Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist: Adrian Armstrong
Mike Kamm
Author
02/21/2025
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Description
Armstrong has a multidisciplinary practice that encompasses drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, sound and other mixed-media elements and documents the contemporary Black experiences in the United States. He is deeply interested in questions of how Black experiences intersect with the history of photography, portraiture and collage.
The School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students. The series is presented in collaboration with Sheldon Museum of Art.
https://news.unl.edu/article/alumnus-returns-for-next-hixson-lied-visiting-artist-lecture
Recorded 2/20/25
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- [00:00:00.000]Obviously, we want to thank Dean Belser and the Hickson Lead Endowment.
- [00:00:08.540]We'd like to thank Sheldon for their support for tonight's talk and Sandra Williams for
- [00:00:13.120]inviting Adrian back to UNL.
- [00:00:15.400]It was Francisco Soto, our director, who always says that when you leave here, you're always
- [00:00:19.760]welcome back because you're family.
- [00:00:22.160]And it's never been more true.
- [00:00:23.440]We were honored to give Adrian an Alumni Achievement Award last year, but we're really glad to
- [00:00:29.320]have you back now and have this stage and record and see what you've been doing over
- [00:00:34.000]the past year and have a chance to interact with students.
- [00:00:36.880]I want to thank Santiago Cal and Byron Anway.
- [00:00:39.760]They both opened their classes today for Adrian, had some great interactions.
- [00:00:45.180]And we really had our first blended studio visits where both BFA students and MFA students
- [00:00:49.460]had a chance for a 30-minute one-on-one with our visiting artists, and I think that's something
- [00:00:54.000]I'd love to see continue.
- [00:00:57.020]So what a week to be back.
- [00:00:58.640]I was going to pick Adrian up at the Embassy Suites, and he said, "No, I think I'm going
- [00:01:02.660]to go find a cup of coffee," and my concern was that he wouldn't get to Richards and I'd
- [00:01:07.800]go looking for him, and it would be like finding Jack Nicholson at the Maze at the Overlook
- [00:01:12.580]Hotel, and there'd be poor Adrian.
- [00:01:15.160]It's not Texas and it's not LA, is it?
- [00:01:17.800]But he's a veteran.
- [00:01:18.800]He lived in Omaha, grew up here.
- [00:01:20.540]He left 70 degrees and sunshine, and yeah, and what did we have, a minus 21 below, well,
- [00:01:26.960]minus 17 technically.
- [00:01:28.460]That felt like minus 21, thanks for the sun.
- [00:01:32.080]So the saying, Nebraska, honestly, it's not for everyone.
- [00:01:36.480]So it is a pleasure to have you back, Adrian.
- [00:01:38.540]It's been a great day and I just want to say quickly that Adrian's work has been exhibited
- [00:01:43.780]internationally in New York City, in London, in Miami, throughout Texas, and most recently
- [00:01:53.820]at a place called The Campus in the middle of upstate New York, an interesting collaborative
- [00:01:58.280]experience that galleries are putting together.
- [00:02:01.080]And so I guess with that, I just want to say welcome back to Adrian.
- [00:02:03.740]We're looking forward to your talk.
- [00:02:05.300]Please join me in welcoming Adrian Armstrong.
- [00:02:09.160]Adrian Armstrong: All right, can you all hear me?
- [00:02:25.580]First of all, thank you so much for having me.
- [00:02:28.100]It's always a pleasure to come back and come back to the place that really started me on
- [00:02:33.920]the path that I'm on now.
- [00:02:37.080]I really enjoy linking back up with you guys and this is always home.
- [00:02:45.560]Believe it or not, this is really my first time doing something like this.
- [00:02:52.480]I'm standing up here feeling a little bit vulnerable because making this presentation,
- [00:02:57.920]I realize that I haven't taken a lot of time to just stop and relish in what I've been
- [00:03:05.320]doing over the last 10, 11 years.
- [00:03:10.820]It doesn't even feel like that long.
- [00:03:12.280]It feels like I was here just a year ago.
- [00:03:16.740]I mean, I guess I was technically, but ... I want to take you through the journey of how
- [00:03:25.680]my work progressed.
- [00:03:27.740]While I was here and to where I'm at now.
- [00:03:33.820]So again, I'm Adrian Armstrong, born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska, moved to Texas right after
- [00:03:40.340]I graduated here in 2014, was in Texas for the last 10 years, did a residency in Connecticut
- [00:03:47.100]called Next Haven that was started by Titus Kefar, was there for a year, and now I'm in
- [00:03:51.880]LA.
- [00:03:52.880]Yeah, let me go to the next slide.
- [00:03:57.560]So, this is my fancy little artist statement.
- [00:04:04.720]As mentioned before, I've shown nationally and internationally, and I'm in a few collections,
- [00:04:10.720]the Dean Collection, which is Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys, Texas Black Studies Department.
- [00:04:15.940]I was also semifinalist for the Smithsonian competition, then recommended for the Joan
- [00:04:24.560]Mitchell Foundation Award in the Library of Congress.
- [00:04:27.380]Many, many, many more.
- [00:04:33.140]I'm not going to read all this, but at the end of the day, I'm very much interested in
- [00:04:38.520]black culture.
- [00:04:39.940]I'm interested in everything that goes into it.
- [00:04:45.400]Being from Omaha, moving to Texas, living in LA, living on the East Coast, I've experienced
- [00:04:51.500]different sub-genres of black culture, and that inspires me.
- [00:04:57.200]Sorry.
- [00:05:02.920]Everything from art, fashion, slang, food, I'm interested in diving into that.
- [00:05:12.520]And you'll see from where I was here, where I was kind of all over the place to where
- [00:05:17.920]I'm at now, there's definitely been a through line in quite the journey.
- [00:05:25.480]So this next slide is
- [00:05:27.020]a bit of a jump scare.
- [00:05:32.640]So these are the works that I was making at UNL.
- [00:05:39.420]As you can see, kind of all over the place, no real direction.
- [00:05:45.540]I don't even like Star Wars, so I don't know why I did that, but I found being
- [00:05:56.840]here allowed me to just create and experiment and try things out.
- [00:06:02.740]I was still very much figuring out, I didn't even believe you could really be an artist
- [00:06:10.120]as a job.
- [00:06:11.120]I thought you had to do something else, or I thought it was something that happened after
- [00:06:14.600]you died.
- [00:06:17.100]As I went through the program here, it became more and more of a reality, but I was still
- [00:06:23.400]figuring things out.
- [00:06:24.500]The painting classes.
- [00:06:26.660]We weren't my friends, but I really gravitated to drawing and then later on printmaking,
- [00:06:34.420]where I studied under Francisco for the most part, and I'm really happy for that opportunity.
- [00:06:42.200]Let's see, like I said, I gravitated more towards drawing, and in this sense, I started
- [00:06:56.480]realizing that I really enjoyed drawing people.
- [00:07:00.920]I didn't know why, I just knew that figurative and portrait work was definitely something
- [00:07:07.660]that I enjoyed more than landscapes or drawing buildings or abstraction.
- [00:07:16.300]And so I began to work primarily with just self-portraiture, and every once in a while
- [00:07:23.220]I would bring in friends.
- [00:07:26.300]Or, you know, just find photos of people that, you know, I could just draw.
- [00:07:33.440]And so at this moment I started experimenting with pen, which later would become my main
- [00:07:42.060]medium.
- [00:07:45.140]I started off with pointillism, and I was doing these small ten-by-tens on panel.
- [00:07:50.660]And I loved the way that they were coming out.
- [00:07:56.120]Again, drawing the faces, drawing figurative work.
- [00:08:00.720]But it still didn't really have any strong direction.
- [00:08:04.580]I was just kind of like, I had an idea and I did it, right then and there.
- [00:08:09.240]I didn't really think too much of the concepts, but I knew I wanted to have this dripping
- [00:08:15.400]effect, and I knew I wanted to work with this, specifically these dots.
- [00:08:22.660]Something about the circles really captivated me.
- [00:08:25.940]So I did a little series of these half kind of abstraction, figurative works, just trying
- [00:08:33.840]out weird things, thinking that I was doing something extremely deep.
- [00:08:43.680]And then eventually I wanted to scale up.
- [00:08:47.840]So this piece is actually about eight feet tall.
- [00:08:52.760]Once I got done with this piece, I was done.
- [00:08:55.760]I was done with pointillism.
- [00:08:57.700]I was like, there's just no way that I can do all these dots on the scale that I wanted
- [00:09:03.160]to go to.
- [00:09:07.160]And so I was on a journey of trying to figure out, okay, how can I, what's next?
- [00:09:14.800]What's the next technique that I can do?
- [00:09:16.660]I didn't want to just do what everybody else was doing.
- [00:09:19.960]I was good at drawing, but everybody was good at drawing at that time.
- [00:09:25.580]I was going through Juxtapose Magazine and I actually came across an artist named Sonye
- [00:09:32.480]Park.
- [00:09:33.480]This is that artist.
- [00:09:38.200]I saw this technique and it clicked in my mind.
- [00:09:40.700]I was like, "This makes sense.
- [00:09:43.320]This really just makes sense to me."
- [00:09:47.380]The swirling motion is something that I really was drawn to.
- [00:09:52.140]I was, again, already working in pen at the time.
- [00:09:55.400]This was similar to the sketching I was doing.
- [00:09:59.120]Mine was a lot looser, so I adopted this, but unfortunately, I adopted it a little
- [00:10:08.120]too much, too close.
- [00:10:15.960]I was working with self-portraiture, trying to figure out ideas and work on my technique.
- [00:10:25.220]I was noticing that this isn't very different from the artist that I'm taking from.
- [00:10:35.320]Me and many other artists, I don't mind borrowing things from other artists, but eventually,
- [00:10:45.500]there has to be some type of difference.
- [00:10:47.960]You have to break away from that, so I continued to develop it and my work started to become
- [00:10:55.040]a little bit more political in a sense.
- [00:10:59.860]So this was during the "We Can't Breathe" movement and for me, I felt as though this
- [00:11:08.000]was work that I was supposed to be making.
- [00:11:13.400]I was passionate about it, but I felt like as a black artist, this was work that was
- [00:11:20.400]expected of me and I leaned into that.
- [00:11:24.860]I made, I would say, about 20 of these, 20 different variations of these.
- [00:11:34.580]It was quite taxing and for a while, I made very political work and very dark work until
- [00:11:46.980]I ran into another artist, Toyin Odetola.
- [00:11:52.680]This is Toyin Odetola.
- [00:11:54.680]What I really appreciated about her work is the way that she rendered black skin.
- [00:12:03.280]One thing that stood out to me with one of her speeches was the way that she used pen.
- [00:12:10.560]She said it's not just a black mark.
- [00:12:14.040]Whenever you use pen and you look at it from different angles, you start to see different
- [00:12:18.600]colors.
- [00:12:19.880]You see golds, you see purples, you see blues.
- [00:12:24.500]To me, up to that point, pen was just a pen to me.
- [00:12:30.880]I wasn't looking at it as anything more than just a tool.
- [00:12:39.260]After this, I was like, "Okay, let me figure out how I can incorporate that into my practice
- [00:12:47.240]and I want to explore color more.
- [00:12:49.260]I want to explore the color of the skin."
- [00:12:54.320]So I started playing around with color very slowly, very, very slowly.
- [00:12:59.820]Still very political and dark, but it went from gray scales to more reds and blues and
- [00:13:09.060]then eventually these yellows.
- [00:13:14.320]This yellow is always going to be in my work.
- [00:13:18.420]This became quite the staple in my work.
- [00:13:24.140]Yeah, it just became quite the staple in my work.
- [00:13:30.700]This became kind of like the turning point.
- [00:13:33.940]This was the beginning of a show that I did called Highs and Low Fives, which was about
- [00:13:39.500]depression within the black community.
- [00:13:42.120]I did it in 2019 in Austin, Texas.
- [00:13:46.040]This was the very first show, big show that I had done.
- [00:13:50.760]Up until this point, I moved to Texas in 2014.
- [00:13:53.960]I had been just working and volunteering my time in galleries and going to shows and doing
- [00:14:03.440]live paintings, selling prints at bars.
- [00:14:08.080]Then eventually somebody saw my work and offered me a show.
- [00:14:13.980]I took that opportunity to really dive deeper into the ideas that I had.
- [00:14:23.780]I had mentioned before that I had been doing a lot of self-portraiture, but this is the
- [00:14:30.860]first big thing that I did where I intentionally took friends and family and talked to them
- [00:14:40.120]about depression and took photos of them and really made it a collaborative effort.
- [00:14:49.000]Along with these, this was also the first time that I had did something outside of painting
- [00:14:53.600]and drawing.
- [00:14:54.600]So I actually produced the album to go along with each piece.
- [00:15:00.360]So it's a soundtrack that goes along with each piece that was on stream.
- [00:15:07.420]It was on streaming.
- [00:15:08.640]It wasn't very good.
- [00:15:10.200]So you know.
- [00:15:14.180]And then moving on to 2020, COVID hits, COVID hits and I'm on the high of this show.
- [00:15:23.420]The show sold out.
- [00:15:25.520]And then after that, I had a wait list.
- [00:15:29.600]COVID hits and this is what most people would call a black renaissance happens.
- [00:15:39.340]So the artist here is Omowako.
- [00:15:42.080]And he truly had a moment at this time and a lot of artists were emulating his work.
- [00:15:52.300]And I found myself doing the same.
- [00:15:53.240]And so I got this was the opportunity to kind of get back into printmaking.
- [00:16:05.060]But like I was saying, like I started emulating a lot of elements from Omowako's work.
- [00:16:12.520]So even though I was enjoying the works that I was making, it didn't feel true to me.
- [00:16:23.060]But there were certain elements that I really enjoyed, that I really loved, and that I would
- [00:16:29.340]incorporate into other pieces later.
- [00:16:34.660]And this is kind of like the first time, not the first time, but like one of the main times
- [00:16:39.740]where I started doing more full body works.
- [00:16:45.220]I started incorporating like these patterns and figuring out like, how do I want to render
- [00:16:51.880]clothing?
- [00:16:52.880]How do I want to render hair?
- [00:16:55.080]You know, just being more intentional about the decisions that I was making.
- [00:17:01.260]But up until this point, like I'm still figuring out things conceptually.
- [00:17:06.380]Like all I know is that I want to draw black people, but I don't know exactly why.
- [00:17:15.560]And then things started to kind of click a little bit.
- [00:17:21.320]This is around 2021.
- [00:17:22.700]2022.
- [00:17:23.700]I just become more and more interested in like these moments of embrace, you know?
- [00:17:34.100]So I start going out and I start taking a film camera with me and I take photos of just
- [00:17:40.240]like my friends and they're like, what I find is like put a camera up to somebody and they
- [00:17:45.280]automatically start, you know, they might hug each other, they might throw a peace sign,
- [00:17:48.840]like whatever.
- [00:17:49.840]And I was interested in those moments.
- [00:17:52.520]I really enjoyed this.
- [00:17:57.540]So this one is called Black Owned and I love that they embrace each other.
- [00:18:03.880]When I took the photo, it shows it's like camaraderie.
- [00:18:08.960]But also I love that they're both holding a Telfar bag.
- [00:18:14.320]And this was something that I really started to get into around this time, like Black
- [00:18:22.340]own fashion.
- [00:18:25.060]It started with FUBU and it started with Carl Kanai and then around this time Telfar
- [00:18:33.500]was really having a moment, they call it the Brooklyn Birkin.
- [00:18:38.560]So I was really interested in how proud they were to show off these pieces and I started
- [00:18:49.400]to piece together more and more ideas.
- [00:18:52.160]Kind of a similar thing, you know, like just piecing together more things in that sense
- [00:19:03.300]of embrace as well.
- [00:19:06.580]And then like a big thing coming out of this was like a carefreeness that I really enjoyed.
- [00:19:14.200]Like this joy.
- [00:19:17.340]And once I figured out like, okay, joy actually feels good.
- [00:19:21.980]That's something that I can work with because post-pandemic I was just burnt out of making
- [00:19:31.660]sad work, you know, like, excuse me, sorry.
- [00:19:38.320]I was burnt out from making sad work.
- [00:19:41.160]We had been in the house for so long.
- [00:19:45.680]We were isolated from people for so long and I just didn't want to do that anymore and
- [00:19:51.800]grappled with that for so long because, again, I felt as though I was obligated to make certain
- [00:19:58.380]work because I was a black artist.
- [00:20:01.420]I felt as though I needed to make political work.
- [00:20:04.360]I needed to make a stance on something.
- [00:20:10.340]And I grappled with that because, like, I felt like a sellout if I talked about joy.
- [00:20:18.300]But I realized that that's just as important.
- [00:20:21.620]And we can't live continuously angry and upset.
- [00:20:27.460]And I think there's something important about being carefree and resting and having fun
- [00:20:34.720]and all these things.
- [00:20:36.620]And that led me to initially people dancing.
- [00:20:46.740]So I had mentioned before that I started taking a film camera with me and I would go to parties
- [00:20:51.440]and I would go to cookouts and all these things and I just took photos of people dancing
- [00:20:58.620]and that's really what I was interested in and people having fun and being in the moment
- [00:21:06.440]because I was deprived of that for a year or two.
- [00:21:11.340]And this was shown at Phillips Auction House in New York and this was one of the first
- [00:21:16.060]ones that I did and then that progressed to more and more.
- [00:21:21.260]More and more dance scenes and again the yellow making its entrance and again being more prominent.
- [00:21:32.740]And these are some of the film photos that I take and they're literally everywhere.
- [00:21:38.020]LA, New York, London, just everywhere I go I'm like I want to capture black joy.
- [00:21:51.080]And I really got back into the individuals.
- [00:22:12.820]This allowed me the opportunity to really connect with people.
- [00:22:18.060]I didn't want to be the person that just takes random photos.
- [00:22:20.900]Just at the party and then just alright bye.
- [00:22:25.520]It allows you the opportunity to hear people's stories.
- [00:22:29.920]Some people are out just trying to have a good time.
- [00:22:32.380]Some people are out trying to escape things.
- [00:22:34.160]I was really just interested in why they were out.
- [00:22:42.720]Why they felt the need to be in this space at this time and how they felt.
- [00:22:50.720]Over time, there was a lot of deep, deep conversations that started to come about and it bordered
- [00:23:03.440]on religion.
- [00:23:05.600]A lot of conversations ended up diving into religion and I thought that was so interesting.
- [00:23:16.200]I'm a pastor's kid, so that's always been...
- [00:23:20.540]It's my upbringing, but to hear people talk about it unprofessionally.
- [00:23:27.380]I realized that it was like very prominent within the black community and
- [00:23:32.960]so I started diving a little bit deeper into that and you can kind of see it in
- [00:23:40.220]like people's jewelry like I make it a little bit obnoxious obnoxious like the
- [00:23:48.740]Holy Trinity on his necklace Jesus pieces and then I just kind of went all
- [00:24:00.500]in with it because to me like I was interested in the gathering aspect as
- [00:24:09.560]well and to me like there was I don't wanna say no difference but there was a
- [00:24:14.900]lot of similarities between a party and
- [00:24:18.500]you know a service you know where they're both gathering is both a sense
- [00:24:24.380]of congregation you know and so this is actually what kind of catapulted my
- [00:24:37.060]practice and you'll see why on the next slide so Oprah came into my studio and
- [00:24:48.260]did the Oprah effect and she you know I only got to meet with her about five
- [00:24:57.440]minutes but like she really like made it clear she was like you should there's
- [00:25:02.840]something here you should dive deeper into this religious you know this
- [00:25:08.360]religious theme and I agreed you know cuz Oprah so
- [00:25:18.020]but along with me taking my own photos it allowed me the opportunity to dive
- [00:25:22.560]into my family archives and so this is a little this is a progress shot of kind
- [00:25:27.680]of like how I work not only is it ballpoint pen and other mixed media but
- [00:25:34.400]I usually collage things on to canvas or on the panel I started sorry I said
- [00:25:47.780]since I work from photos sometimes I don't like to stick too closely to the
- [00:25:51.440]composition and so it's easier for me to really draw things out and then place
- [00:25:57.040]them where I want them to go one of my inspirations and my mentor is Debra
- [00:26:03.620]Roberts who is a collage artist and we did a boot camp together and she showed
- [00:26:08.940]me a lot of methods and so in some of my works you'll see like these maybe like
- [00:26:15.500]you see over here large large hands
- [00:26:17.540]or like these repeated actions trying to you know trying to show motion but also
- [00:26:24.680]I wanted to like not be so tight and everything so this is definitely very
- [00:26:30.560]much experimental but it was also an opportunity to dive deeper into the
- [00:26:35.720]religious theme and so I took inspiration from The Last Supper and
- [00:26:43.100]this is actually a photo of me and my cousins that
- [00:26:47.300]one of my birthday parties when I was younger and going back to experimenting
- [00:26:53.520]with color like a lot of the characters that I use that I use are red because
- [00:26:59.480]red reminds me of home you know growing up Nebraska Nebraska red like that's all
- [00:27:06.300]I can think of but also my cousins are all currently incarcerated and so I made
- [00:27:16.040]them
- [00:27:17.060]orange to kind of represent that you know and like doing this work it made me
- [00:27:24.740]like realize that you know like I wanted to dive more into the personal because
- [00:27:32.780]like I never talked about my family in that way like I never talked about them
- [00:27:37.580]being incarcerated you know I never even talked about this is the this is one of
- [00:27:42.540]the only photos that we have together like I haven't seen them in so long
- [00:27:46.820]and it just made me wanted to it just made me want to dive deeper into into
- [00:27:53.600]that so like I mentioned I did a residency in Connecticut and going along
- [00:28:05.060]with the religious themes I wanted to make these altarpieces
- [00:28:10.820]and so this is the outside of an altarpiece and these are resin cast at
- [00:28:16.580]hands as handles so the idea is that you open this up and it's inviting you into
- [00:28:24.200]this party that's inside so when you open it up then it's this triptych and
- [00:28:33.340]these are all each each panel is based off of a story in the Bible but also I
- [00:28:39.920]was really excited to kind of flex my fashion muscle so the the people in the
- [00:28:45.920]middle are
- [00:28:46.340]like wearing polo and Christian Dior and also like I'm in love with grills and
- [00:28:56.600]that came from inspiration of being in Texas you know being in Houston being in
- [00:29:01.340]Dallas and that's such a big thing in the culture down there so yeah you know
- [00:29:10.180]I was really excited this is my first show in New York actually or no first
- [00:29:16.100]show in upstate New York and then that led to the works that I'm currently
- [00:29:29.000]making which are smaller altarpieces still still within the dancing theme
- [00:29:45.860]and these are all these these are based on scriptures in the Bible so this one in
- [00:29:55.700]particular is about it's describing in Revelation is describing what heaven
- [00:30:02.640]looks like the streets of gold and the pearly gates and so I wanted it to be
- [00:30:09.460]subtle so the twelve gates are represented in the pearls and her teeth
- [00:30:15.620]as well as the the gold rose and her other tooth but I chose this image
- [00:30:23.320]because to me her expression is is that of like wonderment like she's looking at
- [00:30:31.440]something and like obviously there's like some type of wonderment or
- [00:30:36.720]amazement in her eyes like something's going on and I yeah I just wanted to
- [00:30:42.640]surrender that and these works are
- [00:30:45.380]part of a bigger project that I'm working on all year based
- [00:30:52.380]around a party that will be thrown in Miami for Basel called Heaven and it's a
- [00:31:02.000]you know we've all heard the jokes of inviting people to the cookout so this
- [00:31:07.320]is essentially the proverbial cookout that I'm creating and it starts with
- [00:31:13.280]these altarpieces but it's also a
- [00:31:15.140]video project a music project activation project so this is definitely gonna be
- [00:31:24.440]my most ambitious project to date and I'm excited I'm excited about it so uh I
- [00:31:35.360]think this might be the last yeah this is the last slide so you know making
- [00:31:41.000]this slide I realized like there there was a ton of work
- [00:31:44.900]and I chose just a fraction of things and I wish that I could go through the
- [00:31:51.740]entire journey but it's a lot of it's a lot it's a lot but you know I appreciate
- [00:31:57.800]you guys you know braving the weather to hear me yap a little bit about my work
- [00:32:14.660]we have some time for some questions so if anyone has questions I first want to
- [00:32:30.980]say I appreciate you showing your early work while here because I feel like as
- [00:32:35.160]current students it's really encouraging to see like I had to do a colored still
- [00:32:39.920]life I recognize the colored still there so it's nice to see your journey and
- [00:32:44.420]progression and a good reminder for us that it takes a lot of hard work but one
- [00:32:49.140]day we'll probably get there but my main question is which you kind of touched on
- [00:32:53.820]it during your talk but do you feel a certain responsibility in representing
- [00:32:58.480]the black community as a black artist especially when you mentioned making a
- [00:33:04.540]lot of work in the beginning revolving around propaganda yeah no I don't anymore
- [00:33:14.180]I don't feel any obligation to anyone but myself.
- [00:33:21.860]I want to make the work that I'm proud of and that I'm happy about.
- [00:33:27.340]That's first and foremost.
- [00:33:30.440]With that being said, I do want my work to be relatable.
- [00:33:37.280]I want people to be able to see themselves or see somebody that they know within the work.
- [00:33:49.580]But at the end of the day, if I'm happy with it, that's the most important thing.
- [00:33:55.700]As I've met more people and had more conversations, especially with black artists,
- [00:34:03.880]there's...
- [00:34:06.700]I mean, being a certain race isn't a monolith.
- [00:34:12.940]We all have our own interests.
- [00:34:17.280]We all have our own desires.
- [00:34:18.580]We all have things that we care about, we don't care about.
- [00:34:22.020]And that's okay.
- [00:34:23.880]Yeah, so I don't feel any obligations.
- [00:34:30.040]But I do...
- [00:34:34.020]I'll backtrack a little.
- [00:34:36.680]I do feel obligated.
- [00:34:41.060]I want to talk about black things in a positive way.
- [00:34:47.800]That's the only thing I feel obligated.
- [00:34:49.980]I don't ever want it to be controversial, I guess.
- [00:34:56.660]I don't want to represent that in a weird or negative way.
- [00:35:02.380]I love my culture.
- [00:35:04.760]And I want that to be...
- [00:35:06.580]prevalent in my work.
- [00:35:09.160]But as far as...
- [00:35:12.180]Do I feel like I need to be political? No.
- [00:35:13.980]Do I feel like I need to talk about trauma? No, I don't.
- [00:35:18.700]I just want to say thank you for coming.
- [00:35:34.460]And I really enjoyed your presentation.
- [00:35:36.180]But I don't know, typically how long does it take to create a piece with pen?
- [00:35:42.640]And do you start with color or do you vary between each?
- [00:35:50.120]Because I see the highlights are really there, the details are there.
- [00:35:55.280]Yeah, so it just depends.
- [00:35:59.040]I mean, I work fairly large.
- [00:36:00.540]I should have put the dimensions on these.
- [00:36:02.460]This is about 60 by 100.
- [00:36:05.420]Yeah, when you open it up, I think it's about 100 inches long, 60 inches tall.
- [00:36:14.640]I mean, this took me quite a while.
- [00:36:16.980]I would say like a couple months.
- [00:36:19.660]On a typical piece, my process is I draw things out on separate sheets of paper.
- [00:36:28.300]I might roll flats on the final canvas.
- [00:36:32.400]But yeah.
- [00:36:35.300]I draw things out on separate sheets of paper.
- [00:36:38.960]And that allows me to...
- [00:36:41.720]I do pen first and then I go over with an acrylic wash.
- [00:36:46.600]And then I cut it out and place it wherever I want it to go.
- [00:36:51.380]But that changes depending on...
- [00:36:56.880]I work very intuitively.
- [00:36:58.080]So it might be a photo transfer one day.
- [00:37:01.300]It might be a collage the next.
- [00:37:03.320]Or maybe I'm just like...
- [00:37:05.200]I paint over a lot of things too.
- [00:37:08.920]And I use a lot of found material too.
- [00:37:13.180]Like this one.
- [00:37:13.980]I don't know if you can see it.
- [00:37:16.620]But these are like actual napkins.
- [00:37:19.500]And there's like pieces of plate in here and stuff.
- [00:37:26.080]So I use a lot of...
- [00:37:28.280]And this is my construction paper.
- [00:37:30.760]But yeah, I use a lot of found material.
- [00:37:34.220]I might...
- [00:37:35.100]I like make my own paper and all that stuff too.
- [00:37:37.240]So just whatever I feel like is needed for a piece.
- [00:37:41.440]I shied away from...
- [00:37:44.760]I shied away from that for so long.
- [00:37:49.260]I thought like, okay, the pen is the star.
- [00:37:54.100]The pen is the star.
- [00:37:55.520]And this is what it's always going to be.
- [00:37:57.600]And this piece doesn't have any pen in it.
- [00:38:00.960]This is a myriad of things.
- [00:38:05.000]But, yeah, typically it's just drawing on other sheets of paper
- [00:38:11.260]and then add it in onto the canvas later.
- [00:38:13.400]A medium-sized piece for me is like 30 by 40.
- [00:38:18.300]I could finish that in a day.
- [00:38:21.040]That way, you know, if I don't get distracted, which I often do.
- [00:38:26.860]So.
- [00:38:27.200]I have a question about your,
- [00:38:34.980]your biblical work.
- [00:38:35.740]So how did you decide what to do in order to show biblical aspects in your
- [00:38:40.180]work?
- [00:38:40.460]And how did you find a balance between like pushing people away and actually
- [00:38:43.820]bringing them in with your work?
- [00:38:44.960]Could you,
- [00:38:48.980]could you speak a little bit more of what you mean by like pushing them away?
- [00:38:54.120]Well, just like, I don't know.
- [00:38:57.300]I want to be able to like bring the Bible into my work.
- [00:39:01.000]I just don't really know how to without like making it too much.
- [00:39:04.900]And so I guess my question is, like, how did you come up with the concept of, like, the 12 diamonds and, like, the gold streets and putting that in?
- [00:39:13.380]Yeah, so I'll start with that last part.
- [00:39:16.580]I think, like, I think the best advice I got was just, like, it's only too much if you don't want to explain it.
- [00:39:29.400]Like, if you can go to war about it, then it's not too much.
- [00:39:35.500]But, yeah, you just got to be able to, like, defend, you know, what you're doing or, you know, or don't.
- [00:39:46.640]Like, you could just do it and that'd be it.
- [00:39:49.820]Like, you're the boss of the work.
- [00:39:51.900]It's important that you control the narrative of, you know,
- [00:39:59.380]whatever you're making because other people will do it for you
- [00:40:01.780]if you give them the opportunity.
- [00:40:03.300]And the first question was, how did I come up with the...
- [00:40:09.380]Again, so, like, I'm a pastor's kid,
- [00:40:15.080]so it was always kind of, like, in the back of my mind.
- [00:40:18.840]But really, when I went to Next Haven to do the residency,
- [00:40:27.100]my roommate, Eric Hart Jr.,
- [00:40:30.040]he deals a lot with queer imagery and religion.
- [00:40:36.120]And we had so many conversations about, like, his back and forth
- [00:40:45.440]with, like, he wanted to do nudity, like, male nudity,
- [00:40:49.880]with biblical scenes.
- [00:40:54.380]And...
- [00:40:57.060]Yeah.
- [00:40:57.080]And that really, that just really inspired me.
- [00:41:00.300]Like, before I knew it, I was, you know,
- [00:41:03.240]it was bleeding into my work through these conversations.
- [00:41:07.560]And then eventually I just, like, let it be, you know.
- [00:41:12.420]Sometimes it's just, like, that's just the sign.
- [00:41:16.260]Like, sometimes it just bleeds into your work
- [00:41:18.820]and then you just got to let it happen.
- [00:41:21.360]So that's kind of where I'm at.
- [00:41:24.880]And, like, now I'm, like, fooling with it.
- [00:41:27.060]I'm trying to push it as far as I could possibly go.
- [00:41:32.240]Hi, I was just wondering if you had,
- [00:41:40.260]if you were able to, like, go back
- [00:41:42.160]and give advice to your college self,
- [00:41:45.220]what is some advice that you wish you had
- [00:41:48.380]or just something, like, looking to the future,
- [00:41:50.820]what should we know?
- [00:41:51.560]So, like, I said this in one of the talks
- [00:41:57.040]earlier, take full advantage of the facilities.
- [00:42:00.980]Like, I would just experiment
- [00:42:03.460]and make a bunch of good work
- [00:42:07.200]and make a bunch of bad work, you know,
- [00:42:09.540]but there's just so, I mean,
- [00:42:14.180]there's just so many things you can do with art
- [00:42:15.780]and, like, you have the time
- [00:42:17.200]and the facilities to do so.
- [00:42:18.580]So I would go back and be like,
- [00:42:20.660]hey, you better be in that studio, you know,
- [00:42:23.540]and then soak up, you know,
- [00:42:27.020]as much information as you can, you know,
- [00:42:29.840]from the faculty.
- [00:42:30.520]Like, you know, they're here for a reason.
- [00:42:32.680]You know, they know what they're talking about.
- [00:42:34.200]So I would definitely, like,
- [00:42:36.440]go and tell myself, like,
- [00:42:39.340]get in the studio and, like, ask questions,
- [00:42:43.400]you know, and really, like,
- [00:42:48.280]listen to the critiques.
- [00:42:51.480]Y'all didn't, I don't think y'all had Francisco
- [00:42:54.140]for critiques, so, you know.
- [00:42:57.000]It was a little, it was a brutal time, but.
- [00:43:00.280]But look at the results.
- [00:43:03.280]Yeah.
- [00:43:03.720]Adrian, as you've gone, as you've evolved,
- [00:43:17.660]and as you keep kind of pushing it
- [00:43:20.240]and finding new ways to push it,
- [00:43:22.380]what things are you focusing on the most?
- [00:43:26.980]And you think are good things to focus on
- [00:43:30.940]in terms of like creative evolution
- [00:43:33.040]and sustaining creative just like flow.
- [00:43:38.420]So the main things that I'm focusing on,
- [00:43:43.820]first and foremost, like especially moving forward
- [00:43:47.700]is my concepts.
- [00:43:49.160]I feel like if I have strong concepts,
- [00:43:52.260]then the aesthetics follow.
- [00:43:56.960]I mean, because it's,
- [00:43:58.920]I feel like it's easy to make a pretty picture,
- [00:44:01.120]you know, but what's below the surface,
- [00:44:06.120]you know, and so for me,
- [00:44:10.660]it's just like if I can figure out my concepts
- [00:44:13.480]and have strong concepts,
- [00:44:14.680]then I've already broken through that like wall
- [00:44:18.880]of like, okay, like I'm comfortable using materials,
- [00:44:22.580]different materials or like trying new things,
- [00:44:25.540]experimenting, like,
- [00:44:26.940]I'm okay with failing, you know,
- [00:44:29.260]like, and that's what's keeping me going.
- [00:44:31.340]Like, and also I'm just, I'm curious, you know,
- [00:44:34.520]like we had the talk earlier
- [00:44:36.640]and you were telling me about all these ideas that you had.
- [00:44:39.540]And I admire that because like,
- [00:44:42.820]I feel like that is a sign of a really great artist,
- [00:44:46.720]somebody that's curious and experimenting
- [00:44:48.820]and trying new things.
- [00:44:50.440]And yeah, so that's kind of what's keeping the creative
- [00:44:56.920]process going.
- [00:44:57.640]Like, you know, I always want to do better
- [00:45:00.820]than my last piece.
- [00:45:01.980]I hope that answered the question.
- [00:45:06.720]I'm curious to know more about the significance
- [00:45:17.120]of yellow for you.
- [00:45:18.580]So the yellow came right when I started to work
- [00:45:25.340]with Concepts of Joy.
- [00:45:26.900]Yellow was such a strong color.
- [00:45:32.280]You automatically walk in and you see it
- [00:45:35.900]and it's just like a slap in the face.
- [00:45:37.360]And I use a very specific yellow.
- [00:45:38.840]I use a smiley face yellow.
- [00:45:41.340]Smiley face yellow and sunny side up yellow.
- [00:45:43.660]But just like Picasso had his blue era
- [00:45:51.580]and rose era and all that stuff.
- [00:45:56.880]I feel like I'm very much in my yellow era.
- [00:45:59.800]Yeah, I mean, it's such a bold, strong color.
- [00:46:07.280]And historically, that color has meant a lot
- [00:46:14.500]in the sense of royalty and things like that.
- [00:46:17.100]And I really love, I just really love adding that in,
- [00:46:21.320]especially with the jewelry and all that stuff that comes in.
- [00:46:25.280]I think it adds this like,
- [00:46:26.860]extra pop, extra like,
- [00:46:29.960]just like extraness.
- [00:46:34.160]Cool.
- [00:46:45.820]Thank you so much.
- [00:46:47.600]Thank you, thank you.
- [00:46:48.840]Thank you.
- [00:46:50.740]Thank you.
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