About

Early Life and Family Background

Thaïs Carmen Corina Woodville Albert, known professionally as Tai Woodville, was born in 1980 in Los Angeles, California. Raised in a bohemian environment on a rustic working ranch in the rural hills of Malibu, Tai grew up in a family of professional Hollywood actors and artists. She is the only child of British actor, painter, and poet Kate Woodville ("Star Trek") and Mexican-American actor, photographer, and activist Edward Albert ("Butterflies Are Free"). Her paternal grandparents were esteemed actor and activist Eddie Albert ("Roman Holiday," "Green Acres") and Mexican-American actor, dancer, singer, and activist Margo ("Lost Horizon").

An Artist Rooted in Rich Cultural Traditions

Tai Woodville's artistic journey is deeply influenced by her heritage, intertwining Toltec wisdom and Mexican shamanism with Celtic and Irish Druid practices. Her father instilled a profound respect for her Mexican roots, emphasizing nature as a sacred space and artistic self-expression as integral to spiritual life. Her paternal grandmother, Margo, connects her to notable relatives such as her great-great-aunt, singer Carmen Cugat, known as "The Velvet Voice," married to Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat, and Mexican-American multi-modality artist and dancer Rosa Rolando. Tai's Celtic heritage, inherited from her mother, emphasizes nature's sacred significance and the transformative power of the bardic tradition, viewing art as a bridge between the mundane and the sacred.

This background instilled in Tai a reverence for nature and an intrinsic experience of its magic in everyday life. Both indigenous Mexican and Celtic traditions share a reverence for nature, belief in an interconnected web of life, recognition of the sacred in the everyday, and the transformative power of art. Tai's work explores this interconnectedness through writing, music, and movement. She seeks to channel the ancient wisdom of her lineage to create spiritually resonant and transformative works, reconnecting the self with the living spirit within and without.

Early Artistic Pursuits and Education

Tai began writing creatively at the age of five and started singing and composing songs by the age of ten, recording her first demos on a two-track cassette player in her childhood room. Her family consistently encouraged and supported her artistic passions. 

Tai holds a Bachelor of Arts in Literature with a Creative Writing emphasis from UCSB's College of Creative Studies, graduating in 2002 under the mentorship of Santa Barbara poet laureate Barry Spacks. During her studies, she published her first chapbook, "Fireplay," a vibrant debut celebrating the beauty of the mundane, youthful sensuality, self-discovery, and her emerging understanding of her own queerness. 

Music Career

In 2003, Tai formed the indie rock band Sugar in Wartime. Characterized by raw, emotive vocals and lively, driving performances, the trio garnered a dedicated local following, performing regularly at renowned Los Angeles venues like The Derby, The Mint, The Joint, and The Whisky A Go Go. Sugar in Wartime released their debut full-length album, "Out of the Woods," in 2007, the same year the group disbanded. Tai has performed as a soloist at The House of Blues, The Wadsworth Theater, and the Ford Amphitheater in Los Angeles.

In 2022, Tai released a new music project under the moniker Flight Call, featuring warm, meditative vocals, uplifting melodies, sparkling vintage synths, and analogue drum machines. The album "HOMEWORLD" is now streaming on all platforms. Portland Art Museum's PAM CUT selected Flight Call's music video, "Diamond Age," to screen at its Music Video & Comedy Festival in 2024 at the Tomorrow Theater.

Literary Achievements 

Tai's writing has appeared in Atticus Review, Visitant, Lit Angels, Pinegrove Literary Review, and elsewhere. In 2010, Tai launched her top-ranking mystical philosophy blog, PARALLAX: Exploring The Architecture of Reality. The following year, in 2011, Finishing Line Press published her poetry collection, "POLLEN," a meditation on finding beauty in the face of impermanence. From 2014 to 2017, Visitant Lit featured Woodville as a monthly guest poet. Her poem "Winter Fruit" received a Pushcart Nomination in 2016. In 2014, Tai collaborated with fellow writers Alissa Hattman and Sara Jackson-Holman on the poetry collection "HER ANIMAL INHERITANCE," exploring themes of generational memory, the wild feminine, and healing inherited pain through shared storytelling. This collaboration led to a video poem, "HER ANIMAL INHERITANCE, Volume 2," published by the Atticus Review in 2019, filmed during a three-day artist residency at Seaview, Oregon's historic Sou' Wester. In 2023, best-selling author Francesca Lia Block's LIT ANGELS published "Activation," the first chapter of Tai's in-progress novel, in its "Otherworlds" issue.

Conceptual Movement Work

Tai considers the body, movement and somatic work integral to her personal practice as an artist and performer. She seeks to bring a physical dimension to her poetry by combining improvisational movement with her writing and music.  In 2017, she performed somatic movement to an improvised musical performance by musician, singer, and songwriter Emily Overstreet at Portland's Dolores Winningstad Theater. In 2019, Tai performed conceptual movement to her poetry and live-generated electronic music by Mountain on the Moon at the Bodecker Foundation's "Deep Happening" event in Portland.

Artist Statement

Tai says: "Art is a tunnel back to wholeness, stripping away falsehoods to touch what is true. When authentically expressed, the personal becomes universal, reconnecting us with all life. For me, artistic self-expression is a spiritual practice that combats everyday disconnection, deepening my awareness of the energy connecting us all—The Great Mystery. In our postmodern capitalist society, art acts as a homing beacon, bridging us back to our inherent wisdom and intuition. My art aims to mirror our innate value and sacred spirit, highlighting life's magic and beauty while normalizing our secret sufferings. Art is a doorway leading us back ourselves, others and our environment. Art is a bridge between the mundane and the sacred in a world that has forgotten that the mundane is sacred." 

Current Endeavors

Tai Woodville resides in the serene woodland outskirts of Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two cats. She is currently putting the finishing touches on a poetry collection, crystallizing her most enduring poems from the past twenty years, and completing a long-simmering lyric memoir about growing up in a family of Hollywood actors, exploring the fine line between magical thinking and genuine magic. She works as a professional freelance editor.