylor Goss:
Strongly worded, Kiana.
Jaelynn Walls:
Literally. So I had to repress my love. But The Lion King was very important to me.
Being homeschooled was a little bit strange, but I didn't know that it was strange. I feel like I got to embrace my love for writing, my love for reading very passionately, very intensely early on, because there just were not a lot of students. And so my teacher could sort of see, Mrs. Bailey, shout out-
Willie Thompson:
Shout out to the teachers.
Jaelynn Walls:
... that I had just a big love for words, vocabulary, reading, storytelling. And she just kind of let me do it. She was like, "Yeah, you got the math covered. Just sit in the corner and read."
So then when I went to public school in the third grade, I found myself kind of confused as to why I couldn't read all day and do whatever I wanted.
Taylor Goss:
Sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
But I still carried that love for literature with me home, and art, and just being creative in any way that I could. My parents really embraced that when I was growing up. I feel like they kind of let me explore whatever I wanted to do if they had the means to let me do so.
Taylor Goss:
Sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
I was definitely a kid who did everything. My sister and I, we were in gymnastics, ballet.
Taylor Goss:
Good catch, good catch.
Jaelynn Walls:
Thank you. Flute, cello. I played cello growing up. I did karate. We were all over the place. I think my parents maybe didn't have the opportunity to branch out and do all these things when they were kids, and so they kind of just let me and my siblings do whatever occurred to us, which was really nice.
Around middle school, I started writing much more intentionally. I don't know if y'all know what Wattpad is?
Willie Thompson:
A what?.
Taylor Goss:
A Wattpad.
Jaelynn Walls:
Wattpad.
Taylor Goss:
I've heard of it-
Willie Thompson:
As in the measure of energy?
Jaelynn Walls:
No.
Taylor Goss:
Or whatever-
Jaelynn Walls:
Well, it is spelled W-A-T-T.
Willie Thompson:
Okay.
Taylor Goss:
Okay. Run us through Wattpad.
Willie Thompson:
The Wattpad. I had a LeapPad.
Taylor Goss:
A leap? I had a LeapPad too!
Jaelynn Walls:
A LeapPad.
Taylor Goss:
I had a LeapPad too.
Willie Thompson:
LeapPad was where it was at.
Taylor Goss:
Yes.
Willie Thompson:
I used to tear a LeapPad up.
Taylor Goss:
Yes.
Jaelynn Walls:
Absolutely.
Taylor Goss:
Check out the cartridges from the library.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, yeah.
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh, yeah.
Willie Thompson:
Man.
Jaelynn Walls:
Absolutely.
Willie Thompson:
Nostalgia. Sorry.
Jaelynn Walls:
I also had a LeapPad.
Willie Thompson:
Wattpad, Wattpad.
Jaelynn Walls:
No, Wattpad was this website. W-A-T-T-P-A-D. It was a website where you could just upload stories, poetry. It was a lot of fan fiction. It was right around like 2011, so it was a lot of Harry Styles is making out with another member of One Direction.
Taylor Goss:
Right, sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
And you could rise in the ranks of Wattpad, and have followers and things like that. And I started uploading really melodramatic poetry to Wattpad. And I became what was called quote, unquote, "Wattpad famous."
Taylor Goss:
Okay.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, okay.
Jaelynn Walls:
I had several thousands of followers leave comments on my poems and things.
Taylor Goss:
Wow.
Jaelynn Walls:
And so I thought, I was like I can't believe I'm Maya Angelou. This is crazy, I'm 12.
Taylor Goss:
Did you find that the response to your poems made you write differently?
Jaelynn Walls:
No. No. I've been talking a lot about this actually in the different art history courses that I'm taking about if artists can consider themselves artists if they don't share their work with anyone? If they're writing for themselves, if they're painting for themselves, are they an artist? And I think the answer is very much yes.
And also I think that writing for yourself, creating work for yourself is also a very queer practice. But I think there's something about trying to develop your work in solitude and having a sort of self-contained practice that isn't performative or responding to something outside of yourself. And when I was writing on Wattpad, I just felt like, oh, I wrote this really dramatic poem about missing my friend who moved away. And people are responding to it and saying, "Oh, this reminds me of the death of a family member," or, "My relationship with X person." I was like, oh, wow. All these strangers from the internet have feelings about just a very personal experience that I was having. And I don't know, I think I caught the bug of the early, not early internet, but well, kind of. Early internet bug of like, oh, I'm communicating with so many more people than just the people at my tiny school that I go to.
And art can be something beyond a school assignment. It can mean something to many different people beyond myself. So I think that was kind of the start of my needing to share and create work.
Taylor Goss:
So it's funny you mentioned being homeschooled because we have a connection there. I was homeschooled.
Jaelynn Walls:
Really?
Willie Thompson:
Really?
Taylor Goss:
Yeah, I was homeschooled from first grade until high school graduation, honestly.
Jaelynn Walls:
Really?
Willie Thompson:
Whoa!
Taylor Goss:
Yeah, actually. So the whole time.
Willie Thompson:
I had no idea.
Taylor Goss:
You were homeschooled for a relatively short period of time, but nevertheless, a pretty transformational time.
Jaelynn Walls:
Right.
Taylor Goss:
Early education. Did homeschooling affect the way that you found community or searched for community?
Jaelynn Walls:
I think so. I feel like my homeschool teacher taught me very early on like, "Oh, you're weird, but that's so cool."
Taylor Goss:
Sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
"You're really into this thing, but I think that's special and interesting. And you should stick with that." And so when I went to regular school, public school, I was kind of able to stand in that conviction that wanting to read through the dictionary during lunch was cool and interesting, and not weird and isolating and geeky. Or even if it was, I didn't care because I could feel that I was learning new things. And I was taught that learning new things is the way to move about the world in a meaningful way.
I think I just sort of gravitated towards other weirdos, especially, I mean, I went into my school, it was a school where you could learn how to play an instrument, the elementary school. So I was with a bunch of cello players, of course nerds. So I just sort of pulled towards them. People who were into theater, and the, arts and writing. And I went into public school and was like, "Okay, so at my old school, I used to put on plays. Do you guys want to be in my plays?"
Willie Thompson:
Right.
Taylor Goss:
Right.
Jaelynn Walls:
It's like that was a weird thing to do, but I just sensed that it was fun, and I could pull people into my fun or what I thought was fun. So I'm extremely grateful for my homeschool experience. I think I'd be a completely different person.
Taylor Goss:
I feel the same way. A lot of what you said resonates with me. I think the freedom that it gave me to sort of pursue passionate projects and the way that it taught you to do that, gave me a depth of experience and so much time to put into guitar playing and music for me. And as I brought in my social circle and made more friends in different walks of life, music or otherwise, there was just this fundamental sense of, oh, this is a thing that I love and I should spend time doing it regardless of what other folks around me are doing. So talking about sort of standing in that conviction, that really resonated with me.
Willie Thompson:
Talking about your interest in cajoling people to join your plays, it also reminds me of what Karishma mentioned in our last episode around how she was dancing all the time, and dancing was sort of the entryway into art for her and storytelling. And as a result of that comparison, I'm wondering for you, how do we get into art and art history, and just pursuing that as a formal education undergrad through grad school?
Taylor Goss:
From Wattpad to the stage.
Willie Thompson:
Exactly.
Jaelynn Walls:
So when it was time to go to high school, I applied to the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, which is a well-known performing art school. It's kind of selective. So they had just started a few years prior, the creative writing program. And I was getting encouragement from my teachers in middle school, "Oh, you're a pretty good writer. You could try to do this." So I applied. I got in. And I just started focusing really intensely on writing. It became my main thing. I wanted to be a screenwriter.
The setup of the school is that you would work on your art area for three hours a day and then take regular classes for the rest of the day. So I was doing a lot of writing. At the same time, the visual arts kids at my school kept talking about how they were on this thing called the Teen Council at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. I was like, ooh, all the art kids are kind of weird. They seem like a lot of them are queer. I want to hang out with them. So I applied to be on the Teen Council at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston as a writer. I wanted to write for their Tumblr blog. I was like, I don't know anything about art. I don't know anything-
Willie Thompson:
On Tumblr?
Jaelynn Walls:
Yeah, I know.
Taylor Goss:
Might need to explain that term.
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh my God. For their Tumblr blog.
Taylor Goss:
Sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
I was like, I don't know anything about art or art history, but I can definitely write. And it'll give me opportunity to hang out with these weird art kids that I think might be my group, my community. So I started doing that.
And at the same time, the museum was run by a curator, Valerie Cassel. And she was sort of a game changer for the Houston art scene because she was putting on all of these fascinating radical exhibitions centering Black artists, queer artists. She kind of turned the whole museum around from where it was previously. She was kind of young and hip, and had this just really cool approach to curation.
So at the same time, she was putting on all these great shows and the Teen Council up the museum was meant to come up with teen shows, meet the artists that we're putting on shows in the museum. It's just an opportunity for students to get museum-related experience.
Taylor Goss:
And sort of attract a younger demographic to the museum?
Jaelynn Walls:
Right, because museums are, they're very intimidating.
Taylor Goss:
Sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
Kind of typically white spaces. And so teen councils, which are something that have popped up all across the U.S. in different big museums are meant to sort of bring in people that otherwise maybe wouldn't have an interest in art and art history.
So I'm writing for the Tumblr blog. I'm having fun, but I'm also finding that all of these artists and their works are really interesting, and are sort of pulling me towards them. Especially as I'm writing about them, and meeting them, and interviewing them for the Tumblr. And I kind of just fell in love. I completely fell in love with the idea of curation, art history. And a lot of it did involve writing, so it felt kind of close enough to what I was already interested in. So that's how I got into art history.
And I started talking to Valerie, she became kind of a mentor to me. And I realized, if I'm going to get into this I have to study art history in college. And then after that, if I want to be a curator, head curator, I'm going to need a PhD, my goodness.
So I ended up at the University of Texas at Austin in the art history department.
Willie Thompson:
Hook'em Horns.
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh, yeah. Hook'em Horns.
Taylor Goss:
Obligatory horns down from LSU.
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh my goodness.
Willie Thompson:
I'm from Bama, so we might see y'all in the championship.
Jaelynn Walls:
I went there with my best friend and had a rip-roaring time. And I just got so deep into art history, but I still had this sort of love of creative writing, the less academic scholarly, create-a-citation type of writing. So I just kept that in my back pocket for a little bit. And then maybe we could talk about where that led to.
Willie Thompson:
Happy to talk about where that led to, because I think just in knowing a little bit about your story and just how you navigated the space on the Teen Council, was that the start of Art in Color, in a way?
Jaelynn Walls:
I started Art in Color my second year of college. So I mean indirectly, yes. But second year of college.
Taylor Goss:
For the folks out there, what is Art in Color?
Jaelynn Walls:
Art in Color is a YouTube channel that I have where I discuss contemporary artists of color and their practice, and different scandals in art history. And just try to communicate in an accessible way in a digital space about art and art history, and just try to pull people in who maybe otherwise wouldn't encounter this type of work.
When I got to Stanford, I made so many videos my first year, I was feeling really motivated. I would like, Knight-Hennessy helped me out a lot in terms of connecting me to someone to edit my videos and funding, things like that.
And then my second year, things got really intense. And I was like, whoa, grad school is hard. And I took a hiatus. And right now I'm kind of on the hiatus, but I have started talking again to my Knight-Hennessy friends and cohort and everything, and I'm going to relaunch the channel.
Willie Thompson:
Because you pitched it at the Keystone Ideas Festival. And I don't know if you knew this, Taylor, at the time, Jaelynn said that, I think you said you had 5,000 subscribers. Doing our research for the episode, you're almost a 10K or I believe you're maybe trying to get an additional 5K, but there's no small following for Jaelynn on Art in Color. And we would encourage folks who are listening to check that out. We'll include that in the show notes.
And I feel as if something you said about doing Art in Color, I've only taken a survey in visual arts class, and that was senior year of college. But I felt very empowered because of that class to have language to describe what's going on in a piece and using vocabulary to say, "Oh," I don't know, rhythm or something like that to-
Taylor Goss:
Oh, composition.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, or something like that. Just to be able to discuss art in a way.
And I think something that you said, it might not have been Art in Color, but it's somewhere in the research we've done where I remember you saying that art belongs to people. And I found that particularly interesting because even as I was watching more of your videos, it sort of continued to ground me in what the artist is trying to do in terms of letting you know about who they are and how can you engage with that.
And as you mentioned earlier about just art and museums being places that are traditionally white and maybe highbrow, how do you think about bringing people into a conversation that they've always been a part of but have never been aware of their need to participate?
Jaelynn Walls:
Absolutely. I think there is this idea that museums are a space where you can see very large Renaissance-type paintings of beautiful white women, and philosophers, and things like that, or people in war.
Taylor Goss:
Lots of boats.
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes, lots of boats.
Taylor Goss:
Lots of landscapes.
Jaelynn Walls:
For sure. But the truth is there has been such a huge movement recently to try to engage with artists of color, people who are creating work about their experiences, their own identities. And that's an attempt to bring in people who otherwise wouldn't visit museums. I think it sounds like me, art does belong to the people.
Museums are spaces where art is brought out of storage in order to have engagement with the public. It's not like when someone buys a work of art and then it either goes in their bedroom or it goes into storage so that it can accrue value, which we can't get into that. We can't get into that.
Willie Thompson:
I kind of wish this is a video podcast because that was probably the hardest...
Jaelynn Walls:
Sorry.
Willie Thompson:
So funny.
Jaelynn Walls:
I'm so sorry.
Willie Thompson:
You're good. You're good.
Taylor Goss:
I saw the whites of your eyes there, Jaelynn.
Jaelynn Walls:
I'm so sorry. I could feel my face doing that.
Anyway, but I think to tear down the illusion that there is some sort of barrier between people, especially people of color, and art, I think is one of the main points of the ethos of my personhood, essentially. I just am so drawn to artists that are creating meaningful, often extremely personal work about who they are typically as people of color. And allowing people to bear witness to these works and engage with them in a meaningful way, not only for themselves, but also for this sense of community and understanding that there is a certain level of universality to a lot of the struggles that an individual may have.
Taylor Goss:
You spoke a little bit about getting to Stanford and being very productive, and then moving into a space where the challenge of Stanford, the challenge of grad school and life as a grad student. I think that's something that every grad student experiences, something just like the reality of the responsibility and the level of work that it takes to make it through. How have you felt about confronting that challenge of life as a grad student over time?
Jaelynn Walls:
I definitely have been having a more deep, internal conversation about my purpose here, how I have moved from my original intentions and where I am right now.
I'm in an art history methods course with Professor Marci Kwon. And she asked us to do an intellectual biography essentially stating why we study what we study. And I read my admissions essay to reflect so that I could complete the assignment. And I just felt so nostalgic, but also like, aw, they're so naive. What a charming person this Jaelynn Walls of 2021 was.
I am currently in this moment where I am aware that my passion lies in connecting people to art and making meaningful threads between the quote, unquote, "art world" and the public. Simultaneously I think trying to bridge the gap between my previous passion for that and my ability to have action towards that, and then my present moment being fully aware that there are limits to this is kind of where I am right now.
I think just what you said, the reality of the situation of like, oh, I'm just one person. And even having access to all of these wonderful Stanford connections and blah, blah, blah, there are limitations to my ability to change the world for the better. But I need to hold onto the idealism of first-year Jaelynn in order to drive myself towards making even marginal amount of change.
Taylor Goss:
Sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
And marginal changes is more than no change.
Willie Thompson:
Speaking of idealism, I do want to make sure we get time to talk about your imagine a world statement, speaking of ideas. And I think sometimes it's interesting because a lot of times when people think about art history and art, they think about adults. And I feel as if what you talked about, even sort of you being, I think I remember you saying you got dropped off at museums as a kid, with your siblings, with your parents. And sort of how important children are when it comes to our understanding of anything in the world. I mean, I have a daughter right now so I'm very much realizing, oh, she's having to learn all this stuff through me and this making me...
Anyway, don't want to get into a whole thing about that. But I'd love to hear you talk more about that imagine a world statement. Why the focus on children and kids? And we know that you just published a book?
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes.
Willie Thompson:
Just published a book. Love the publishing of a book. And talk a bit about how even some of that book relates to the importance of children and seeing themselves in whatever ways via art forms.
Jaelynn Walls:
I think a lot of these ideas around who is supposed to enter museums, who is supposed to engage with art, who is art for, are built when you're very young. I think that's why there's so much effort on the part of major museums across the country, I mean even internationally, to bring in kids because the ways in which we engage with art are determined very young, I mean, just like anything else. Art is a really sort of exciting thing to engage with. Museums are really cool spaces. They're often in these really fantastical buildings, huge facades, amazing colors everywhere. And so if you're a kid and you come into this space and you see, oh, there's works that 100 times the size of me. And maybe there's a person of color in the painting, or there's a photograph of all these different ways to be a person in the world, or landscapes that I've never seen before. Then there's an inherent interest, inherent excitement in engaging with the space.
There's a field called museum education. Most museums have an education department that are structured to engage with children specifically because museums are not at their core for children, but they function as really exciting spaces for children. And so I think to have this foundation of accessibility, excitement, direct engagement with young people, especially thinking about elementary age school children, is probably the only way that museums are going to survive.
I mean, museums are supported internally, structurally by very wealthy, older people. The volunteers that work there are retired people who have time to walk around for free and talk about art. They are funded by people who have a lot of money and have some sort of appreciation for art. But what happens when those people move on? All you have are young audiences and younger curators who are trying to make sure that the legacy of a museum space continues on and on.
And how do you do that? By engaging with children, and making sure that there is a foundation of interest and not one of fear or disinterest from the very beginning. I mean, beyond the sort of institutional engagement in order for the legacy to continue, I just think some of the most interesting thinkers are children. You can talk with a bunch of scholars about a painting all day long, and then you do a museum tour with a kid, and they're like, "Why is this color like this?" And you're like, "Oh my God, I'd never noticed that. No one brought that up."
So I mean, I've had that experience dozens of times working in museums, doing tours, doing curatorial work where it's just like, oh, that fourth-grader had a much more meaningful engagement with this work than anybody I've talked to so far. So the creative grounds are with the children.
Taylor Goss:
Are you optimistic about the ability to bring in this new generation? Like the institutions, the folks in power, and also the younger curators who are creating these spaces to be more available and welcoming, are you optimistic about their ability to bring a younger generation in?
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes and no. I am optimistic that individual curators have passion, that museum educators have passion and interest in engaging with kids. I'm optimistic that kids will always and forever bring their creativity into institutional spaces.
Simultaneously, I am a little pessimistic about the powers that be funneling finances into accessibility for kids to see museums, to engage with art. It might not be as exciting to say, "We can fund museum visits for five different elementary schools." That's not as cool as like, "What if we paid $2 million for another Van Gogh?" So the answer is yes and no.
Willie Thompson:
So to that point about yes and no, what are the things that need to happen to make a world where the yes is more emphatic and the no is less pronounced? Because for example, the Mellon Foundation I think recently announced they're going to donate a half a billion dollars to monuments around the U.S. And I think that's a very interesting approach to an interesting sort of option C when it comes to the national conversation of monuments. At least being from the South, do you count Texas as being a part of the south?
Taylor Goss:
That's the fun thing about this. All three of us are from the South.
Willie Thompson:
Yeah, we are all southern.
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes.
Willie Thompson:
No accents. But it's sort of the conversation around Confederate soldiers-
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes.
Willie Thompson:
... and monuments. And there seemed to be an option A, you keep them because people believe the Confederate... I'm not going to get into that. Or option B, you tear them down for the reasons that are publicly documented. And I feel like what the Mellon Foundation is doing is a nice option C of what if we just built more? And to balance the narratives that people have.
So anyway, that's I guess a side example to talk about. So what would it look like for you? And what would you need to see or feel like would need to happen for some of that optimism to be more robust?
Jaelynn Walls:
I think just having, a lot of museums are run by boards. Boards are often just full of very wealthy people who do a lot of decision making about what a museum can and can't do. I think having boards, having directors engaged directly with curators who have exciting ideas, would just change museums so much.
I think there's, I don't know, is this like shop talk?
Willie Thompson:
Go ahead.
Jaelynn Walls:
There's just a delineation, sorry, a separation in power structures in who is able to actually directly engage with and communicate with curators, and the public, and museum education people. It's like, why are the people that are giving the museum money not talking to the people that are putting on shows in the museum?
And so I think it's cool and exciting to have an announcement like 25-year-old Black female curator put into the insert whatever huge museum. But it's like, what does that actually mean? Are that person's ideas being heard and are they being executed in a meaningful way beyond a title or beyond just reifying the institutional work that's already existed before them?
And so, I think just direct engagement between financial people and creative people that are engaging with the public would be the emphatic yes. But of course, that's individual case, individual case, individual case from museum to museum. And so, I think that goes back to triumphing in the marginal successes.
Taylor Goss:
And sort of turning from this discussion around the systematic to you as an individual and your creative pursuits. I know Willie mentioned earlier you've written a book. Would you talk a little bit about your book, about the process of writing it and maybe a bit about how it's connected to your research at Stanford, if at all?
Jaelynn Walls:
Definitely. As I mentioned earlier, I always engage with creative writing as just as my outlet. I love storytelling. I love lying, making things up.
And so when I was in high school, I was trying to middle school, high school, I was really trying to figure out my identity, who I was, what was going on with me. And my way to do this was reading books and watching movies. I loved watching movies, especially about queer people, gay people.
And so I wrote this research paper my senior year of high school, basically just looking at queer stereotypes in American movies from the sixties to the present, which the present at that point would've been like 2016, '17. And the results were pretty bad. I would say the stereotypes were not great. And through writing that paper, I kind of wanted to create a solution, if you will. And so my response to that research paper was to write a film kind of against stereotypes. So it's like a very queer teen film dismissing all the negative stereotypes, instead embracing this more organic diverse narrative centered around people that were just basically like my friends. I was building characters based off of people that I knew around me.
And then I just had a movie script. And I wasn't going to make a movie, so I kind of just let it gather dust for a couple of years, the script. And then when I was in college, my friend, a couple of friends actually were like, "That script was interesting. You should do something with that." And I agreed. And I adapted it to a novel manuscript titled The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay. And I pitched it to some agents, got an agent, shout out to Garrett.
Willie Thompson:
Ooh.
Jaelynn Walls:
Thank you.
Taylor Goss:
Shout out Garrett.
Willie Thompson:
To Garrett.
Jaelynn Walls:
Garrett, who's up in Washington. And then he pitched it to publishers. And I got my manuscript accepted to a publisher, Levine Querido. That is a publisher of children's books, primarily working with queer and Native authors, queer and Native stories. And then my book got published and it came out a few weeks ago, November 21st.
Willie Thompson:
Wow.
Taylor Goss:
Congratulations.
Willie Thompson:
Congratulations.
Jaelynn Walls:
Thank you. The story follows three girls, Dawn, Georgia, and Edie. They're all living in Houston, Texas, which is where I'm from. And Dawn is trying to make a documentary about queer love so that she can get a scholarship to the radio, television and film program at UT Austin. So the story is very close to my heart and very much follows my path towards college with several twists and things made up as well.
Taylor Goss:
Sure. But some autobiographical themes clearly.
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes, autobiographical themes. And it's just about how friendship is a kind of love and how making deep connections, platonic or otherwise, when you're a teenager can sort of lead you towards your identity and help you survive as a queer kid in the south.
Taylor Goss:
That sounds so beautiful. I'm excited to read it myself. And what's the best way for a listener to this podcast to get access to or purchase this book?
Jaelynn Walls:
If you want to support a local indie bookstore, that's a pretty good option. I have tried my darndest to get it stocked across California. And it's also in indie bookstores pretty much everywhere in the U.S. But if that is too much or maybe you have some struggles finding it, it's also available online, bookshop.org, Amazon if you want to do that. IndieBound. There's also an audiobook which is available.
Willie Thompson:
Are you reading the audiobook? Is it-
Jaelynn Walls:
No, I have a professional.
Willie Thompson:
Okay, okay.
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh my goodness.
Willie Thompson:
We already said you're a professional.
Taylor Goss:
Yeah.
Willie Thompson:
You already are.
Jaelynn Walls:
No.
Taylor Goss:
I see you speaking into a microphone right now.
Willie Thompson:
I know, you're speaking right now. Do you want to do it right now?
Jaelynn Walls:
It's already done. A really wonderful audio narrator named Tamika did it. She's an artiste of the Voice. That's available on Audible and all the other audiobook sites.
Taylor Goss:
That's so exciting.
Jaelynn Walls:
Barnes and Noble online, online.
Taylor Goss:
Okay.
Jaelynn Walls:
You can order it into Barnes and Noble, but I'm still trying to figure that out.
Taylor Goss:
Okay. That's so beautiful to me, where it started to what it became. And I'm sure because of how much time it took, and how much experience you gained over the time that you were writing it and the different forms that it took, I'm sure that all of that changed the story as time went on. So I'm sure it's very cathartic for you to have this out into the world. But it also sounds like in your description of the process of getting it published, you're really interacting with this area of commerce. You've been in the very public facing museum side of art. You've been in the academy with art. How did you feel about interacting with this realm of commerce and getting your book out to people and as a product to some degree? How do you feel about that?
Jaelynn Walls:
It's very strange because the early part of publishing a book, when you get out the advanced, what are called advanced reader copies to people, those are not going to teenagers. Those are going to professional book reviewers who are adults. And so it's just strange to the very...
I've been sort of in my little corner working on this book for such a long time, and then the second I put it out into the world in any capacity, I am getting feedback from adults.
Taylor Goss:
Yes.
Jaelynn Walls:
But the most meaningful element of, I guess the commercial aspect has been having it in libraries and getting feedback online from teenagers who are able to engage with a book for free because libraries, love that. Oh, you can also get the book from, I think it's available in 200 libraries across the U.S.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, wow.
Taylor Goss:
Amazing.
Jaelynn Walls:
Check online, see if your library has it.
But the most gratifying part of this has been hearing what young people think about it. I really, I'm being honest, just don't care what any adult has to say about this book because I didn't write it for them. I wrote it for young kids and also indirectly, some younger version of myself, I'm sure. I'm excited as time goes on to hear back from more and more teens. And actually today I have an event at the San Francisco Public Library. They have a queer social hour for teenagers, and I'm going to be stopping by and signing books and meeting with kids. So this is perfect. It's exactly what I wanted when I initially wrote the book.
Willie Thompson:
Speaking of timing, I know we're coming up on time now. I'm going to ask a couple of really quick questions before we wrap this conversation.
Well, one, I'm going to follow really quickly on Taylor's point around engagement with commerce and art. And I feel as if the common thread between whether you're writing a book, whether you're curating an exhibit at a museum, or whether you're being a PhD student, I think the common element across all those things is critique. There's always critique. There's always someone giving you some form of feedback. At the business school, they always say, "Feedback is a gift." And I think that most times it's true. Well, I mean, a gift is a strong word, depends on your perspective.
And I've heard some of the people on Art in Color talk about critique and how do you deal with critique? And I'm wondering what things do you do to build in your comfortability with being critiqued, and how do you keep that from making you cynical? Because I think that's the thing I continue to keep coming back to being in the academy in some way, shape, or form. It's almost if the bar of your success is how cynical you can be. I think Serena brought this up in our retreat for Knight-Hennessy. How do you think about that idea as someone who's in the space?
Jaelynn Walls:
I think for creative work, it's much easier because I feel that if The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay is useful for even one young queer person, then I feel happy. I think just keeping in mind who my work is for, what my intentions were when creating it, creatively, has kept me feeling very positive and even motivated to write another book.
In the academic sense, in the professional sense, that's tough. I think critique can sort of, I don't know, beat you down to build you back up in the academy. I think I found a lot of value in understanding the person giving me the critique as someone interested in making me or my work better. I think that's my method of not getting lost in the sauce of mean quote, unquote, "comments." I'm like, I think they said that because they desperately want me to be a star. I don't know if that's idealistic or delusional, but it's been my method of sustaining my sense of wanting to do scholarly work, is everyone at Stanford loves me and wants me to be amazing, and that's why they're saying this mean stuff to me. So that's how I've been feeling about critique lately.
Willie Thompson:
I think I might take that framing just to give myself some solace cognitively of this person wants me to succeed, even if what you say sounds like you don't.
Taylor Goss:
Exactly. And just the notion that regardless of critique, it's possible to still succeed. It's possible to hear the critique and then progress from it. The critique is not saying like, "This is you in a negative light, and this is how you'll always be." It's more, "Here's something for you to think about." And that, framing it the way that you've framed it, would allow me to think of, okay, how do I move forward? Not just what am I right now, but how do I move forward?
Willie Thompson:
Yeah. That reminds me of Aaron Samuels, who came to one of my classes at the business school. He's the co-founder of Blavity and AfroTech. And he's Black and Jewish, and he started off with poetry. So he was a poet for a good part of his early career. He made this interesting point about someone giving you a note. He said, "Someone gives me a note on a piece that I'm working on." He said, "I don't always take the feedback as given, but I do realize..." Well, or maybe it's and. And he realizes that what they're communicating is something is not working. And that's what he tries to hone in on depending on how someone's giving him that feedback. And so I feel like that was an interesting way to think about it.
And to your point, Jaelynn, it's like, well, if someone's giving you feedback, let's say on your book, but you realize something's not working for them, but then you don't care about the thing that's not working for them, you're like all right, cool. You keep moving, right?
Taylor Goss:
Yeah.
Jaelynn Walls:
Yeah.
Willie Thompson:
It doesn't feel as personal.
Taylor Goss:
There's a triage to that. How severe is the problem actually?
Jaelynn Walls:
Right.
Willie Thompson:
I mean, don't get me to making, I'll make a decision tree if I have to.
Jaelynn, before we head out, two quick questions for you. This has been really great. So glad to have you here. First is got to get into some improbable facts. It's a hallmark the community here.
Taylor Goss:
Improbable facts are something that everybody does in their Knight-Hennessy application. For me, it was the thing that took me the longest and probably that I thought the most about because it's so concise. So how did you feel about the process of deciding on your improbable facts? And would you be willing to share one or two of them with the-
Jaelynn Walls:
The process was fun, actually, because I think I am a person who, unfortunately, as soon as I accomplish something or finish something that I've wanted to do, I am immediately moving on to the next thing. I'm like, that was cool, anyway. So having this mode of reflection was really valuable. And then also in the application, I think they suggest that you ask your friends and family, and so that was also cool to just ask my friends like, "What's something cool I've done?" Get feedback.
So my first one is that sophomore year of college at UT Austin, I won a drag ball judged by a famous drag queen, Monique Heart from RuPaul's Drag Race, which I think now she goes by Mo Hart. My best friend Sydney and I decided last minute to participate in this drag ball on campus, which is an event where people can show off their drag artistry. Their drag artistry, dressing up, putting on costumes, makeup. Not necessarily in the way that we would associate drag with feminine impersonation, but just in extravagance, and clothing, and things like that.
And so we both did the runway category. There are different categories like runway and lip-syncing. And we won first and second place. And it was very much in our wheelhouse because whenever we were invited to go to parties during college, if it was a lingerie-themed party or a Halloween thing, we would just do the extreme version for no reason at all.
Willie Thompson:
Do the most.
Jaelynn Walls:
We'd be like, okay, thank God someone invited us to Halloween party. We can start working on our costumes and sewing them three weeks early. It's like nobody asked us to do that.
And so this was just an actually appropriate space for us to exercise our creative talents. And I think that just, it's a really lovely memory I have with my best friend. He's still my best friend. He studies Russian, and translation and interpretation. He's living in France right now.
Taylor Goss:
Oh, wow.
Jaelynn Walls:
My next one or second one that I'll share is that famous poets often commission me to hand-stitch their poems' titles onto sweaters as gifts for themselves or friends. When I was in high school, I really loved this poem called Heart Condition. And I cut up some letters from a green fabric and sewed them onto a brown sweater. And it kind of went crazy on Tumblr. So different people started contacting me to make sweaters like this. I just thrifted sweaters and would hand stitch onto them. I was not a sewer or anything like that. I didn't have a machine. And then I realized, oh, these are the friends of the poets of the poem titles that I'm doing, which is kind of wild.
And then randomly, I would see online people posting, poets that I loved and respected, posting themselves wearing sweaters that I made, which is kind of bizarre. A lot of that was in high school, and in early college. But so it's completely random outside of anything that I do. It's just a random thing.
Willie Thompson:
Another talent, another talent.
Before we go, last question. What advice do you have to anyone who's interested in being a part of Knight-Hennessy?
Jaelynn Walls:
I would say make sure that you care about the world in a very specific way and are prepared to bring that specificity to the community.
I think talking to people in Knight-Hennessy is just always a magical experience because you meet them and they're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm taking this class. I'm so tired. My life is like this," blah, blah, blah. And then a few weeks later, they'll be like presenting about how they started some incredible organization to help people in such a specific community or specific way. And you're like, oh, you're a wonderful person in this very broad way, but then there's this specific way that you are interested in creating change that I have never engaged with or thought about. And it's obviously really meaningful, and you have such a passion. And I think that's the common thread amongst people in Knight-Hennessy, is just a deep, flowing passion that allows them to overcome idealism, and naivete, and the hardships and just fight for their little niche.
Taylor Goss:
That is a beautiful description. And I think both Willie and I, that is something that we see in you and what you bring to the community. So thank you for sharing that.
Willie Thompson:
In spades. For sure.
Jaelynn Walls:
Oh, thank you.
Willie Thompson:
So look, Jaelynn, it's been great. So glad to have you on this episode of Imagine A World and to close this out for this calendar year, which is crazy. So thank you so much for spending your time, your talent, your treasures with us for this time. Really appreciate it.
Taylor Goss:
Yeah, the whole way through. All from Wattpad to Tumblr, to YouTube, to the San Francisco Public Library.
Willie Thompson:
I can only imagine the amount of Googling that's going to be happening on the background.
Taylor Goss:
I know. Go check out Jaelynn's book. You have some book touring coming up as well, right?
Jaelynn Walls:
Yes.
Willie Thompson:
Oh, wow. Okay.
Jaelynn Walls:
So I'm going to be holding events in Northern California, up in Oakland, in San Francisco in the new year. So you can definitely keep your eyes out for that. I'll be doing some stuff in Texas, Miami, New York. So I have a website. My middle name is Dale, so I go by Dale when I write. dalewallsauthor.com, I'll be updating everything there. My Instagram is the same, my Twitter is the same. And I post on there all the time about what I'm doing, where I'm going, virtual events, IRL events.
Taylor Goss:
We'll put that in the show notes.
Willie Thompson:
We'll make sure that folks can have access to that through show notes and the social media. So Jaelynn, thank you.
Jaelynn Walls:
Thank you both. Great.
Willie Thompson:
All right, that's it.
Jaelynn Walls:
Whoo!
Taylor Goss:
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Imagine A World where we hear from inspiring members of the KHS community who are making significant contributions in their respective fields, challenging the status quo, and pushing the boundaries of what is possible as they imagine the world they want to see.
Willie Thompson:
This podcast is sponsored by Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University, a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate fellowship program providing scholars with financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while helping equip them to be visionary, courageous, and collaborative leaders who address complex challenges facing the world.
Follow us on social media @KnightHennessy and visit our website at kh.stanford.edu to learn more about the program and our community.
