Meet Pamela Oliver Muñoz

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Pamela Oliver Muñoz. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Pamela below.

Pamela, 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?

When we were little, we’d ask friends to come out and play by singing their name at their front door. The twins across the street would sing, “Pammy, Laurie”, and my sister and I would go outside to play with them. That’s how I think of creativity. It’s like a friend at my door, always singing my name to come out and play. So when I read articles on how to recapture your childlike spirit and creativity, well, if I were a cartoon character, I’d have big question marks springing from my head. Recapture? I don’t think I’ve ever lost it.

That’s not to say it hasn’t been put on the back burner. Life definitely gets in the way, and sometimes I get in my own way because it’s scary to put your work out there. It’s not always received the way you hope.

After I got my B.S. in Art (no joke) from UW-Madison, I went to the placement office to see about jobs. I was told they didn’t help Art majors get jobs. Gulp. Okay.

I moved to Milwaukee and showed my portfolio to a big department store. The young man at the boss’s desk said he loved them and to come back with an ad for them. I was so excited! When I returned, an older man, his father, was at the desk this time. He took one look at my work, picked up the phone, and said to someone, “The artwork’s no good. We can’t use it.” If I had been a cartoon character, this time I would have had a hole the size of a cannonball shot out of my middle.

I decided to hide away my artwork after that. I got a job designing windows for clothing stores because creativity is like pushing clay through a sieve, those squiggles that come through the holes are still all your same creativity, just in different forms. Then I took post graduate classes in Art Therapy until I ran out of money, and moved to South Texas to live with my sister, Laurie. I was a teacher aide, then got my teaching certificate for art and elementary. But I wasn’t meant to be a teacher. No teacher voice was calling me to come out to play. Our intuition, our gut tells us what’s right and what’s wrong for us. It should be simple to know but the world tells you right and wrong based on different criteria. How much money can you make? Do you get insurance? Will you have a retirement package? Oh, the world can be so loud!

When I had kids, there was no more time to draw but I could take photographs, and after winning a Kodak contest, I thought this might be a safer way to be an artist, not as personal as drawing, and I could get paid. I have done that for 30 years and I love it but that voice never stopped calling me to come out and play. Even more.

I started going to open mics with my husband and we’d write songs and perform. Scared to death but it was exciting, and creative.

I wrote screenplays in notebooks no one would see. I made little commercials for contests, and making a video was like my photos came to life with stories, and wardrobe and props, and camera shot choices – so many ways to be creative! But it took people and money and, well, it took a backseat.

Then during the pandemic, I wondered if I’d ever get to work with people again, and what if I never got to tell the stories? What if I never lived past the pandemic? So I watched a YouTube video on how to hinge paper dolls, and I started to make my own movies using cut paper stop motion. When I fretted about how choppy they looked, my wise daughter, Savannah, said, ”Think South Park, not Disney”, and that released me from worrying about being perfect, because THAT was never going to happen. I wrote the script, made my actors, directed them, put my own songs behind them, edited it all together, and they were all me – inside and out – and for some reason I wasn’t scared to show them anymore. Maybe I was older but no, I’m still as insecure. Maybe it was just that they made me so happy. Maybe I was finally answering that voice singing outside my door to come out and play. When I make stop motions, If I were a cartoon character I’d have hearts fluttering above my head.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’ve been a photographer for 30 years: portrait, family, commercial for clothing stores, headshots, and political candidates. I absolutely adore all of it – it feels like a party, like I honestly get so filled with energy that I barely know what I’m saying or doing, I’m just in the moment, experiencing the people in front of me, the light, the composition, the energy – I love it. I love being part of people’s memories that they’ll have forever. I love for them to see the beauty I see in them.

Recently, I’ve been making short films which is an all-consuming passion! Live action and stop motion, and oh, it’s incredible. I’ve been lucky enough to have been in the South Texas Film Festival, doing stop motions for their 48 hours and won best animation twice, and my live action, “Whatever It Takes” a short musical about how difficult it is to afford healthcare here, and in the got into festivals last year and my lead actor, Aaron Barrera, won best actor for the whole STXIFF festival! It also showed at Cinesol in Brownsville.

A stop motion I made about the separation of families at the border, “Love Has No Borders” was the second one I did. I had written a musical about it but during the pandemic I felt I really had to get this out there. It was a finalist at a few festivals and won first place at the San Diego film festival Migrant Voices Today. You can see it on my YouTube channel @pammomunoz.

I just finished another stop motion called “Hurdles” about quieting the negative voices in our heads, and I’m about to work on a short musical (stop motion or live-action, not sure yet) about the giving girls/women agency to speak up not to have unprotected sex, especially in Texas, especially now.

I was honored to have filmmaker, Joe Rios ask me to create 3 stop-motion sequences for his live-action film coming out at Christmas called, “Eggnog, Sugar Cookies, and Misery”. I’d love to create stop-motion commercials for anyone! I’m also working on a music video for Tina Van’s new album, “Chrysalis”.

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?

Lean into your strengths, whatever they are. I think it’s true that the very things that make you different are the things that make you special. I spent so many years wishing I were more this, or less that, always comparing myself to others and coming up short in my own eyes. Who am I kidding? I still do it. But fight that ridiculous urge. Listen to your gut, the feeling inside that tells you clearly what is right for you and what is wrong. No one else can tell you. It’s all a game, really. It doesn’t matter what you choose to do, it’s all a path to becoming the person you’re meant to be – not the job title you’re meant to have, but the person inside. Like I said, the world is loud but try to listen to your gut.

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?

Probably being number 7 of 8 kids, I had it easier because my older siblings were pretty much perfect, so by the time I came along, expectations had been met, and I was free to be me. My mother was kind and creative and always asked us to imagine what the other person was feeling if we were mad at a friend. “Maybe she had a bad day”. My mom was always creating, making miniature houses, furniture, painting bricks on the walls or murals, painting a rug on the vinyl floor, flowers and a vine on the cracks in the wall. She never cared if we made a mess. My dad was a great photographer chronicling the childhood of all 8 of us, and he was a big sweetheart who wore his heart on his sleeve. They’re long gone but I have a Mom and Dad tree in my yard where I hug the “Mom” side then the “Dad” side, then I lean in the middle and they hug me back.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://pamelomunoz.com
• Instagram: @pamelaolivermunoz
• Facebook: facebook,com/pammomunoz/
• Youtube: @pammomunoz

Image Credits

pamela oliver munoz