Transcription of Jessica Tomlinson for the show Sisters #41
Dr. Lisa: As part of this week’s sister show for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast we are fortunate to have the sisters Sonya and Jessica Tomlinson. Jessica Tomlinson is the Director of Artists at Work at Maine College of Art. She’s the board president of Space Gallery, a graduate of Hampshire College who lives in the west end of Portland with her husband, the artist Henry … Jessica I’m going to have to have you jump in here.
Jessica: Absolutely. Wolyniec.
Dr. Lisa: Henry Wolyniec and their nine year old son Otto. Thank you for coming in Jessica.
Jessica: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: I’m going to talk about your sister here who a hip hop recording artist and Grants and Outreach Manager at the Maine Women’s Fund, a Telling Room teaching artist, and a nine year veteran of Space Gallery. Thanks for coming in.
Sonya: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: So sisters. You’ve been I think, Sonya, from what I understand, you were persuaded to move back to Portland or to Portland by Jessica.
Sonya: It’s true. I was going … I moved to North Carolina. I was going to UNC Greensboro and I was in my senior year and I got a package in the mail and it had a green paint stick and an offer to move here. It said this is the color of your new room if you’ll come back and live with us for free. I think I graduated on May 28th and I moved June 1st. Everything in the U-Haul and camped out with Jess and Henry for a little longer than planned. For what was to be six months I think it turned out to be nine, and I’ve never left and it’s 13 years later and I’ve never leaved anywhere more than three years in my life. Four years. Yeah, I was persuaded.
Dr. Lisa: That’s a pretty strong sister pull. You must have a good relationship.
Sonya: We do.
Jessica: Well Sonya also lived with me when she graduated from high school so there’s a little bit of a history of that actually. Sonya’s great company and so she’s not only a great sister she’s just a great human and I think that that’s pretty evidenced by her making Portland home. Portland used to be my city until Sonya moved here, so now it’s very funny I hear “Oh, you’re Sonya’s sister?” I say “No, Sonya is MY sister.” There’s a big difference. I was here first.
Dr. Lisa: Jessica, are you the middle child? You have an older sister as well?
Jessica: We do. We have an older sister so I’m the middle and Sonya’s the youngest.
Sonya: Shout out to Andrea. She’s in New Hampshire. Not far away, but …
Dr. Lisa: What’s the age difference? What’s the age spread?
Sonya: I just figured this out the other day. Jess is exactly four years older than I am, and then Andrea is seven years old than I am, so then there’s about almost three between them.
Dr. Lisa: What I like is that each of you is in the arts field, but each of you does something pretty different. Talk to me about why you made the choices you did in your career paths and was it influenced by what your other sisters were doing?
Jessica: I can start with that. I was really influenced in this interesting way by Portland and when I came to Portland it was a total accident that the first thing I did was open an art gallery. I was looking for an apartment and instead found a great space that turned into the Dead Space Gallery with Tanja Hollander so that’s how I got to Portland is by starting a gallery. It’s quite amazing for me that that was my introduction to the city and everyone was so warm and so welcoming. Tanja and I did that for several years. For me it’s very much about the visual arts and so Sonya is on the other side which is the performing arts. Then there are definitely some areas where we cross over, but I think it’s a really good line of visual and performing.
Sonya: Yeah, I think the irony is I’ve been at Space for nine years. I started off performing there. I had my CD release party there and then I became on their event staff and here we are nine years later and my sister’s the board president and it’s just … it’s ironic and it’s really telling of who we are as people. Jess is in the professional role and I’m house managing or performing or getting hip hop artists in or slinging drinks or working the door and it’s funny that that is where our worlds eventually collided.
Dr. Lisa: Do you use some of these middle child and youngest child kind of traits to do the jobs that you do?
Jessica: That’s a good question. I’m a connector. I really see my job as being … I think of myself as an arts ombudsman in a way. Is that people bring issues to me and then I try and then solve them in a way. I think about it as creative problem solving and so that’s what I do in the arts world both at Maine College of Art and at Space Gallery and just the work that I do as an arts advocate in this city. Really interested in how can we move the needle on the arts and raise the bar and have a different kind of conversation and create change. That’s what I’m really interested in doing. I think Portland’s at this really interesting moment. When I came here almost 20 years ago it was a very different city. This is the city I wanted 20 years ago and so I’m thrilled and in a way what’s really interesting is I’ve always wanted to make things better so that Sonya has a better city, so that my son has a better city, so I’m really interested in that. I think that those skills that you have in your birth order, mine for the middle child, definitely play into that.
Sonya: I agree. Like I said, as the youngest I think you often feel like you have this safety net. You’re taken care of. There’s people looking out for you, and I think Jess has done nothing but push me further on that limb since I moved to Portland. I funded my first album through a grant from the Maine Arts Commission completely. Then I’ve branched out, Genevieve knows, doing teaching artist gigs at the Telling Room. I think Jess has pushed me to take risks and really explore what I’m feeling and because that is her role to sort of be that stable anchor in life I felt good about knowing that she knew what she talking about, that she had done the leg work for me and that these were going to be successful avenues for me to take risks in the arts world.
Dr. Lisa: It’s also interesting that you work with the Maine Women’s Fund.
Sonya: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: There’s the sister aspect of things and the female aspect of things, and Genevieve and I were talking about this earlier, and you work for the Maine Women’s Fund.
Sonya: I do.
Dr. Lisa: Do you translate some of this sisterhood love into the type of work that you do?
Sonya: I think, in ways. It’s ironic, my relationship with the Maine Women’s Fund, again, Jessica was a new girl in their New Girls Program and encouraged me to apply for a New Girl’s Network for Social Change Fund. I did and then I did hip hop workshops in Longcreek Development Center with a Girl Unit. I did this hip hop workshop there and then did the same at Preble Street Resource Center and …
Jessica: Actually I nominated you, first. That was what was first. I was really proud of the work that you were doing as a female in this very male dominated hip hop world. It’s not rap. I’ve learned that. Hip hop. So Sonya was doing some really interesting work talking about really social issues, gender equity in the hip hop field, and so I nominated Sonya for a Maine Women’s Fund Award. That was where that started.
Sonya: I was an awardee first.
Jessica: You were an awardee. So I was very proud. Nominated and you won. That was the first introduction.
Sonya: That’s right. Then I became a grantee and now …
Jessica: An employee.
Sonya: And now an employee, so definitely there’s some crossover there.
Genevieve: So do you ever fight? It all seems very rosy.
Sonya: We really don’t.
Genevieve: What about when you were younger?
Jessica: That’s a different story. I think what’s really lovely is that, I don’t think we’ve said this, but Sonya and I actually live in the same house so the way that it works is I have a two-story home that I own so my family lives upstairs and Sonya and her husband live downstairs. I think the biggest joke about that is I never see her and so when we want to see each other we have to go …
Sonya: We walk to work.
Jessica: Sometimes we walk to work and then we go to lunch. It’s ridiculous but we are both very, very busy and so my rosy fantasy about what I would be to live in the same house just haven’t kind of worked out in that way. Our schedules are too busy.
Sonya: I think I see more of your son than you because I babysit so you can go out. We really don’t fight. It’s pretty crazy.
Dr. Lisa: Or you didn’t fight until you said that thing about seeing more of her son.
Sonya: Historically, we’ve … Jess has always been really even keeled. I think the three of us fought some, but we really have never been that way.
Jessica: I think Sonya’s just very good for me. She’s just very calm and has a very different perspective than I do and I think it’s really interesting because it’s an exchange of learning. In the same way that you think I’m paving the way, Sonya can show me a different way of being, about being a little calmer, a little mellower, just a different more laid back approach. I’m a little high strung and so I do learn from Sonya a different way of being in the world.
Sonya: Yeah, and I would say actually in the last five years it’s been this interesting turn of being the little sister and always being thought of as the little one and needing to be nurtured and now it is great to see this turn and we’re really friends. I think what you’re saying both being out there in the world and trying to do things in Portland, there’s this appreciation for what each other can get done and I think that I’m feeling more like an adult in our relationship in the last five years, which has been great. We do definitely balance each other out. I always say to her I would be friends with you if we weren’t sisters and it’s so true and cliché.
Genevieve: Well of the things Lisa and I were thinking about when it comes to this show is the idea of competition versus collaboration and it’s something, Jessica that you and I have worked as my representation of the Telling Room and you at Space. Space and the Telling Room have had kind of a sisterly, brotherly relationship. I love this idea that you can … that collaboration actually breeds success more than competition and I think that Lisa and I talk a lot about that. That it’s not either or it’s both.
Sonya: Yeah, and that’s funny because I think our dream … we’ve talked about … we’ve never … Space is as close as we’ve gotten to working together and I think there is this idea that we love … I’m at the Maine Women’s Fund doing this good work for women and girls in Maine and my sister’s doing this great work being an arts chair leader and we have this dream of how could we work together at the same job and what would that look like? Would this relationship stay the same? We hope to fully collaborate at some point.
Jessica: Yeah, I think we bring very different things to the table. It’s amazing because I honestly … now thinking about it it’s like do we fight and is there competition? No, I can’t think of the last time I yelled at you. Like maybe in high school.
Sonya: Yeah. Yeah I think. I think I borrowed your clothes once without asking. Really, I think that was it.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, and it would be a little harder to do that now. She’s a little bit taller.
Sonya: That’s funny you say that, Lisa because I was thinking about the fact that … to see people’s expressions when they finally see us in the same room and figure it out that both of our last names are Tomlinson. The only thing we really have in common is our voice so I think that’s … people will say that. They’ll look at us, and I think I’m 5’ 2” and you’re 5’ 11”, and people will say “Never would have pinned you for sisters, but now that I’m hearing you talk …” So out there in the radio land you see a commonality most don’t.
Jessica: Twins. We’re twins on the radio.
Sonya: Yeah.
Genevieve: I’m struck by the idea that you have created a home for your little sister and that’s very special. How did that kind of bond come about? Was there something in your birth family that created a stronger sense of siblinghood?
Jessica: I would definitely say … our parents are divorced, and I’d say that always does change your family dynamics. The way that it worked when I was … yeah, I was ten and you were seven.
Sonya: Six, yeah.
Jessica: Six? When they got divorced and so then we would go and fly to see my dad once a month. I would be the unaccompanied minor with Sonya flying, so once a month we would fly. My dad moved around a lot in the country so we would fly once a month. We logged some serious miles together on airplanes and it’s an intense bonding experience I would say. The two of us would do these trips once a month. Literally the people … the stewardesses in Chicago knew us by name. It was like we had our own little flight pins. We were veterans of airline travel and so that really did, I think, cement … so I did feel responsible, very much so, to be traveling across the country with Sonya and being responsible for her … obviously her physical well-being but also emotional well-being. I think that definitely created a pattern for life which I’m grateful for, but as Sonya said I think it’s interesting. It might have stemmed from this divorce, creating this kind of intense bond but in terms of responsibility now I do feel like as we’re getting older it’s more of a shared mutual responsibility.
Sonya: Yeah. I looked up and saw these two incredible sisters, this mom who was managing it, and as I get older I have much greater respect for the fact that she was a single mom of three children. Then also are grandmother, my mom’s mom, was this incredible figure in all of our lives and she and her … my grandfather got divorced early, so I just saw this lineage of incredibly strong female role models four or five deep and so I think that bonded us too.
Jessica: Oh God, and I work at the Maine Women’s Fund. Oh wow.
Sonya: Ladies. Yeah, I think that that was huge. Obviously when something happens in your family dynamic and something falls apart you really work that much stronger to keep what’s left together and everybody did.
Dr. Lisa: Well I’m sure that the Maine Women’s Fund is going to be very happy to have you bring in that strong, matrilineal aspect of things. I think that’s a good thing to end on. We’ve really appreciated your spending time with us today and talking about what it’s like to be sisters working in your respective fields. We’ve been talking to Jessica Tomlinson, the Director of Artists at Work at Maine College of Art and Board President of Space Gallery and also hip hop recording artist and Grants and Outreach Manager at the Maine Women’s Fund, Sonya Tomlinson. Thank you so much for coming in today.
Jessica: Thanks to both of you.
Sonya: Thank you for making the connection.