Being an artist
USA 🇺🇸“It was hot as hell in the summer and cold as f*ck in the winter. That's what Detroit is: It’s miserable in the winter and the summer. But it was also rich because everybody was around. There were elders who sat on the porch and who would tell you what to do you know and you better not disrespect him. There was an appreciation I think for the richness of other people's culture and music and definitely food.
“We played outside in the street and I was a kid who loved TV, you know, and I was really really, really shy and loved spending time in the house and my sister kind of liked being out playing in the street so, but kids played in the street. You kind of saw all of the dynamics of humanity play out on your block.
“We moved to Denver when I was a teenager, my mother is from Denver, my grandmother lived in Denver, so all of my Christmases as a kid, we spent in Denver. And my mother had a pretty severe breakdown when I was a teenager and we needed to move home so that she could, really the truth is, so that my grandmother could take care of her daughter. So we moved to Denver, so I had of course the hugest culture shock of my life to go from very black Detroit to very white Denver and I lived there for 29 years so that's my entire adult life time so I have all of this schooling and work and career, art making, creativity that is in Colorado as well.
“I was never not in the arts. My father is a visual artist, my mother is a musician so there was a piano in the house my father had a studio, he lived in the house and then he didn’t live in the house, but either place, he’s always had a studio. And even in the homes he has had on his own he creates a studio so this idea of going to the studio, having your place to make and to create or to sleep or dream or whatever, that's always been part of my consciousness so I've never not been inside of art-making and cultural production. Part of the story goes that my father took me to you know one of the many gallery openings or exhibitions or whatever it was we were doing on some Saturday and I asked him who decides what art gets hung on the wall? And he said that's the curator. And I said that’s what I want to be when I grow up. And so from the age of about six or seven, I realized that that was a powerful place. Who got to define what was art, who got to say what was beautiful, who got to make the decision on what was shown to the community. I wanted to be that.
So in the various creative careers that I've had in my lifetime, most of which played out in Denver, I’ve been curator. At the most, you know, on a simple level curator’s acquire art, they display, exhibit art, and they write about it. The term has been co-opted and everybody’s a curator now but: To take care of, to hold sacred was to curate space.”
“Part of the art-making piece is the dream state and you being able to frame and reframe and create the world that you need, that you want, in your dream state and some people have the opportunity to put those into motion outside of their dream state but that movement there, that knowing there, is how I’ve been able to like re-define myself and the forgive myself and be patient with myself and laugh at myself. And so the making, the being an artist, the stepping fully in to the fact that my curatorial practice is my art practice, it’s like I am not a print maker even though I like to I like to do that and I know I'm not a dancer you know even though I like to do that, I love to dance. I love to sing too but I’m not going to make a record but it’s like the sound energy, the movement energy, the being inspired and impacted and impressed with the reflection that we as artists give each other.
The Dharma, the truth of knowing, like my Buddhist practice of knowing like nobody gets free alone, no one. So if this is about abolition work, if this is about freedom work, if this is about artwork, I'm not going to get free without others like sharing with me this beauty. And there's so many things in society against me, being a dark-skinned black woman, who is queer and who has children and grandchildren you know there's so many things against me that the artwork and the art world and the knowing that my creative self shows up first is what has saved me over and over and over. It's like, okay well you can say that's the story but I got this whole other story that I created in my head and I get to play out that story, I don't have to play out your story.
“I don’t have to play out your story. That’s what being an artist has allowed so, I define this culture, I create what that definition means for myself and I manifest it for myself.”
That's what being an artist has allowed so, I define this culture, I create what that definition means for myself and I manifest it for myself. And I’ve had a lot of mostly a lot of a lot of privilege to do that, I have a lot of scars and I have a lot of successes and because I have a lot of successes, it allows me to be more courageous. It’s like you win some, you lose some. 10,000 joys 10,000 sorrows.”
