Meet Jenny Alice Watts

We recently connected with Jenny Alice Watts and have shared our conversation below.

Jenny Alice, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?

Creativity is my natural state. My equilibrium. When all else is pushed aside, it’s the force that anchors my inner world to the outer world. I’ve always said that if I could be successful in any career other than the arts I would snap to it in a second (because why the ff would anyone choose to be an artist).

That being said, the practical part of my brain that thirsts for gold stars and validation never seems to be satisfied. I thrive on due dates, high demands, and high praise. The benefit? Productivity and growth. The downside? Burnout.

Periodically my creativity thrives, and periodically it dies. By the end of June of this year, it was dead, to be replaced by anxiety, anger, self-destructive tendencies, and jealousy. Then, in July, I was in a car accident.

(I’m fine, mostly.)

Whiplash turned into a severe concussion and a herniated disk. Suddenly I couldn’t work, look at screens, or even hold a proper conversation. My inner world and outer world became an overwhelming fuzz, and I existed in the grey. Unable to think, my intuition became my only guide. And my intuition started making puppets.

So there I was, almost 30 years old, sitting in my parents’ basement crafting toy pigeons for a music video (“Stupid Little Bird,” song out now 😉), feeling more connected to my creativity than I had in years.

So how do I keep my creativity alive? I watch it thrive, then I watch it die. I stop forcing and let my intuition take over – even when it wants me to make puppets.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I’m a photographer, filmmaker, and musician. I mostly make portraits of other creatives (musicians, comedians, performers), but also do documentary-style event photography. On the film side, I recently worked as Director of Photography on Great Minds, directed by Alice Marks, and I’m currently developing a short film to accompany my first solo EP, Stupid Little Bird and Other Small Tales, which will be released in 2026.
What excites me most about my work is the collaboration, especially with musicians. I love working with people who, up until that point, have only expressed themselves through sound. There’s something really special about being part of that transformation and helping them translate their ideas into something they can see.
When I’m creating for myself, especially with my own music, I get excited over having full creative control over the story. My artistic style leans toward a kind of heightened reality; I craft worlds that feel familiar but just slightly off-kilter. The stories I tell often start with something I’m feeling or experiencing and then get reimagined through a more surreal, symbolic lens.
Right now, I’m deep into my EP, Stupid Little Bird and Other Small Tales, and its accompanying short film. The film features an extended version of my single “Stupid Little Bird” and introduces characters from a world I’ve been building since my car accident earlier this year. That accident (and the forced stillness that came with recovery) actually reignited my creativity. It gave me the time and space to reconnect with my rogue creative side, and I remembered how satisfying it is to make things purely for the sake of making them.
I’ve been working on this EP for over a year with producer Brayden Baird, and it’s my first real step into sharing myself as a musician. For a long time, I boxed myself in, telling myself I had to choose one medium (photography), and the worst thing I could be is a “jack of all trades”. But the truth is, limiting how you express yourself limits the stories you can tell. So this project is me breaking out of that, letting all my creative languages talk to each other, and striving to be a “master of some”.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

First and most-boring I’d say is understanding the core principles of art (Color, value, composition, etc). As a freshman in college, I hmm’d and haaa’d along with all the other 18 year olds at the idea of painting color wheels and following “rules” when it was soo much cooler to break them. But as an adult, I realize how deeply those fundamentals affect the way I communicate through my work. They’re not just visual tools, they’re psychological ones. They guide how an image feels. Whenever I’m unsure about a piece I go back to those basics. I ask myself whether the colors, shapes, and balance are actually serving what I’m trying to say. And if I’m still unsure, I ask for feedback. That’s number one. Hot take – no great work exists in isolation.
The second would be patience, and learning to let things take the time they need. Rome was not built in a day, and truly anything great has been thought and re-thought 100 times before reaching its final form. I have a tendency to either rush projects out of fear I won’t finish them, or I’ll get overwhelmed immediately and not start them at all. Now I know that stepping away, letting ideas breathe, and coming back with new eyes almost always leads to something inspired and unexpected. Creativity moves in cycles. It ebbs and flows. I’ve learned that it’s okay to pick things up, put them down, and come back when the spark returns.
It feels cliché to talk about channeling your inner child when you’re creating something like puppets, but that sense of play is essential. When I started making puppets during my recovery, it became this unexpected outlet where I could use all the skills I’d developed over the years without the pressure of perfection or profit. I haven’t been able to achieve this feeling with photography since I became so business minded about it. So much pressure has been placed on making art something you can make money off of, and the result is a watered down oversaturated market of depressed creatives creating things they hate. It’s important to make art for you and it’s ok, nay, necessary, to make art with the expectation of nothing in return.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I am looking for lighting Assistants!

Because of my neck injury I am unable to lift more than like 15 pounds, so simple set ups that were a breeze beforehand are now impossible for me to do alone. Open to all levels of experience.

I also have a photography studio in East Williamsburg which is available for daily rentals. HMU if you’re looking for a place to shoot!

You can email [email protected] or DM @jennyalicewatts on Instagram

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jennyalicewatts.com
• Instagram: jennyalicewatts
• Facebook: n.a
• Linkedin: n.a
• Twitter: n.a
• Youtube: n.a
• Yelp: n.a
• Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/jennyalicewatts/stupid-little-bird
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/track/6M3I59sZFjam5BPgr1a4M0?si=Ay6ceWxaT66JNmKoNHVyqw

Image Credits

All images are by me (Jenny Alice Watts)