Profile: Jacinda Smith

Posted by Danell Horan in Students

Jacinda Smith. Photo by Jason Stilgebouer.

Santa Fe University of Art and Design student Jacinda Smith sat dressed as a witch outside her campus apartment with a bowl full of candy and caramel apples from 1-4 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 29. Though turnout was slim for Smith’s trick or treating event, Smith was not deterred from focusing on and pursuing her other activities planned for this fall and next spring.

Now that Halloween is over, Jacinda Smith, a Music Performance major, plans to focus on preparing for a Japanese festival and her senior show in the spring, as well as prepping to do a special effects makeup series with photographer Christina Marshall this fall.

The Japanese festival she will be partaking in will be with a group of students led by senior Maggie Yu, where they will perform a unison dance, possibly with traditional Japanese fans.

She is also currently planning her senior show and focusing on growing her voice to its full maturation. “I still have kind of like a high schooler sounding voice and I’m trying to condition to sound more like a 23 year old woman sounding voice,” Smith says.

Lina Ramos, Smith’s vocal instructor, believes Smith has made good progress the last two years. According to Ramos, when Smith first came under her teaching, she was a beginner; however, that has changed. “Jacinda has wonderful technicality and of course it comes out in her selections…I think she’s very patient and methodical, and she takes direction well,” Ramos says.

Smith plans to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, First Day of My Life, and Rolling in the Deep as part of her senior show next spring, and will play the bass guitar and piano.

Inspired to sing seriously, first, by the All American Rejects in 2005, Smith’s current inspiration is Freddie Mercury. “Because I can be shy on stage, and so I look up to him for not being that way. Because Freddie Mercury was pretty shy himself, but I have to remember, you have to have your own different persona on stage and that’s what he did,” she says.

While music performance is her first passion and hopeful career, special effects makeup is a hobby Smith has enjoyed for the past five years, starting with her first job in a haunted house, House of Torment, based in Austin, TX, where Smith is originally from. She also served as assistant makeup artist in SFUAD’s Final Cutz this past summer.

Christina Marshall, who uses Smith as a model in her shoots, agreed to help Smith create her special effects portfolio. “I’m just going to do studio shots for her makeup. So she’ll do [the] makeup and I’ll do studio lighting so I can take pictures for it,” Marshall says.

Smith hopes to continue her special effects makeup artistry on the side, while pursuing the production and live performances of her own music upon graduation spring 2018.

Before anything else, Smith believes perseverance is key to her success as both a musician and artist. “And I compare myself to others a lot, so I keep telling myself that just because you’re at this stage doesn’t mean I don’t have room to grow. So that might be what it is, always remember that you have room to grow and it’s never too late,” she says.

To her fellow musicians, she says, “Don’t be discouraged. And I know that’s easier said than done, but that’s where the perseverance comes in. Always just keep pushing forward. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be very tough, but I feel like that’s kind of the fun of it.”

Smith plans to return to Austin upon her graduation to be with family and later move in with a friend, while continuing her music career post-graduation.