Today we’d like to introduce you to Tavair Dominque.
Hi Tavair Dominque, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I grew up in Missouri and different forms of art showed up at different points in my life. Looking back, I think of myself as a closeted creative. I grew up in a hyper-conservative environment where creativity wasn’t really something I felt encouraged to pursue seriously. A lot of that part of me stayed quiet for a long time.
Music and songwriting were probably the first places where that started to change. In my final years living in Columbia, Missouri, I was around a lot of incredibly talented musicians. Being in that environment helped me start taking my own creativity more seriously. That eventually became The Sagacious Traveler, which was a really important chapter for me. It gave me space to experiment, build roots and start understanding myself as an artist.
Over time, that expanded into the deeper pursuit of poetry too. I met a poetry mentor through my day job and that relationship helped me realize there was space for my voice there as well. I had always been drawn to science fiction, space, speculative ideas and questions about what exists between the things we can easily define. Poetry became another way to explore that.
Eventually, I started creating under my own name, Tavair Dominque. After a particularly powerful art experience, a friend reminded me that my name was enough and that stayed with me. It felt less like changing a stage name and more like allowing myself to fully stand behind the work.
Moving from Missouri to Maryland was another major shift. Living on the Eastern Shore introduced me to a completely different environment. Then moving to Baltimore opened things up even further. Being surrounded by so many different people, art forms, communities and ways of thinking has been radically inspiring. It made me want to explore more, not less.
These days, that means music, poetry, visual art, hosting Creative Show and Tell, supporting spaces like Arteasy and Collaboration Laboratory and trying to actually pause long enough to celebrate things like my poetry collection, *Meanderings*, being in the world.
A lot of my trajectory now is about finding and trusting my own voice. I’m trying to give myself permission to start over, rebuild, change direction and hold space for multiple things at once. I don’t feel like I have to be this or that anymore. I can hold the new and the old together. I think that freedom is becoming a big part of how I make art.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. A lot of my creative life has involved restarting, unlearning and learning how to trust myself.
Leaving Missouri was a huge first for me. I was my late twenties and changing almost every part of my life at once. I was also rebuilding after leaving the hyper-conservative religion I grew up in, which meant having to unlearn a lot of the programming I had carried with me for years.
Then I moved from the Eastern Shore to Baltimore after a breakup. I hadn’t been in Maryland very long, so that was another major reset. Building a life again in a new city was difficult, but it also forced me to listen more closely to my own intuition and figure out what I actually wanted my life to look like.
There are also the practical challenges of being a multidisciplinary artist. I’m still learning how to let music, poetry and visual art coexist without forcing everything into one category. Balancing all of that with a day job, time, energy and financial resources is hard.
I’ve also had to get more comfortable with uncertainty. I don’t always know what a project is going to become when I start it. I’m learning to let work be imperfect, to change direction and to trust that not everything needs to arrive fully formed. A lot of the struggle has been learning how to move through that uncertainty without abandoning my own voice.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a multidisciplinary artist working across music, literary work, visual art and community-based creative spaces. I also think of myself as a host and facilitator because a lot of what I care about creatively is not just making work, but helping create room for other people to share theirs.
My work often pulls from grief, mental health, speculative ideas, space and what I think of as the in-betweens. One word that has stayed important to me is John Koenig’s “sonder,” the realization that everyone around you is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. That idea connects deeply to how I observe people, place and memory.
I don’t really see my different art forms as separate. They converse with each other because they’re all snapshots of whatever version of me exists at that moment, and a lot of those versions coexist at once. A song, a poem or a visual piece might approach the same feeling from completely different directions.
Locally, I’m known for showing up in community spaces through Arteasy, Collaboration Laboratory, Brew Tunes and other local events, as well as hosting Creative Show and Tell.
Creative Show and Tell is what I’m most proud of right now. Its structure was influenced by mental health support groups I attended while transitioning out of the religion I grew up in and while working through mental health struggles I’ve carried since I was young. I saw how powerful it could be to sit in a circle where people were given space to share something honestly and be listened to without needing to perform for the room.
I wanted to bring some of that feeling into a creative space. Artists are already sharing pieces of themselves through their work, but I still think there’s a real need for spaces where that sharing feels intentional, safe and communal. Being able to create that and serve my community means a lot to me.
I’m also proud that I’ve gotten better at simply putting my work into the world. Getting past imposter syndrome and allowing myself to be seen has been its own accomplishment. I think what sets me apart is that I’m less interested in choosing one lane and more interested in letting different disciplines, ideas and versions of myself occupy the same space.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
There are a lot of people and communities woven into the work I’ve been able to do.
Miguel Mitchell has been part of my poetry journey and helped me better understand that there was room for my voice, especially around the speculative themes and ideas I was already drawn to.
Duane was one of the people who encouraged me to create under Tavair Dominque. That support helped me feel more comfortable putting my own name at the center of the work instead of feeling like I needed a separate artistic identity.
The musicians and creative friends I’m still tethered to in Columbia also shaped a lot of my early development. Being around people who were actively making music helped me take my own creativity more seriously. Some of those folks from home include Nate and Jessa. They are especially meaningful to me because they’re also childhood friends who found themselves leaving where we came from and building new lives of their own. They’re extraordinary artist and I’m consistently inspired by the way they create.
Since moving to Baltimore, Arteasy and Collaboration Laboratory have both given me community and space to keep developing as a multidisciplinary artist. Lee Allen Schimmel has been part of that support through Collaboration Laboratory and the broader creative community around me.
Politics and Prose played an important role in bringing *Meanderings* into the world and helping me turn years of writing into something tangible that I could share with people.
Michael Iven Schwartz and Brew Tunes have also been part of my time in Baltimore, giving me opportunities to learn more about the city in which I have planted roots, stay connected to other musicians and continue growing through live creative spaces.
Siena Rose has also been an important creative partner. We co-host The Process Podcast, where we talk with artists about how their work gets made. I love learning how other artists think and create, and Siena has been especially inspiring in how she navigates the balance between art, relationships and expectations.
Open Works has been important too, especially as a home for Creative Show and Tell. Having a space that supports the kind of community-centered gathering I wanted to build has allowed that idea to become something real.
And honestly, Baltimore itself has played a huge role. Being in a city with such a strong creative culture, so many different kinds of artists and so many community resources has helped me expand what I thought my own artistic life could look like.
None of these people or spaces exist separately from the work. They’ve all been part of different chapters, projects and accomplishments along the way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tavairdominque.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tavairdominque/
- Facebook: http://facebook.com/tavairdominque
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/tavairdominque/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@tavairdominque
