DPYears later, in 1989, I got a call from Robert Blackburn. Bob said, \u201cI have somebody here you know,\u201d and put Aminah on the phone. She was an artist in residence at his Printmaking Workshop. That call sparked a relationship that grew until her passing in 2015. There were other artists who encouraged me, too, like Romare Bearden. As an undergrad, my work was exploring family and memory in Patoka, Indiana, where my father\u2019s family is from. I remember when I saw Bearden\u2019s Prevalence of Ritual\u2014his Mecklenburg County was my Patoka.<\/p>\n
Earlier today, during the drive from my studio in upstate New York to yours in Brooklyn, I was thinking about how we often come full circle. I\u2019ve lived long enough now to appreciate the way the ripples we make in the world intersect. I feel like I have been on that continuum with my students, particularly from Cooper Union and Queens College.<\/p>\n
NGThat\u2019s what happens.<\/p>\n
DPIn 1986, I moved from Columbus, Ohio, to New York City to attend Pratt Institute. I was pursuing an MFA in painting, but I became a teaching assistant in art history for Lawrence Campbell. He was an art critic and historian who taught courses on modern art at Pratt and the Art Students League. Every week, he loaned me a different folder on a Black artist from the Art Students League archive. Anyway, he was friends with Bearden and Ernest Crichlow. Bearden, Crichlow, and Norman Lewis founded a gallery\u2014<\/p>\n
NGOh, yes, Cinque Gallery in New York City.<\/p>\n
DPProfessor Campbell encouraged me take my slides to Crichlow, who lived just a few blocks away from Pratt. In that first meeting, he arranged my first solo exhibition in Manhattan, at Cinque Gallery in 1988.<\/p>\n
NGThat\u2019s amazing.<\/p>\n
DPCinque originally opened on Astor Place in 1969 and moved to SoHo in 1988. My show was their inaugural exhibition in the space at the corner of Broadway and Prince Street. Professor Campbell was instrumental in helping to launch my art career. He insisted I apply for an internship at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and that internship helped launch my museum career. I didn\u2019t know anybody when I moved to New York City.<\/p>\n
NGBut look at you now. You always say, \u201cI\u2019m too shy,\u201d but you have a great presence. There\u2019s an idea that when you go to art school someone will teach you to paint. But that\u2019s not what art school is for. You go to get reinforcement for something that you don\u2019t know exists. It\u2019s about dreams and the idea of becoming. It\u2019s like when actors say they put their own bodies on the stage. That\u2019s what artists do with their artworks. All artists are secondary narcissists. That\u2019s why we come to see each other\u2019s work. We make art for it to be seen. And then viewers respond to it, and you\u2019re amazed by their responses because the work came out of you.<\/p>\n
DPYou make what you make, and it\u2019s so personal, but then you\u2019re amazed at how other people respond. I completely agree. There was a time when I thought I should stop making work about my family. I was also told this by someone whose name I will not mention.<\/p>\n
NGYou\u2019re kidding! It was probably an art person.<\/p>\n
DPIt was ridiculous. It kind of messed with me a little bit. I\u2019ve never made work because I wanted to sell it. I wanted to teach, and I was grateful that I had that desire because I didn\u2019t want to try to live off my work. But the ridiculous suggestion did make me slow down and consider what else I\u2019m interested in making work about. And then I thought, Why am I looking for something else?<\/p>\n
NGIt was all there. You make work about tenderness.<\/p>\n
DPThe tender artist. (laughter)<\/p>\n
I like to learn new things and explore new mediums. Before the pandemic, I began making clay sculptures and assemblages. I didn\u2019t think, Oh, I\u2019m gonna show these, or I\u2019m gonna sell these. Then, when it came time to put together an exhibition at Jane St. Art in Saugerties, New York, I told Colin, \u201cI guess I better be thinking about the show coming up.\u201d He said, \u201cYou work all the time. Just present the new work as vignettes.\u201d That\u2019s how I approach most exhibitions now. I work simultaneously in several ongoing series, and I work in various mediums. It feels very natural to flow between painting, drawing, sculpture and site-specific installation. I give myself permission to do what I feel like doing because what else am I going to do? I freeze when I think too hard about it.<\/p>\n
NGYes, because that\u2019s not how we\u2019re constructed. Real artists are like volcanoes. They\u2019re either always there and then they gush, or they\u2019re constantly running. But they\u2019re not for containment or for hire. It\u2019s a gift. So many people try to capture it, to sell it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DPYears later, in 1989, I got a call from Robert Blackburn. Bob said, \u201cI have somebody here you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493769,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[17807,14059,146,501,85,96946,46,5777,56986,5394,5778,5607,10193,1266,98461,762,1264,7485],"class_list":["post-493768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-artists","tag-black","tag-entertainment","tag-family","tag-il","tag-im","tag-israel","tag-its","tag-ive","tag-know","tag-like","tag-make","tag-making","tag-people","tag-think","tag-time","tag-work","tag-youre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493768","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493768\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}