Kindred Spirits: Contemporary African American Artists

Kindred Spirits, contemporary African-American artist, is funded by Philip Morris Company's Inc., which supports the spirit of innovation in the visual and performing arts. The great art says, I may be sneered at, I may be misunderstood, I may be undervalued, but I shall not be moved, I shall be here, I was here at the beginning of time when the first rocks looked up at the moon I was here, and I shall be here. Like contemporary people, but they may contact with something that has grounded them.

And I think that they're asking all of us to think about that. What is it in your past, in your background, in your upbringing that has made you what you are? You have to remember that the word black meant the devil, it meant something negative. You see, so Africa itself had a completely negative connotation. Now I stopped this trust in this early, this didn't make sense to me because after all, I was a black person and I knew I was human and I knew I had sensitivity. So I knew something was wrong with the information and so very early, I wanted to go to Africa, I wanted to find out about my own culture roots and arriving in Africa was a tremendous experience which I have never gotten over.

My first trip to Africa was in 1972 and the thing that had the strongest impact in on me, I think, was my feeling was the fact of the living art and to me the living art was the people. The people themselves were like sculpture, moving, living sculpture. When I got to Africa here, this kind of atmosphere was everywhere. Women with their claws and as they would move, they looked like exotic birds. It was the presence of the people. People looked you dead in the eye. Nobody looked from side to side. People looked you. They confronted you. A man may be barefooted but he confronted you with such presence. You forgot that he was barefooted because that was such humanity that came forth. So I found, for my inspiration, purposes of growth, I found the art to be in the people. That's what I found.

I was opposed to a sculpture in a case in a museum. They said, Al King shines brighter than the sun. He's most blended than the sun. He gives life to all of us. Queen, she's more peaceful than a full moon. She also gives radiance. The moon, itself, goes behind the cloud when we bring her forth and the people are carrying them in the palakments, a hundred drums, a movie with nothing but energy, energy, but the vibration of energy. You become energy yourself. You no longer have any gold. Suddenly, I realized here was a great culture beyond any kind of description. Here was such a revelation of such great beauty, such profound beauty and such profound meaning. But after them, because of metaphors, he feels ensembles.

His motivation is not just visual, actually consciousness is his permanent reservoir. It is out of consciousness that all of his world is what really comes forth. And this, he believes, is eternal. You see, this is what was completely misunderstood and misrepresented in all those years of black is evil, that darkness is evil in the devil. No, this is the mystery of life, and this is what I'm trying to show. This mystery that comes out of the darkness, the light that comes out of the darkness. I thought that if I brought forth my heritage, the concepts of my heritage, the imagery, then I would make some kind of positive contribution to the overall integration of the market. So I held fast on to Africa because I realized that was the only way that I could really

contribute something positive to the block of wear and the situation in America. The warrior is a sculpture that tends to have a proud stance, chest rolling forward, shoulders leaning back, head tilting forward, looking down as a tall, elegant, dominating type of a figure, and is looking down on the world and saying that I will protect you. The warrior and I are one and the same. The tribes has been separated, but the spirit is still one. The tribal spirits, the way the faces and things is done, is in a disguise because we have

lived in a disguise, our ancestors lived here as happy people with their heart longing for the whole man. We have lived under what we have been taught, but deep down inside that tribal spirit is there and that goes for the blacks down through generations. There is something about Betsy Harvey that is so pure, so spiritual, but I think that she is in touch with the kind of consciousness that perhaps we don't even understand, but she has lived basically in small southern communities and she has been surrounded by black people and heard black voices and been to black churches.

It is that spiritual kind of interpretation and that flow, you know, that she has received from her community that gives her so much truth. Okay, like this piece here, anybody else would look at this as this old stump to throw in the fire, what I do, I take this home and add other pieces and make it what my vision shows me. This is a bird, this is a slapbox, so the birds that have to be on the piece and fuse. Birds is in most of my pieces that I do, and that is because if we have the spirit of the bird, birds are free. And if we have a free spirit, we can escape inner trials, tribulations or troubles, if we just remember that we have the spirit of the bird, we can fly away, we can be free

of it, we can just fly away from it and the spirit. The flesh suffers a lot of things, but in our spirits we can escape and that is why we find freedom added in the spirit, not in the flesh. In this painting, you see two women, one is black and one is white, think in terms of our history here in this country, and what happened in that plantation setting also leads us to know that out of that horrible painful institution of slavery, again, we have two families being cultivated. I'm saying that we are sisters because of what happened during this time period that my blood flows into yours as your flows into mine.

I look at myself in the mirror and I'm aware that I have more than one culture residing in my body, and so we are indeed one family. What one really is brought to see is this statement. The statement is I am a human being, nothing human can be alien to me. That is the statement, it's amazing. This represents the ultimate conclusion that the artist reached after going through the frustration and anger, they as artists had to reach another plateau, another level,

and their awareness of their African heritage was a means of reaching that level. I met Dr. Ellie Muck and I might say that he was a wonderful person, professor of philosophy and we really created the Harlem Renaissance and that was the introduction to black artists of the importance of their heritage and of their ancestral background. The Harlem Renaissance was a very, very important movement, it was a wonderful period when black

artists really blossomed into beauty. It was obvious in the music and singing all of the life of the people, especially in the arts. Dr. Locke was very, very definite in advising me to make use of the heritage that it was really a part of me and so it was that I took his advice and even until this day I am still using the influence as I feel it because I do paint from feeling. I expose myself to this rich background of the ancestral arts in doing much of my present creative work. We really must admit that African art is really giving a very important culture to the world.

The other thing I am aware of in talking to those who have experienced Africa is that that whole notion of family. The love of ancestors and all is another thing that is a little different in our country. I mean they really respect and say very, very much you would be the grill and that we would have to pay you the utmost of respect because you will pass in on the latest seat to me and certainly to Renee. What I do in my own work is to try to bond the African heritage as well as my American experience. When I am creating such an energy and such a flow of creativity and a flow of awareness,

I feel like I am a church. I am living in the present moment but as you can see from the things around my apartment I am surrounding myself with things from the past. So it is everything, I am everywhere at one time when I am creating. What Renee is doing is approaching Africa from a very personal point of view. She has made herself a statement about this continent that she identifies with never having set foot on it. I think from seeing the palmistry shops and like root stores and things like that embossed

and it is like something was telling me that somebody needed these places in order to be able to control the circumstances of their lives. They need to find answers. So through looking at that sort of voodoo that African American voodoo that was being practiced in this country, then I traced through that I found African art and that connection with that I just felt like I wanted to use my own body and put found objects from my immediate environment. I would go back in the alley, back of my house and collect junk that I found and I said I am going to use these materials because these things are from this environment and I am going to take them from this negative environment and turn them into something positive. I felt like in creating that piece, if I never created another one I had created all that I needed to protect me for the rest of my life. Your life was a dream. I think what happened it was as simple as needing a material and not having enough money to buy other materials.

We ended up going to either junk yards or this replating factory. It seemed like when I began to work with these bumpers that I was able to access certain memories that evidently had laid dormant in me for a long time. I began to recognize certain things and readings that I had done over the years in African lore and African mythology, Egyptian mythology and this material seemed to access all of that for me. I recognized that there was a level of reclamation in this, that I was reclaiming this imagery using this contemporary material. It was kind of a combination of this thing being a bumper which I recognized was the front of the car which took the bumps and bruises of the car.

It was in fact, I saw that as a metaphor with black people in the United States of America. I think each time you paint a painting or write a poem, for the moment what you do is you lay a burden inside that work. There is a life in the work and the life is the burden the artist has laid down in it. And it then belongs to all people all the time. It no longer belongs to one person or one race or one culture or not even one time. I am not the artist, God is my artist. He began to show me faces in this wood, animals, people, even in the paneling on the wall.

It seemed that they would just pick out at me. Then I realized God wanted me to bring these people out so the world could see him because he blessed a stick and he gave it to me. And in the Scriptures he said, but he be lifted up that he will draw all men on him. So my sticks lift him up and it's going about all over the world to draw men. The mirror painting, it seemed to have been a natural kind of expression for men, for people in all ages. I felt it was a kind of art expression that lends itself to public exposure, public influence.

And from the very beginning I felt that this was what gave light and illumination to our communities. The major problem in doing this mirror was to create a design in relationship to the staircase and the rise and fall of it as students go up and down. The architecture determines a major composition, a composition of elements. And verticality and architecture is what we want to reflect here. So that students who go up and down the steps, they will rise, this will rise with them. My angelus poem, I rise, is a part of the inspiration for doing both of my roles. I felt that she characterized in that poem, if a philosophy in which what I was trying

to do visually could be embodied. You may write me down in history with your bitter twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still like dust, our rise. You can shoot me with your words, you can cut me with your lies, you can kill me with your hatefulness, but just like life. Our rise, out of the huts of history shame, I rise, up from a past rooted in pain, I rise, a black ocean leaping and wide, willing and swelling, bearing in the tide, leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise, into a daybreak miraculously clear, I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the hope and the dream of the slave.

And soul, there I go. My pain looks like a secret shine, like an African temple of something. This is like a phoenix and they're going up into the heavens, that leads up into the heavens. And a unified is one like a family. I feel that one of the most powerful expressions of the human embrace is with elder figures, embracing youth. So when you see the shotguns with the women on the porches, these become the little tuples, these are tuples.

And these women, they are the wisdom barrows, through their will and through their what they have given us in inheritance, they are helping pull us, and we simply listen to the wisdom, they automatically lift us up. The main thing that's catching my attention is the colors and the unification, because I see myself in that picture. And what I'm trying to do today is unify my people and become one. So represent what I'm about. And I think all men and women are trying to get to heaven, whatever color you are. All of their spirits are returning to the stars, they're returning to the highest point, they're returning to the ultimate, so they are truly finding the meaning of the sun, a new kind of sun, a new kind of day. It is nameable and the name of it is love.

It is not mush, it is not sentimentality, it is not indulgence, but it is love. The most powerful concept in the universe. It is that quantity which holds the atoms together. It is that powerful thing which encourages us to develop courage and to use that courage to build bridges and to cross those bridges and attempts to reach each other and put a hand on each other and say, I know I was there, or if I haven't been there yet, thank you for having been there and showing me that I can live through it. That is love, that is what is in great art, that is what is in great architecture, that is what is in great music, great dance, that's it. That is love, that is what is in great music, great dance, that's what is in great music,

great dance, that's what is in great music, great dance, that's what is in great music, great dance, that's what is in great music, great dance, that's what is in great music, great dance, great dance, great dance, great dance, great dance, great dance, great dance.

Kindred Spirits, contemporary African-American artist was funded by Philip Morris Company's Inc., which supports the spirit of innovation in the visual and performing arts. If you would like a video cassette of Kindred Spirits, please send a check for 27.95 to Kindred Spirits, box 68618 Indianapolis, Indiana or call 1-800-368-K-E-R-A. This is PBS. Black Art and Sestral Legacy, the companion book to Kindred Spirits is available for 27.95, call 214-740-9288 or send your check to K-E-R-A, Kindred Spirits, 3,000 Harry Heinz Boulevard, Dallas, Texas, 75201.