Good evening, I'm Erin Hanas, curator of academic engagement at Sheldon Museum of Art.
I am pleased to welcome you to a conversation with artist Radcliffe Bailey a live audience
taping of the modern art notes podcast thank you to the nebraska arts council the nebraska
cultural endowment and Hixson-Lied Endowment for making this program possible
thank you also to the following sponsors for supporting the exhibition person of
interest kristen and jeff klein karen and robert duncan melanie and john gross roseanne and phil
perry lee and debbie stewart foundation union bank and trust donna woods and john hinrichs
radcliffe bailey's mixed media work distant stars 2 is currently on loan to sheldon from
the private collection of catherine and mark lebaron for the exhibition person of interest
finally thank you to our sheldon art association members your support helps to make our educational
programs possible information about our membership program can be found at sheldonartmuseum.org
join it is now my pleasure to introduce this evening speakers radcliffe bailey
is an atlanta-based painter sculptor and mixed-media artist who layers photographs
text found objects and other culturally resonant materials to explore themes of ancestry race
history migration and collective memory his art creates links between african diasporic histories
and potential futures investigating the evolution or stagnation of notions of identity
radcliffe bailey's work is included in the collections of the metropolitan museum of art
the smithsonian institution the art institute of chicago
the denver art museum the high museum of art and sheldon museum of art among many others
jack shaneman gallery has represented radcliffe bailey since 2002 tyler greene is an historian
critic and the host of the modern art notes podcast a weekly interview program that has
aired over 460 episodes his first book carlton watkins making the west american published by
the university of california press in 2018 won a california book award gold medal in 2019.
please note that there are live captions during this program and we will leave time at the end for
q a if you have questions or comments please use the q a box as part of zoom now without further
ado tyler greene and radcliffe bailey if you don't mind turning on your videos and unmuting
yourselves um hi everybody while radcliff is coming up or being visually activated as it were
um uh thanks to all of you uh for joining us um if you aren't man podcast subscribers
it's free of course uh on apple podcasts or spotify or wherever you get podcasts
and you can also listen through manpodcast.com of course um over the um uh radcliffe will
be next week's show um over the last few weeks uh our guests have included aliya ali
jeffrey gibson who's at the brooklyn museum right now tamashi jackson who's at the wexner
turquoisey dyson who was just at new orleans for a very long pandemic interrupted show
and this week we have uh a new getty book um on imogen cunningham uh which should be um which was
a fun fun show to take um let's jump in radcliffe bailey welcome to the modern night notes podcast
thanks for having me thank you i wanted to start with migration because your work is
rich with full of an address of of migration whether forced migration such as through the
middle passage to the americas or within the united states such as um the great migration
and people who are with us on zoom tonight can um can see one one such reference behind you
i i guess from your work that your interest in migration as a subject or theme goes back at least
to the 1990s what brought you to it family history something in school something else yeah all above
migration was always important for me because of number one my relationship with my with my family
i was born in new jersey my parents moved to atlanta in 1972.
my father the idea was that you know our family wanted my south and um not one it was really about
the experiences growing up in the city like atlanta uh in the south but though
it was a very um african-american community um growing up in new jersey it was a whole different
relationship the reason why my family was in new jersey on my father's side was they were
railroad trying to migrate to canada and when they migrated or escaped from slavery
they ended up in jersey at some quakers and and a part of south jersey and
um that was kind of like the beginning of my my family um stopping before going to canada uh
but you know like later on in life uh my parents uh decided that they wanted to
bring me and my brother up in a different environment and um where we were in new
jersey was pretty much a pretty rural area it was you know pretty much in the garden state
so we kind of grew up around my grandfather raised asparagus it's a whole different kind of
relationship all our family members lived on one street we were ourselves we were our you know we
were our best friends we were our family we were close by each other we were neighbors um but
my parents moved to georgia and one of the reasons why they moved to georgia as they were
coming down south they stayed at a hotel a hotel in a restaurant which was called pascals pascals
was where dr king used to have his meetings and it was an african-american hotel and they met a
guy named reverend tobin reverend tobin was a teacher and opened my parents because he knows
a week later my parents moved to atlanta and um one other thing that deals with migration in my
work is that my father it was railroad and so he would often we would often travel by train anyway
so migration was just something that was kind of it kind of comes in and out of my work a lot
i think some one of the first artists that i met was jacob lawrence
and you know i was always fascinated with his work by the way the migration series um and then
really it was about really trying the history of my family um you know i was in art school it's
one of those things where what what is my going to be about is my where's my work going and i decided
to do something and focus on the personal and um one thing happened to me um you know trying to
one thing happened to me was that in school my mother was and virginia up in the coast and so we
were between virginia new jersey bc philly and um i just remember one christmas when all my family
members were all together my grandmother gave me a photo album of family members
it was 400 photographs of 10 types and she gave it to me but she knew that i was going to art school
but she had never really known my artwork and and that was like one of my biggest influences so i'm
constantly trying to deal with that subject on and on and migration in terms of north to south
east to west and from outer space to the sea so it's a combination of a lot of stuff and
i think part of that is just fascinated with the future as well as holding on to the past
you know i can't we'll come back to that photograph album um and photographs in a bit um
i've been thinking about how there have been so many museum shows in just the last few months
even amidst the pandemic of artists who are examining migration and you all are about kind
of the same age julie maratu whose retrospective is uh now in atlanta has been addressing migration
in her work for 20 25 years uh turquoisey dyson who just had a big show in new orleans
um has been working on on abstractions related to migration for for a long time and is working
on it now in residency at the wexner at ohio state and and of course there's there's you
and i that kind of shared interest in subject and theme among
three such prominent artists all about the same age made me wonder if there was something
in the culture a book a movie in the mid to late 90s maybe that maybe encouraged you not that you
needed encouraging but you know that kind of functioned as a broader cultural permission
nothing but a man there's a movie called nothing but a man it was
ivan dixon abby lincoln wow art collector ivan dixon
and so i just remember seeing that film and it was that relationship of a man and woman and
he worked on the um worked on the railroad land tracks
but that's the first thing that comes to mind out the blue um
but there's all there's been hmm amistad was 1997 right right yeah right exactly and uh
there's always been this when you when i think about migration too
you say films i think about like music um cold train
sunrise and it's a different kind of migration but it's it's traveling through time it's traveling
back and forth and i i find that um you know those were some of my earlier influences in terms of my
work it was always like you know turn on music um you know try to understand history through music
understand like you know you know code train did a piece based on the um four girls who died in
the church bombing um sunri was you know playing music that was you know about a joyful noise and
you know i was talking about outer space but it was always like steeped into the history
blues and jazz and some of the marks that have been made by african americans throughout history
with music and then traveling to something that was pretty much about like um the future
kind of like creating a new a new kind of music it's like i think about beard and romer beard
and i think about like the way in which he was collaging and putting together these different
periods um pretty much like a quilt but i but i also think he's kind of rebuilding
um like i think there's one thing i think about like as an african-american artist the artist
of african descent it's like when i was in school
my family
truly crossed atlantic and understand until later on in life and realize that
here here we have this tool of dna and so we can trace it so uh
my first form of dna is music um relating and reacting to different sounds
i think we all relate to certain sounds and memories with sounds so yeah i have more
about migration i want to know but i can't let your jacob lawrence reference slide how how did
you how and where did you meet jacob lawrence i met jacob lawrence when i was in middle school
oh my gosh and that name you remember jacob from the same time at james and i met them
by way of my mom my mom was a school teacher and so basically she knew the shows that were
up in atlanta and at the time there was a show of um james fantasy and ph poke and uh and it was uh
and i remember going to see that show but then later on i remember
going to see a show of jacob lawrence's work at the higher museum and i remember my mother
you know i was real shy at the time my mother made me stand in line to get his autograph and
my mom said my son wants to be an artist and you know and that was like the first kind of
living
that's great um back to migration um there are lots of ways um that migration foregrounds
itself in your work and we'll talk about some of them ships and seas and railroad tracks
but i want to start with stars um they've played a role in your work and we have recurred in your
work for almost 25 years now since at least of course the 1998 distant stars ii up now at sheldon
um that's a pretty early work you were about 30 when you when you made it
um stars are in the title obviously but also they are present in the white splotches of paint
that suggests stars in the night sky um for me
across all of your work that addresses migration stars are probably the most constant thing um how
did you come to seize on stars as i don't know it's not a metaphor is it but it's a it's a
it's a familiar presence across all of your migration work right um
i was uh one of the more obvious ones was that fascinated with trying to understand
constellations and then north star um i was always interested in the um you know as
you know one of the first things i was fascinated when i was in school was
i was always drawn to the power of african art i never knew or understood i knew that there were
things that i read but i also knew that there was much more to a lot of that um objects and
um and then at that time i was fascinated with the dogon and the dogon often talk about
you know talk about stars and and i was reading a book called the pale fox
and i just remember just being fascinated with it and trying to draw a connection and you know as a
kid we're always looking up in the sky and i just wanted to understand and understand
are there other worlds outside of here and i'm staring at stars and constellations and
thinking about traveling and you know it's that whole thing with uh migration as well and
there's another thing that was connected with the stars for me and the strange way i remember
making this piece was that i was fascinated with um people trying to foresee the future and
people trying to foresee the future by like for instance predicting let's say
nowadays people play the lottery and they're trying to predict numbers and 4c and and so and
this work also is kind of like a constellation of numbers um and some of the numbers are you know be
it like numbers of uh birthdays and family members dates of deaths uh when people make transitions
so so the stars themselves are really about those other worlds and the numbers as well um
you know the the your use of stars has sent me off thinking into art history for a couple
weeks thinking about stars in in paintings history and you know there aren't a ton
um it's not as common i think it's not as common a thing as one might think there's one big exception
um and that is uh the star of bethlehem um in christian religious painting and now it guides
um the three traveling men the magi to the manger in which jesus was born
and there's very often a very prominent star in those those paintings
did you have any interest in that usage in christian painting um somewhat in a strange
way in a connection my grandfather was a deacon in the church and he and he built a church and
right outside of uh charlottesville virginia in a town called palmyra
and that church i remember my grandfather working and building and working on the church and
i remember earlier work that i was working on when i was in college i was making triptychs and i was
kind of there was a reference to that upbringing of my grandfather being a baptist deacon
as well um and then some you know i would make references to some haitian practices um you know
be it like nowadays we see like a medical sign with the with the snakes wrapped around kind of up
across and then some i was referencing to haitian deities and that one in particular was dealing
with damballa and it was really like a symbol that dealt with healing and so you know religion
religion was a thing that i i i avoided i avoided in a strange way i had some
powerful experiences as a child um i've seen some things i remember going to that church where my
grandfather was a deacon and it was a very small congregation it was maybe about maybe 20 people
that you would see at a moment and it was i remember seeing someone sit there
with a pen and i remember seeing these kind of scribbles and they weren't really words i couldn't
really pick up exactly what they were doing and then i later on as reading about some things about
artists from the south or artists i mean people from the south and different practices
uh like somewhat of a spirit writing and so for me uh that also that just took me into a place where
i was just like instead of understanding religion i really wanted to understand the practices of
african americans throughout the southern parts of the united states because i felt
like they held on to certain practices but it was not necessarily something was not documented in
a book there are books that people have written about uh these different practices but um
and i'm even more um
he used to um ride ride bikes he's a bike group
and a friend
but on this motorcycle it was covered with lights and he had almost a couple hundred lights
around the spike so it was almost like a rolling altar and i i remember um seeing pictures of
this throughout some of my family pictures of my dad in the 70s and seeing with his friends with
his with their bikes and i think robert ferris thomas wrote about it as like this rolling altar
and so when it comes back to you talking about the stars and the references to the stars i also
make these reference to like haitian flags where they use sequins to deal with
shiny objects to repel and thinking about things like glass and mirror
like the glass from person
of repelling um so yeah there is that reference as well um
i don't know if i answered your question yeah no that was that was great i i
so sometimes in your work stars are a star field like in a work like door of no return
which i hope we come back to in a minute it's one of my favorite um baileys um and sometimes
their star is like five-pointed stars um as in congo from from 2013 um or in or like military
uh insignia calling stars in a work like stars over the argonne forest from last from last year
to you are you signifying or telling us something different with those different ways
of representing stars or are you you know more referring to kind of the variety of references you
can make with stars or are you playing with the idea of a star well i um another part of you know
my father's side of the family and uh they were a part of um they were some of them were garveyites
and some of them are part of marcus garvey's movement so marcus garvey always talked about
the black star line and and so that's that's a reference um so that's something for me
like when i think about it garvey's movement was important to me to understand but i also know that
it wasn't as successful but when i think about it it's almost like a spiritual migration for me
and you know like you know i mentioned earlier like nowadays we have a way in which we can do
it a lot faster we can take our dna to understand and migrate somewhere else
but when i was using those actual five-pointed stars it was really a reference to
marcus garvey in the black star line um it kind of you know i go from from the north star to
a migration backwards with um yeah there was those are some references and um
and i think when i look at the when i look at military figures and you know african americans
that have fought in you know like world war one um like that image that's up right now and i
use military blankets to make the piece but the star the stars kind of go back to almost like
i treat the stars like um how can i say like a it's like an adornment but it's also
it's a reference back to like that that um nikisi figure where you would find like nails and
and objects that are growing shooting within an object but there's also for me
it's kind of like dealing with that thought and that subject matter and there's the action about
me putting the stars in a particular way and um and painting to me was almost like i never knew i
i feel like i paint like a sculptor because it's there's a certain kind of energy that i have to
work and i have to work in a certain scale so i have to i makes i like i make a lot of paintings
are kind of big so and a lot of it has to do with like my arm reach and it has to do with my height
and it's almost like that act it's like that performance um that's for me and that's kind
of like one of those kind of acts that it's like a private act that happens in the studio because
you know like i said i'm not really like a religious person i'm a spiritual person but
if i ever had to say that i went to church church would be my studio
there's almost nothing more paintery that a painter can say than referring to you know
his or her reach as as being defining right the field so you know even if you're not slapping
oil around um right that's still such a painter thing right so if there's if there's going to be
migration um as as as we've been talking about migration there must be a means of of migration
and sure enough um there is over and over again for decades now in your work you've given us ships
um a reference to transatlantic journeys and of course especially to the middle passage and you've
given us railroad tracks all right um and i think and please correct me if if you think i'm wrong
um increasingly as your career has gone on you've been willing to give us ships and tracks together
in individual works um such as works like east-west south north or caravan from 2018. um
if i'm right about that that you're that you've been willing to do that more as the years go on
why have you been willing to to pair those two two means of migration together um
well you know it's really about talking about my i'm trying to find new ways to talk about
my family experience i don't necessarily want to talk about my family experience and
just all of a sudden stop talking about my family experience
there's a lot that we all have about our own personal experiences or
family for being about like really like communicating with a hire an ancestor
um you know there's a sense of sometimes there's a sorrow sometimes there's uh
i'm celebrating um i'm dealing with that painful experience but i'm also dealing
with the movement and being moving moving moving forward um and i pair them together just based on
number one um you know it's my father's father was a fisherman as well and so i just remember some of
those like personal experiences but it's also like you know there's the ships they don't necessarily
there's sometimes there's a reference to slave ships but there's also these references to other
ships that almost like spaceships to me where i'm traveling somewhere else i'm fascinated with
create some type of i don't know what i want to call it science fiction but you know i remember
hearing something a while ago is like surreal is real to black people and kind of taking that um
thinking about those experiences and and creating vessels where we could travel and move
and move in different places and they look like different forms i remember you know you know as i
do some research on like contemporary african art and how these objects that um well
i'm speaking about traditional african art and how today how those practices
transform transfer to different new contemporary objects and still carry the same amount of weight
and i'm trying to do that in a in a way as well
speaking of ships that are very much not slave ships um your 2006 work tricky um which shows
kind of a i'm not good at nautical terms but let's just call it a yacht with a sale
right if that's a thing um uh that's that's reflective um and has a hat on it um
i had not thought of this until about half an hour ago
but tonight is the first time i've ever seen you without a hat on um well well it's uh
say again sorry it's the earphones oh it's the earphones so i i so for listeners i sent
radcliff earphones and kind of made him wear them so i'm i'm really messing them up um
so i kind of can't help but wonder if the hat in tricky is a little bit of a self-reference
yeah it's a self-portrait um i think that most artists are tricksters
and we dabble in between different worlds uh i make references sometimes to uh europe deities
by way of west africa and nigeria and and the top hat is that kind of reference to that kind
of reference to a shoe which is like a guardian of the crossroads and you know when i think about
the crossroads i think about um land and sea and i think that we're at a crossroads between those two
because the deeper you can go in the sea it's just like for me it reminds me of
the deeper you go on outer space and the similarities and how we sit in between those two
worlds so tricky is that kind of person that sits at that crossroads tricky is that artists that can
work in different realms different materials and speak in different languages in different times
and speaks in a way which similar similar tongues in similar ways but also very different ways
the piece itself is kind of just referencing i like that self-portrait and it's somewhat close to
my height um the size of the boat and so that top hat is just one of those kind of things that kind
of come up every once in a while and i do these kind of pieces um it's an ongoing body of work
that i do that references like this trickster and tricky and some of them have top hats and
some of them have like rocks and then some of the references to the rocks or references to like
you know issue which is like if you've ever seen like one who practices you'll see like
this kind of rock with kyrie shells on you on it and so sometimes there's references to that but
it's it's loosely and there's it's i'm not trying to be very specific about it
i'm trying to um how can i say i want to make a nod but i don't necessarily like the one thing
that's that's interesting and it's fascinating is that i was drawn to african art by way of museums
a lot of us a lot of us younger artists we were drawn by going to museums and seeing
african art and some of those earlier shows that i did see i kind of wonder about that
work and how it made it to its museum how across the atlantic and and how it ended up
in different places and how its influences and i think about its life and how it still functions
um i want to make work that does the same thing where i don't give you all the answers
are you still there
crashed on my machine i'm sorry about that okay i hear you now um i'm very um
sorry about that zoom um uh yeah i don't know what zoom did i was i was about to ask um
so you've mentioned a couple times um that in 2006 you used a commercial dna test in the hopes
of learning about your mother's ancestry and you learned that her lineage went back to guinea and
sierra leone and to the mendy people right the high has the high museum near you in atlanta
has three mendy masks and in fact it acquired one just about the time that dna test came in
right um i guess first did you have something to do with that no no i didn't have anything to
do with it but i but i enjoy seeing the piece i actually made a piece that was in reference to it
where i actually printed on steel that image of that mask in the collection with uh with glass in
front of it which catches a reflection of that sculpture that's on right now that's the shape
of a mende mask but i did it on on a lathe and so it's it's a reference to it but it's
it's it was about the patina and the patina itself um which when i think about the mende i think
about the the the mende women the midday women are the ones that um pretty much run the community
in my family on my mother's side my grandmother was like that person and my mother had a lot
of sisters and so that's kind of like a reference to my grandmother as well because
she would also refinish old furniture but she would rub it in such a way and put a patina on it
that it almost reminded me of like the patina that you would see on african art
so there are those kind of loose references and
throwing that relationship with dna and tracing my mother my mother's side of family so it that's
where my work became a little bit more personal towards the dna references before in the past it
was more like the references were brought to me by way of the museum but at this point knowing my dna
or parts of my dna and being able to reference it in a different way
did you um so as we've talked about a little bit there are references to
african objects and african peoples in your work throughout really um but you know including in
as early as that 98 piece where um it has written on uh the window just above the photograph towards
nigeria and benin um but do you think that the the the what you learned from that dna
test changed how you approach african art or african cultural objects
um no yeah i think i did pick up i picked up more um but i was really you know at the time of doing
this work even though it's personal where i have a family member um from that photo album that my
grandmother gave me i also know that the makeup of a lot of african americans we are of a lot of
different people and so that was pretty much like a reference uh with this one well as well as like
i had logs from the slave trade and numbers of people that crossed the atlantic and so on some
of these pieces i have numbers in they would say like 30 from you know from nigeria or or it would
have reference to the congo or and so i was just really joking down information as i would pick up
information on the work it was a way of like the work was becoming more like uh like a notepad and
it was very loose and um but at the same time i'm i'm thinking about that but i'm also like
very fascinated with self-taught artists from the south and and then you know there was also like
the influence of like a john michelle basquiat it was you know there's a lot of like parts of
me trying to connect a lot of dots and understand it's the painting is also
when i think about dna too the painting has uh it's painted with georgia clay
so on top of the piece it's like georgia clay and that was just a reference to number one
there was a reference to my backyard uh number two was thinking about the native americans
and blood um and those lost and civil you know those fought in civil wars so it's a combination
of a lot of those different thoughts all together it's not one specific thought that is several
different thoughts and i think that um you know with that work as well it was all about layers and
layering one thought over top another thought over top another thought over top another thought
and um you know i wish i could write because i would love to write a book
and but i look at my work as like a page out of a book of my life there are a couple of things
that come to mind when when you say that um one is a work from and i'm afraid i don't remember
the year maybe 2008 called returnal um which um has i think sequences of your dna um but also
references minkisi right um which are um common in congolese religious practices or were um
and and so when you talk about um using the work as a kind of notepad for references that
may may or may not refer to things that are in the work
um i guess that's probably one example of how you've done that exactly yeah it got
i i think another thing you do a lot in the work is um you make art about things you
can't possibly know um the history of um which is to say you take what we don't know
and find a way to address it in your work anyway um and so i i when i work on on writing history
what i don't know generally drives me batty and i you know there are things i wish i could
know so that i could understand what the heck i'm trying to write um and appreciating of course that
artists are trained differently than journalists or historians do you remember how and why
it became okay for you to make art about what you couldn't possibly know to make art
that mashes up some of the references like like the ones we were just talking about in return
um there there are parts of it i do know and some of the parts of it i know is
you know a part of like you know i'm just trying to draw those connections between like those
artists that those self-taught artists that are in the south and and they're all around the country
but particularly like in the south and some of those lands i think about the way they work i
think about the use of materials and i think about you know my choice of materials at moments like
well you know i want to work in class okay but there may be a reference to my fascination with
the great mosque in mali uh so it's more like making those references
and those are some of my thoughts but i'm not being very specific about it
but i'm also being very personal in a way where it's from my backyard which was civil war
grounds and so there's a lot of that there's a you know i do read a lot about african art
i do try to understand as much as i can because that's just something i'm just fascinated with
um i think i would probably be fascinated with it regardless making art um
i don't know i don't know if i'm answering the question quite the same way but i don't have
a fear of going into that space and where i'm uncomfortable i think there's one thing
that i used to do and i still do um i create problems to solve and have questions that i
i want to answer i want answered but i i feel like i have to work them out within the work
it's something where it's like um i don't at one time i remember making work and i
was very insecure about using found the old photographs because i felt like i'm using
these old photographs and i don't know those actual people from a family photograph i don't
know makeup i don't know dna completely but i do know that there is a connection between my family
so it's almost like i've learned to become comfortable in that space enough to just
because they're these the work is more about asking questions is
than it is about having answers so i have more questions than i have answers um does that
make sense yeah yeah i and i love that artists have permission to kind of do that in ways that
others of us can't i value that um enormously um
so i think a work that asks questions that i i mentioned a little bit earlier is door
of no return from from 2015 um which i think is um one of your your uh most major works and
it's work that kind of brings together a bunch of things we've talked about um we've talked about
how often you have photographs and other objects behind windows behind plexi or glass and and and
here here is a work where we see the sea um kind of in a window hovering in this in a star field um
it's it's certainly at least for me your your most psychologically intense work um
i guess first did this does the c in that picture come from a specific place is it a specific sea
it is it is um
i don't you know i usually don't really say exactly where it came from
but did the door no return the piece of stuff around the door returned
from boreal island of the coast of senegal and um there was a reference to that
but it was you know i basically referenced the photograph that i shot when i was in cuba and
i started drawing the connections a little bit because i just started thinking about
the practices of the people in cuba and trying to make up you know when making the piece i didn't
really think about it at the time i just really wanted the beautiful photograph of the ocean
because it's like when i think about very painful subject matters i always try to figure out
a poetic way of talking about the past i and it's how can i say there's like a there's a
way i want to do it and tell a story i can paint things that are painful and difficult
but i don't want to paint it in a in a in a gory or a dark way i kind of want to i want to look
at the i mean when i think about the history of african american or african americans in this
country i think about like there was a lot of painful experiences but i also i'm really
about to celebrate who i am in such a way where i really want to deal with the joys and beauty of
beauty of who i am um but when i think about this piece in general it was like you know there was
a very like well i remember going to the door no return and i remember going through the darkness
of it and seeing the areas where the africans were kept in very small spaces right before they are
put on ships and taken away and that was their last touch of land
of home um and i and i think about when i went there i i took a i rented a fishing boat
and i rented a fishing boat a while on the island and i wanted to film and i filmed a video of a
fishing boat pulling up pulling up to the door no return and going away from the door no return
so the piece itself was also there are other parts of it that are that i've been working on
in the past with this piece um so it was like that reference but then it's also when you look at that
look at the space the glitter screen the glitter screen was um was really about like outer space
as well and uh outer space but then also
is i wanted to make something that was kind of very minimal so that when you look at the piece
you weren't really you know if you didn't read the title i don't know if a lot of people would
really pick up on the subject of it i want to make something that was kind of like simple
beautiful
so yeah but that photograph um i took in cuba uh that was something that i i mean
no one ever asked me that question before but uh but yeah that's that's where it came from
i'm also interested in how differently how many different ways you have of portraying water or or
the sea in a work like windward coast west coast slave trade um which you've made and installed a
number of times over the years you're using um piano keys are they called keys yeah yeah you
can't you know the not the keyboard piano keys but the long wooden things that go back in a
in a piano to um to reference water you've done that in storm at sea also a piece from from 2007
is it important to you to have kind of a toolkit of different ways of
presenting ocean and water because it sure seems when i've seen the different
installations of these pieces i mean at the risk of sounding trivial it looks
like you're having a heck of a lot of fun figuring out how to show us water
yeah i'm actually yeah i am having a lot of fun i know with this piece
when i first when i first created the piece it was um basically um a lot of
us we we don't use a conventional art store sometimes we just go to very odd places and
as a kid there was this piano shop that was in walking distance from my house and i remember as a
kid walking down the street and i remember looking in and seeing all these pianos and i remember
years ago going by this piano shop and driving by and i saw i noticed a fire was in the back
of it and smoking it and i drove in i pulled in and they were these guys were trying to get rid
of all these pianos and basically they were just putting all the wood on fire so i said
well you know let me have all these piano keys and i brought them back to the studio i didn't
know what exactly what i was going to do with them but i brought them back to the studio and
i started stacking them on the floor of my studio and at the time i i think it was like a three or
four thousand square foot studio and i just dropped all the piano keys on the floor and
it came in i was like that's the perfect place where they should be and so the piano keys um
you know i started playing with them and they turned into the ocean i would put on
i would play um mccoy tyner and cold train and i would put on my earphones and turn up the music
and i would just react to it and drop the piano keys and i realized like as i was dropping the
piano keys i started hearing the sounds like a ripping of waves and you know like the water
as it trickles and so i started recording those sounds as well so with the piece itself there is
a recording that comes from uh i have a a conch shell that has a speaker on the inside of it
and outside of the conch shell is playing those the sounds of the piano keys dropping and you
can hear me ripping the boxes open and it sounds like waves um but yeah and it was just fascinated
with you know it's back to like the whole thing i was thinking about was like music was like
my first form of dna and i was thinking about those piano keys and i'm thinking about all the
you know different people who played those piano keys and all the different sounds that
came from those piano keys and thinking about them all kind of jumbled together
but then also thinking about the history of jazz music um african i mean you know jazz and
i was thinking about the way in which all these kind of sounds were kind of collaged together
and you know it's also like there's a lot of ebony and ivory on the piano keys themselves as well
so it's all that kind of mixed up and you know he goes back to that experience of
my relationship with my father my father's father and being on the ocean and feeling so small when
you're on the ocean and so it's a combination of that and um i was also i remember at the time
these different places where the cities and the you could see like
the debris from the buildings all kind of stacked and pushed for by way of
by way of the water so that was always a reference by the way
by the way the ocean can do damage
i'm going to ask one more one more question and then we're going to open it up
for uh viewer watcher viewer watcher questions i'm not sure what the zoom term is
um we've talked a couple times about your use of photographs in in works and where
some of those photographs have come from and one of the things i've
noticed in your use of photographs in a work like before cicero from 2016 is that the
person in the photograph is looking right out at us um directly at at the viewer and that the
person in your artwork is then often surrounded by um an abstraction not always an abstraction like
an abstract painting but a group of or a set of symbols that point us toward an idea um so there's
this very specific one-to-one viewer to person in the artwork relationship and then this broader
abstraction that that builds us to an idea and i wonder what about combining those two things
is something that works for you something you like because it happens a lot all right
um it kind of goes back to
the conversation about tricky where i felt like i was in between two different worlds and i know
uh different groups of people around the world they talk about this other world this other place
um you know i think about native people from different parts yeah i was just think about the
way in which they talk about this other world and there's this other world that was not necessarily
so tangible so when i when i look at it when i think about my use of paint and where i use paint
i don't i don't necessarily would call it abstract or anything but i just there's a reference to like
sometimes that person that i remember when i was in church with my grandfather and someone doing
this kind of scribbling and writing and kind of taking notes of the moment of that second and
reacting to it like a rhythm like a dance for me it was like you know when i think about the use
of it i think about the here's this world that's of the tangible and here's another world where
things are tangible but it's almost a tr too because photography is not quite as it's it's
meant to be as tangible as you can be but i'm also dabbling with these different time periods
as well and so i'm kind of juggling between that and sitting in between those different thoughts um
so for me it was always about like um those two different worlds but it's also when i think about
you know and i and i talk about these references in terms of like you know like jacob lawrence
and his use of the narrative and color and in his work and then i think about
vanderzee and his photography and i've always kind of felt like those were early references
of people that i met where i'm pretty much combined in the two in a different kind of way
and yeah so it's it's it's it's strange but you know it's like the photographs themselves are like
objects the objects that are like they have that same kind of presence like the objects
that i would see when when i was in school of african art in the museum it's that kind of like
you you you stand but so close to it you want to become close to it but also i i really like
to use the photographs in a very large way where they're like actual scale of a person um
but yeah that's that's kind of that's kind of where i'm at
when i think about those the use of photography and the painting so i like it and one of the
weird things about zoom is i feel like there's a gentleman standing
behind your right shoulder who's been staring at me for the last hour
um i want to i want to kick off kind of the the q a portion here um
with with a question that came in early from a class
but before i ask it aaron do we want to give potential question askers any instructions
if you have questions go ahead and type them into the q a box my colleagues are watching if
you want to ask a question out loud you can also raise a hand but my colleagues are watching to
see who has questions so then i'll start with the with the first question
um that came in early um and that is uh someone who noted something that i think is is
uh very much in in the water at the moment you live outside a major arts center you
live in atlanta um and i think that as the pandemic has happened in the last
seven or eight or nine months we've seen a lot of artists move out of major arts centers um uh
how do you think being in atlanta has has worked for you or not worked for you how how is not
having proximity to a new york or la or london or berlin or mattered or not mattered for you
well i'll say one thing we do have the largest airport in the world
and uh yeah that always matters it's probably t it's 10 minutes away from me um
i think i made the choice um i made a more a choice that was that was based on my parents
you know they're at that age and i've always been pretty close to them and it was always like me
my brother and my mother and father and um i always felt like i wanted to live close to them
i was lucky when i was young when i first finished um undergrad i
started my like junior year of college so i started you know opportunities and kind of get an
understanding but not really because at the time of land was kind of like it was a city that had
art galleries but you know i still you know i was the kind of even when i was in college i
would jump on a plane and go visit my cousin that lives in new york and i sleep on his couch and i
go to the galleries and then you know three days later i'm jumping on a plane going home
and going back to school and then you know it was it was always like i felt comfortable you know
i i did at one time want to move to new york i did at one time when i moved to san francisco
i did want to move to a major art hub i felt like that may have been like a thing but it's also like
i think it's an important thing to do but it's not necessary for everybody i think that if you
can make it in a in a place where you can have your own sanity and get peace i think that that's
a wonderful thing and that's complicated because nowadays uh sometimes in cities that are not major
art hubs you know keeping weights in the galleries are not necessarily it's not the easiest thing
to do they don't necessarily have the largest collectors in the world come into those spaces
uh it could be a mixed bag i'm very supportive of the arts community that i um that i grew up in
it's been it was very important for me um but it's also it's i like my space i see i see the south as
pretty much when i think about i go as far as texas and and as you know throughout the east
coast and i think of it as always in a strange way and i think of it as that and i really enjoy
um how close to some things and how far i am for other things too um you know i think it's a it's
you know we all operate different i try to think about how would it be if i was to make
the work that i'm making in a city like new york i think there would be a different edge to the work
i think my sensibilities are are different and i think i've learned and i've grown to
enjoy and love those sensibilities and um enjoy that space it was also it was you know it was
puzzling that sometimes at moments too um because there was those like itches like oh i really want
to be here i really want to go here and i really want to see these shows i want to
i want to be able to be around the arts community because i have a lot of artist friends that are
all around the country but i really wanted to be in that kind of space but as it as time went
and time grew i started feeling a little bit more comfortable i know whenever whenever people are in
town they come and visit it's also i really like that space there's something about that space i'm
one of those kind of people who i don't work with a lot of people uh i have a couple assistants but
they're more so like people i've known since i was in high school so i'm kind of like i'm
close to the community here i you know i grew up in this community here where you know i knew
i've known at least like four or five of the past mayors i've uh you know went to high school with
the i mean i grew up and went to middle school with the current mayor you know it's like um
there is also this sense of like a community here um african-american community that i grew up in
that was used to seeing black businesses and people that were politicians and saw
a sense of blackwell from a different angle um which which was which was like a beautiful
feeling i have memories of those things even though those are very strange times post
post assassination of dr king those were kind of different times but it was also
um it was kind of beautiful it's beautiful in a way in which i was like i grew up i feel like
it's post-segregation but still segregation and you know it was a different kind of environment
because i really feel like we have really never ever really been truly integrated amongst
each other to appreciate each other i think that we're still working on that experiment
we're still trying to get it right um but atlanta kind of gave me that space of family even though i
don't have a lot of family members here it's just more so my mother father and my brother so that's
a that's a good thing it's it's complicated it's difficult too um you know i don't necessarily have
you know if a curator wants to come visit me the curator has to come see me
curie has to jump on a plane curator has to really find a way to get to me so it's it's also it's you
know it's it's good and good in a way too so the artwork the art world doesn't take me and
and squeeze me in and mold me and it's more like i can have my own personal life my
family my you know kids or you know what i mean i i you know in talking with artists over the last
six or eight months the things you just talked about are the things everybody's been bringing out
especially the part about wanting to feel part of a place rather than living in a rich person's
playground like manhattan right um i've heard that a lot yeah um uh we have a question from shonda
holloway who asks have you always had a peace and inner peace about not revealing verbally revealing
everything you set out to say with a piece how have you allowed yourself that right to for the
viewer to have a personal perspective which may be outside that which you had yourself intended
uh i came up with a thing uh and i've said i've said this before i kind of keep coming back to it
make it so personal that it becomes universal
make it so personal that it becomes universal and um and there i've always been kind of uh insecure
i've always been like that kid that was insecure and i really like you know when this when artwork
leaves the studio i'm always kind of like i'm i'm concerned about what people see blah blah blah
i've learned to just be at peace with it just kind of let it go uh i think right now it's like a
i still feel like um i've been to my homies once always consider yourself
emerging you know no matter how old you are you're a forever emerging artist you're always
emerging and so i kind of take that with me to feel a little more comfortable about that and
about those thoughts and things and my insecurities it's okay and then you know and
if it's not perfect perfection is professional you know and so i've i've learned to be okay with it
but there's you know it's also like there's a way in which in terms of information and things
in my work i like to have a level of protection protect meaning that there's some things i don't
say about work on purpose because i don't want to reveal every single thing in the work because i
don't feel like i want to say give up the that power that of that work i want to have a part
of it that holds its own and there is a little mystery about it i'm cool with that i like that
um another question your use of materials we talked about some of them is really specific
how have you acquired things like the ships and the military cloth and how important is
the history of those objects themselves like the blanket in um in the argonne forest piece
how important is the history of the physical object you're using to you um
i i get in trouble with that sometimes i remember there was a i remember there was a piece that i
grew up in with a house it was a mirror and there was this mirror and it had this hand
and the inside the mirror when we were kids me and my brother we remember right before we went
to school we walked down the hallway and we look in that mirror just to look and see if we're okay
well that mirror ended up being a piece and uh my mother she was always kind of get at me about that
but yeah i i um i try to figure out and i i live with a lot of objects i feel like um
i feel like a healer sometimes and those are like some of my favorite things to do or go through
antique shops and part of it is going through the past and and you know you're actually seeing
all these old objects and reliving and trying to understand these histories but you're also
smelling them as well because they carry a certain smell or a certain age when you go
into an antique shop so i'm i'm very fascinated with uh like stuff like that and i don't know
if i'm answering your question somewhat yeah no that that that um that that worked okay um
uh and then uh another um attendee
or watcher really somebody needs to write a zoom dictionary or you
your more recent works seem to have a lower key or more somber palette um than earlier works um
which i hadn't thought of but now that i think about it i think there may be something to that
um is that intentional is is there something driving that uh yeah it's uh it's intentional i um
you know i was uh when i was in school i was a sculpture major
so i would make things that were somewhat minimal but i'm also trying to figure out a way to make
those very minimal things but still have the same amount of layers of thought over top of
them so it's really like a personal exercise with me and a conversation i'm having with myself and
trying to figure out ways to be a little bit more minimal about some of my thoughts
but at the same time i have some things that are here in the studio as well where i'm going back to
painting the way in which i painted like the painting that's in the collection that's in the
show right now and using color in a different way and there was this whole thing with me
with in the use of color as i really love to put together colors that did not necessarily work and
try to create a try to create a different kind of sound with those colors and make those colors work
and that's a lot of problem solving for me so that was a thought but i also
i kind of go back and forth um for moments are very normal but there's works that are
very busy or some of my food and some of them feel figurative in a totally different
way which was just like uh just dealing with my my figure so it's it's it's kind of like
i'm jumping around i'm bouncing around i felt like i had like maybe seven or eight different people
inside of me and each one of them has to come out every once in a while just like you know you have
deities and and all these different practitioners and i'm just trying to figure out ways all these
different parts of me that come out i love to speak that's third moment sometimes it's a
reaction to when when one comes sometimes i'm very colorful now when the summer when it's decided
sometimes it's a different palette that's totally the opposite of whatever
may be happening that's probably uh that trickster reference is probably a good place to leave it
radcliffe bailey thanks very much thank you thank you all for joining us stay safe
have a wonderful evening thank you so much radcliffe bailey tyler green take care