Meet Maegan Gonzales | Artist, Poet, Parent, Yoga Instructor, & Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Maegan Gonzales and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Maegan, what’s the most important thing you’ve done for your children?
This is a good and a tough question; I think allowing my children to witness  me live a creative life will be the most important thing I’ll have done as a  parent with the largest impact. Neither are an easy commitment – the  creative life or parenting life, but for me anyway, my creative life is  absolutely necessary in order to sustain my parenting life and whether my  children ever understand that is not the point but them witnessing it – that’s  going to do the biggest something, I think.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I’m a poet, visual artist, educator, and yoga instructor. You’d think after  years working towards Liberal Arts degrees that I would at least be able to  do one thing, but I wear many hats because I do a lot of things and I create  from a lot of different emotional places. Mostly, I have an ongoing love  affair with language – strife included. Lately, I write poetry often inspired by  my personal, observable natural world and create playful pieces of small scale art that blend words and visual elements, sometimes wearable art  featuring hand-stitched phrases like “okay human” or large-scale abstract  paintings that are anything but quiet, I think. I consider myself lucky to have  a variety of outlets to – if I’m being totally honest – cope with whatever it is  I’m coping with in this life through my creativity. I used to think about it a lot  – what I was coping with, but I don’t as much anymore. Getting to this place  was not easy. I’ve had to listen to myself a lot, and that’s hard when  everything outside of you gets loud. I had kids young. For a long time, it has felt like just surviving – lately not as much, but it’s hard to shift out of that.  

When I was in undergrad, broke, and my daughter came home with one of  those little Mother’s Day fill-in-the-blank things the kids make in Elementary  school; it asked something like what does your mom do? My mom’s a “painter,” she wrote. Of course, it was asking about my job or something  like that, and I was a waitress at the time, but my girl saw me. When I wasn’t  letting anyone else see me; she saw me. That’s powerful. That’ll change your  whole world. And it did mine. Sure, I’m not selling paintings for thousands of 

dollars and hardly anyone probably reads my poems, but I chased after art  when my kid came home with that. I chased after who I was for the first  time ever. I knew I had to study art, really dive into this thing about myself  and just learn through it, you know? So I did. Then I started writing poetry  again. All these things I used to do when I was little, having my two little kids  around me – it’s like they could bring out the kid in me and that healed so  much. I probably could’ve been, can be a better parent in a lot of ways but  being able to love in this pure way that releases these child-like states of  being in you – that’s healing, that’s important. So yea, I started writing  poetry again and I applied to grad school on a whim, got in. I’m teaching  college most of the year, teaching high school kids in the summer, moving  my body and sharing yoga under an old oak tree, creating art, able to take  care of my family. I like the diligent practice of it all – the domestic that  surrounds the swirling. A lot. I’m proud of the home I’ve made while  wholeheartedly moving towards what would sustain my creative life.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I’d drive you to the Civic Center downtown to walk along the boardwalk,  feed the ducks in Lake Charles, and sit in the old graveyard close by. There is  a great spot downtown called Stellar Beans to get coffee and small  sandwiches then I’d drive us out of the city along Common Street until it  becomes Gulf Hwy until it turns off toward the Wildlife Refuge and you can  drive along the coastline and stop off at the beach before heading back or  keep going to stop of the side of the road to pet horses and take a short  ferry ride to the other side and drive the long way home. I think some of the  most interesting things to do in southwest Louisiana involve being outside  and probably eating.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?

I’m so grateful for my creative communities. I’m grateful for those that I met  during my time in college, both undergrad and graduate school. Some of  those peers and mentors, I am grateful to call some my closest friends and  they’re still a part of my creative community now – voices of  encouragement and critique that I trust and often listen to. I have a handful of friends that I’ve known for much of my adult life, some almost half my life  now that support my creativity and straight up weirdness in a non-academic  informed, life-based love and experience that is liberating and has been so  important to my creative emergence and embodiment entirely. I am so  grateful for them. I’m grateful for the yoga community I’ve created under an  old oak tree and all the energy we‘re able to swirl up together on some lucky  Saturdays because moving my body has saved me and it’s so humbling – every time – to offer that being in the body for just a bit to others. I’m  grateful for my children because they inspire more of my life,  accomplishments, and voice than I’ll ever fully know or understand in this  life.

Website: maegangonzales.com

Instagram: @maery_gonzales

Twitter: @maerygonzales

Facebook: Maegan Gonzales