Meet Gwendolyn Kuhlmann | Artist & Creative Strategist

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

Hi Gwendolyn, what’s one piece of conventional advice that you disagree with?
I’ve become allergic to the idea of the Career Path. I suppose it’s good to start with – while we’re still finding our way, transitioning from being students to being professionals. But at a certain point, either the benchmarks have been reached or they’ve been missed, and you look up and wonder, “Well, what the hell was all that for?” Because with a Career Path, you don’t have to know why you’re doing it. You just have to know the next step everyone else took, then take it, too. So much of the idea hinges on approval from other people – we go from getting straight A’s to getting the promotions and the salaries. None of it has anything to do with an inner compass, an inner desire, a wish, a passion, a purpose. In a Career Path, your voice doesn’t matter; it’s your utility to whatever system’s ladder you’re climbing.

I say all this because it’s the first set of thoughts I had that helped me finally find my voice. For over a decade, I had followed the Career Path of the Opera Singer. I went to undergrad, then grad school. I even moved to Germany (very much part of the dedicated opera singer’s path) and started working in opera theaters there. I thought singing on all the big stages and getting all the big solo roles my voice was meant for would mean I won. I would have success. I would have fame. I would get to be an artist and have a point of view. And until then, I needed to do what I was told and just Be Better.

I finally realized I had it all tangled up and turned around when my husband and I were ready to start a family, and my biggest hang up was whether I needed to wait out the next audition season because “what if I finally MAKE IT, but I’m PREGNANT?!” It was this wake-up call when I realized that I didn’t actually have something bigger I was doing this for. I didn’t know my why – I wasn’t even sure if I actually cared about this music. I just wanted to feel like I could create, that my voice mattered.

Those were the first gifts I gave myself when I left my Career Path: my voice, my ability to create, and my why.

Actually being a leader in your industry means forging your own path. It means learning how to listen to yourself, rather than follow what everyone else says you should be doing, and it means feeling lost at least half the time, or honestly, you’re not doing it right.

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 create large-scale community art projects with the fundamental belief that every voice, every story, matters, but it took a while to get here.

I was kind of talking about this before with the Career Path, so I’ll continue it here.

When I looked around and realized I didn’t know why I even cared about classical music – this music I had dedicated most of my life to – I took a step back and started asking myself, “well, what do I care about in general? What matters to me?”

Up until that moment, I had been a friend of and advocate for refugees who had reached Germany in 2015/2016 during the influx during the Iraq and Syrian wars. They were trying to make new lives in a place where they knew no one and didn’t speak the language. I was part of a group of New Berliners (refugees) and Old Berliners (anyone who had been there longer and felt more established in their lives). We would meet every week and check in, then share a story from our lives that connected to a specific song, then we’d play that song for each other on YouTube. Sometimes, we would sing them ourselves. Every story, every conversation was translated between Arabic and German or English, so even before the New and Old Berliners could talk to each other directly, we’d already fallen in love. It was incredible to see the power of us telling each other our stories and sharing our music to bind us together, and what came from that love. What we had the strength to withstand and the courage to strike out and acheive – not just for the New Berliners. I felt like I was supplied with rocket fuel during that time.

I’d also volunteered as a utility advocate once we moved to Oakland, California, pulling out my best White Karen and climbing the hierarchy of the local water company’s customer service line, ending up by the head of customer service, who knew our organization by name. I’d tell them the story of my client, we’d create a payment plan, then we’d go to other local charities, tell the client’s story again, and see who could help them come up with the down payment. While I was there, I met a woman who was living out of the back of a U-Haul with her four kids and her husband, an employed union painter in Oakland.

I started seeing that the connecting thread was stories. That I’m good at telling them and providing the space for them to be told, and that when we have the space to tell our story, we come to a deeper truth. A truth that matters and must be shared. We get a why that is the sum total of everything we’ve ever experienced. Suddenly, nothing you’ve ever been through is senseless – it’s a contribution. It gets to all matter. It’s empowering.

And with classical music, I suddenly realized I had a way to platform people’s stories. Especially the kind of people and the kind of stories from situations that society talks a lot and worries a lot about, but doesn’t often think to ask or platform the people who are actually going through it. I knew my art could do that.

So, now pregnant with my first child, I interviewed five women who had experienced housing instability and homelessness as mothers – starting with the mother I met while I was a utility advocate – the one who had been living it of the U-Haul with her kids. By now, she had become a friend. I asked them what is was like, how they got through the day, and how they taught their children that they matter when the world was telling them a different story. I took audio clips from those interviews and wove them into a live performance of Schubert’s Winterreise, letting the women’s stories uplift the music, and letting the music uplift everything the women were telling me. It’s called The Winter’s Journey Project.

We give art meaning through our stories, and we give our stories meaning through art.

Now I’m creating my largest project yet – an aural history of the EF4 tornado that struck my hometown of Newnan, GA, in 2021. When my family and I moved to Atlanta, we first stayed with my parents in Newnan – landing one week after the tornado hit. I got to see the phenomenal response, the way our town came together to help each other, and the level of organization the local NGOs had that was able to magnify any help that came from the national level. I remember driving through the wreckage and thinking, “I wonder what people will say about this after all of this is cleaned up and a memory? How will we see each other after this? Who will Newnan be after this? What will give us hope?”

Now, three and a half years later, it’s time to tell the story. The aural history will be stored for years to come for anyone who is curious about the once-in-a-century tornado, and on the 5th anniversary of the storm, the project will culminate in a live performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons: Recomposed by Max Richter, featuring the voices of our community, telling their stories about the seasons of recovery that they lived through, answering those questions I had as I was driving through the destruction.

It’s called Seasons of Strength, and it’s a fiscally sponsored project of the Coweta Community Foundation – the organization that was a key point of coordination for all the local and national NGOs that came to help after the storm.

This path has and hasn’t been easy. It’s easy in that I no longer feel like I have anyone who has to approve of me to make what matters to me. It’s easy in that every time I’ve created something, it’s opened more doors professionally than I could have seen myself – it is even the reason that I now also have a business as a creative strategist for online businesses, helping business owners tell their story. That never could have come without all this.

It’s hard in that I’m making things that no one has ever seen before, going into sectors that a career as an opera performer never prepared me for. But I like learning, and I’m getting good at wielding my proverbial machete, carving out my own path.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Honestly, with two small kids, I don’t get out much. I’m still getting to know the city, even though I’ve been here three years, but here are some high points from my little bubble:

If you have kids, make sure you check out whatever is happening at the Alliance Theater for kids (Bernhardt Theater for the Very Young). It’s never failed, and it’s often a morning or afternoon of entertainment for $5-$15.

Whether or not you have kids, just take a walk from Krog Street Tunnel into Chalk Level, keeping along the South side of the train tracks to see all the beautiful mural art. You’ll end near Carrol Street Cafe, so go ahead and sit down to enjoy their delicious fare.
Then get on a bike and get moving through the Atlanta Belt Line. If you’re from Europe or a city in the New England and are wondering where the heck all the people are, it’s here. They’re skating, they’re biking, they’re walking, they’re eating in some of the best restaurants, they’re making music…this is where Atlanta feels alive and like an actual city full of people, not just cars.

Also, if you have kids, and it’s a warm time of year, pack your swimsuits and make a slight detour off the Beltline to the Old Fourth Ward Splash Pad.

If you’re here over a weekend in the Fall or the Spring, don’t miss any one of the many neighborhood festivals – Chomp and Stomp in Cabbage Town, Little Five Points Halloween Fest, Kirkwood Spring Fling, Oakurst or Virginia Highlands PorchFest… I could go on.
The special thing I’ve found about Atlanta is that it isn’t a big city; it’s a bunch of small neighborhoods linked together to form a large city. At least, that’s how you experience it as a parent, and it feels so supportive when you’re in that position.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
If I can, I’d love to shout out two Atlantans who have been instrumental in my growth:

First, I want to shout out Jayme Alilaw of From the Core Coaching and Good Soil Management and Productions. She’s a dear friend and coach who has been on a similar journey of leaving the beaten path of the Opera world and creating something so much deeper and more meaningful in the way she impacts the world. Having her to share notes with as a fellow artist, and having her ability as a coach to help me see my own power and “put me all the way right” as she says, have been instrumental in my growth and action-taking over the past few years. With Good Soil, she is at the forefront of changing the opera industry into an environment that supports artists to make great art.

Second, I want to shout out Terra Elan McVoy. She’s an incredible writer and dear friend who co-founded a company called Rootstock, a creative agency that helps company founders, CEOs, and other ambitious leaders to grow their brand from the truth behind it. I’ve been partnering with them, and I can’t tell you how amazing it is to work with people who understand the value of building from the truth. It’s when you realize that growing and marketing a business is the same assignment as creating art: we have to find the truth. It is what moves people and creates the kind of world we want to live in.

Website: https://www.gwendolynkuhlmann.com

Instagram: @gwendolynkuhlmann

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gwendolyn-kuhlmann/

Other: For the Seasons of Strength project:
www.linktr.ee/seasonsofstrengthnewnan or www.seasonsofstrength.org

Image Credits
Credit for Photo 1+2: Tara Swan
Credit for Photo 3: Joshua Lipton