Good evening, everyone.
Welcome to the Billy Wilder Theater.
I'm Claudia Bestor.
I'm the director of public programs
here at the Hammer Museum.
And I want to welcome you all for
tonight's artist talk with Mr.
Willie Birch, followed by a
conversation with Mr. Birch and
curator Ira Muschietti.
Birch's work is part of the Hammer
Museum's Contemporary Collection,
which we launched in 2005 to
build a collection of international
contemporary art made since 1960.
And this March and March of this
year, we
unveiled our brand new building
expansion. You probably might have
seen it on your way in, and
to celebrate, we decided to present
works from our collection to
inaugurate the new spaces.
So our current exhibition is called
Together in Time, and it occupies
nearly all of our existing gallery
spaces.
It's the largest presentation of the
Hammer contemporary collection in
our museum's history.
And Mr. Willie Birch's work is
featured in this exhibition, and we
are thrilled to have him here with
us all the way from New Orleans
tonight.
Mr. Willie Birch was born in
New Orleans, Louisiana.
In 1942.
He received his undergraduate degree
from Southern University in New
Orleans and an MFA from the Maryland
Institute College of Art in
Baltimore.
He lived in New York City for much
of the seventies and eighties and
traveled the world before returning
to New Orleans permanently in 1994.
Mr. Birch creates paintings,
drawings and sculptures that often
center on spaces and everyday
objects or scenes of daily life
around his New Orleans.
To quote his Prospekt five
biography, they are testaments
to black life in the city and to
spaces of togetherness,
individuality, ritual,
celebration, domesticity,
creativity, labor
and rest.
His work incorporates an
encyclopedic knowledge of European
painting, African art and
history to create a style that
is entirely his own.
In addition to his object based
artworks, after the devastation
of Hurricane Katrina and its
entirely inhumane and degrading
aftermath, Birch co-founded
The Porch Seventh Ward Cultural
Organization to preserve
culture in a neighborhood in need
of revitalization and revival.
And it's had an enormous impact on
the youth of the historic Seventh
Ward neighborhood in New Orleans.
He also founded the Old Prior Street
Project and Community Garden, which
engages local artists,
youth groups and community members
in the preservation of the culture
of one of the oldest
African-American neighborhoods in
the city.
Mr. Birch's work has been exhibited
at the Contemporary Art Center in
New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum
of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York, the Studio
Museum in Harlem, New York,
Mass. MOCA, the Tucson Museum
of Art. The National National Museum
of Art at Duke University.
The Speed Museum in Lexington,
Kentucky.
The Hilliard Art Museum in
Lafayette, Louisiana.
The Museum of Contemporary Art,
Cleveland. The Museum Room, Museum
of African American Art in Tampa
and the Scottsdale Museum of
Contemporary Art in Arizona, among
many, many others.
His work is included in the public
collections of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum
of American Art, the New Orleans
Museum of Art.
Crystal Bridges, Museum of American
Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern
Art and the Speed Museum, Kentucky,
as well as, of course, here at the
Hammer Museum.
Mr. Bush has been the recipient of
many awards and fellowships,
including the Guggenheim Foundation,
the Pollock-krasner Foundation, the
Joan Mitchell Foundation, the New
York State Council on the Arts and
the National Endowment of the Arts.
He was named the USA Artist James
Baldwin Fellow in 2014,
and he's received the Governors
Award from the State of Louisiana
and the Mayor's Arts Award from New
Orleans.
Mr. Bush's work has been included in
numerous group exhibitions
throughout the country and a
retrospective of his work called
Celebrating Freedom.
The Art of Willie Birch was
organized by the Contemporary Art
Center of New New Orleans in 2016
and traveled nationally.
So first, we're going to hear an
artist talk from Mr. Burch, and then
I'll have a conversation with
curator Muschietti, and then
they'll take some audience
questions.
And afterwards we'll have some
coffee, tea and cookies out
in the courtyard where you are.
Welcome to come and meet the artist
in person.
So without further ado, please
join me in giving a very warm
welcome to the one and only Mr.
Willie Birch.
Have a great time.
Thank you.
I don't know who that person was.
She just mentioned, but, uh.
But we're going to see where this
stuff go.
It was an interesting.
Today I met this
young lady who
is really from Cambodia,
and she was telling me that her
mother has a restaurant
on Capital Street in New Orleans.
And I say, That's the street I was
born on, chapatis.
This means
pathway along
the river.
And so here I was
in 1942,
being born in the back
of my aunt's restaurant
Thanksgiving night
in 1942.
So I was a family baby.
And I've always been a family baby.
And that
story informed me
to the point where today
I love to tell stories
because it seems sometimes like
what I'm living is fantasy
because of the nature
of the way the world is.
And also growing up in the South.
But yet I've been able to persevere
and seem at this point to have done
it to the point where now it
can get recognition of people
like Hamer inviting
me to come and give
this presentation.
But also including my work in
this collection.
And so I
feel very honored.
So I want to thank
the Hamer family
for giving me this opportunity.
Like I said, I like a
lady say, Claudia said,
I'm from New Orleans,
Louisiana, and that to me
is the greatest city in the world.
I know that people would take
objection to that.
But in terms of
America's only real
art form.
It comes from New Orleans,
and we need to remember that.
And we call it jazz.
And that music is about
storytelling.
It's not.
If you know something about the
history of Western art, it has
nothing to do with Dada.
It has nothing to do with the
deconstruction of art.
It's about the creation and telling
of the identity of a people
who have survived due
to the way.
Due to the fact that they were being
oppressed.
That's a hell of a story.
And so for the first time now,
America is really seem to
have decided it has to engage
that part of the story in order to
really tell the history of America.
And that's going to be very painful
sometimes, especially with people
like me, because that
is my role.
I like to say the fact that
I went to art school,
teacher of mine, A-grade.
Creating art school for me.
I grew up in the Magnolia Project,
which is the projects in New
Orleans.
Single mother who had three
babies out of wedlock.
And she never want me to be an
artist. But all these things are
important and give you some
information as to why
I'm who I am and why
I do what I do.
At 18, I joined the Civil Rights
Movement.
These are important things.
My mentor, who
has a street named after her in New
Orleans named Aretha
Castle Haley, sent
me to the library, which we
integrated to
to look up an artist by the name of
Kat DiCarlo.
It's
the first time.
Yesterday, I saw that bus
of Cathy Kotlowitz.
And it just made my day.
Because if you know anything about
Kate DeCarlo, it's she was doing
things with anti-establishment,
the art that she was making.
So all these things have informed
me. But at the same time,
what Aretha said to me was that
an artist had one foot in poverty
and one foot in aristocracy,
and they'll never give you the money
because they want to keep you in
poverty.
But at the same time,
you are the record of
particularly the underserved,
the marginalized.
So my
thrust of making sure
that I keep
that mandate and
that trust that these
people who helped
me to go to school and pay
help, pay for my college education.
These little old ladies who raised
and the cookie bags so that
I could become who I am.
I celebrate them.
So what I do is for them.
So I'm telling you this because as
we begin to look at the slides,
what you're going to see is that a
lot of the work is for
for me at this point is for you
young people.
I'm interested in you.
You are young enough to be my
grandchildren.
And that's important because
you are the people who are going to
carry on and decide whether this
stuff is relevant.
Artists.
We are made
and disappear.
And we are sometime
we are reborn again.
Like like James Baldwin would say.
You find something and you able to
use that information and it says
something about who you are.
But this is a short trip
and memory is very short.
There's a saying
that I talk about a lot of times,
and then I'll start showing the
slides.
And that is, is that Europeans
see 100 miles
as a short distance.
Americans see
100 years as
a short time.
So what does that buy the long
time? Because yet
Americans see 100 years as a
long time.
Because we have such a short
history.
Mm hmm.
So you are going to be the carriers
of whatever this stuff become
in terms of defining what kind of
country you are.
And I believe the country is in a
real shaky situation now
in terms of what it would want to
be.
But it's going to be up to all of
you and it's going to be
multiracial.
And the biggest thing is going to
you're going to have to deal with
these class issues
because this is where we
move in. Race is becoming less of an
issue, folks.
It's going to be about class.
So I'm here to introduce
you to what is to come
if it's not already here.
And so I hope that you
listen and.
And learn.
Disagree
and have free engagement
as to what we all
deserve as fellow human
beings.
But it's your journey.
I will transition within
the next couple of years.
And being in New Orleans, we
celebrate life and debt.
We give them equal balance.
We celebrate you when you
when you die.
And we cry for you
when you're born.
This is New Orleans.
Okay.
So let me start
off with this particular piece.
This is what you'd call an
assemblage or whatever.
It was done after Martin Luther King
was killed in 1968.
And it's called Two Faces of a
Nation.
And I'll give you a short history of
this. And then, you know, you
can better understand what
now I've just given you about this
whole history of Aretha Cassel,
Haley, my mentor, and giving
you an understanding of what the
role of an artist is.
What I become.
And this piece,
I had this professor name
Arthur Britt, who
I'd never seen on like this.
I didn't realize I'd seen art like
this. And what happened was that
he took these
pieces of this scrap
around New Orleans,
and he made this piece based
on the full on the bombing of the
four little girls that were killed
in Alabama.
At that time, there was a thing
called the the
National Conference of
of African-American Artists or
Colored Artists, and that show
was held in Atlanta,
Georgia.
And you had people like Charles
White.
You had people like
Elizabeth Catlett.
You had people like
Jack Jordan.
You had people like Haile Woodroof.
You had some of our most prominent
artists who, as far as I knew,
had never done anything
in relationship to making money.
It was all about making sure
that they made images that was
reflective of their time, and
that is what they did in terms
of the
people that they served, which were
people of color.
So that piece
that Dr. Arthur Britt
made won first
prize over Elizabeth can
we know is a great sculptor
over Jack Jordan.
And all of a sudden, I had to really
change my direction as to
what was precious.
The scraps
of just little fragments.
They just were discarded
things that we threw away.
But all of a sudden they have
another purpose because there is
metaphor, there's all these
different ways of interpret them,
and eventually they come out to
something I want to say about
America, which is that
we live in two different countries.
We live in the country that I live
in and we live in the country
that are the people who happen to be
of a lighter hue, do not understand,
does not appreciate it, does not
know anything about.
So so I just wanted to
start with that.
This is another one of those pieces
which is called the door.
And and again, we're showing it
because you're going to see some
replica of this in another form
as I move through my 40,
50 years of making this stuff.
Okay. I go to graduate school
and I want to understand
abstraction.
I had a problem with abstraction
because the people I come
out of, they
didn't understand.
They wanted a more literal
interpretation of
so-called abstract work.
And and but the
meaning is there.
But you have to have a history of
you have to have the knowledge of
it, as you all know, probably in
terms of you
have to have a history of, of
of American art.
And so it may be esoteric
to some people, but to
those with the to try
to understand all of those layers
of meaning underneath that.
Most black people, we we
don't work like that.
That's why we do figurative stuff.
So the only route to
me making the art that I went
to Marian Institute to learn about
was to make these paintings
dealing with the map of Africa.
That was my desperation because
that was the closest thing I could
find that would make an image
that I could recognize
and take someplace else in terms
of being within the same
genre as, say, a mars Lewis
or a
Sam Gilliam or whatever
that we call the Washington College
School.
These patterns are fairly
large, like seven by eight.
And so now I'm beginning to
understand some about social
order, social commentary, all
of those things, but yet within this
abstract way.
But eventually I got bored
with this and what
I learned from my musician friends
and knew all the ones I really
admire is that you
can play.
Different ways.
The same tune and different tunes.
But the but the reality is that
you don't have to stay and do the
same thing for the rest of your
life. So these young artists, since
this is not about making money.
Once you solve a problem,
solve or conquer the
way you want to make something,
then the best thing you could do if
you really are going to be involved
in is that has some spirit.
You move on to another
form that also gives you
this energy because this
process is a constantly changing
process. And as we would say coming
out of New Orleans, we are making
living art.
We're not interested in data
that's been made.
We're interested in living.
Okay, I got this commission because
I studied also sculpture,
and they told me I was very good at
it. So I got this commission
from the oldest Catholic church
in Baltimore.
And the priest asked me to do
a lifesize crucifix
because they wanted the
parishioners to feel
something about themselves in terms
of if you study a
renaissance or we know that
Christ, the person
we call Jesus Christ.
He had he had
kinky hair and
he was of a darker hue.
But when you look at Renaissance
art coming out of Italy,
sometime, he's depicted as somebody
with blond hair where you
realize people make things
that represent them
so that they can feel close to.
So but for me, I wanted
to do a self-portrait that had
some semblance of myself.
Now I become artist in residence
at Studio Museum,
and I wanted to do a voodoo series.
So what happened?
Me being.
And I was surprised to get this
honor to be asked around the Studio
Museum because
I just didn't think that my work
really fit into what
Studio Museum was looking for.
Studio Museum,
which is a now
historically known black institution
or interested in in
making art that was more
representative of of
of of what was going on
within the larger community.
And to me, that basically meant
that I would have to give
up my blackness.
I would have to give up my for
something else, as Thelma Golden
would say.
But that's not realistic in terms
of who I am.
So anyway, Studio
Museum got me a Xerox machine.
I asked for a Xerox machine,
and I made these large pieces based
on that.
Because voodoo is different
than voodoo doll.
It's different.
It's a it's an amalgamation
of different African
religions coming out of Europe.
And in New Orleans, it's also about
Catholicism and
what it is. It's it's it's
it's a hybrid that's
really very much involved in
everything we do in New Orleans,
which defines how we do
it and why we do it.
We are ancestor worshipers.
And I work in series, so
there may be 40 pieces in this
series.
Okay, Everything is series.
Okay. After that,
I did this.
I started looking at
people. And I'm in New York now,
too.
I'm looking at people, particularly
people of color, and
they look like all our
faces of all the African people,
all the African faces that I've
seen.
So I started taking friends of mine,
whoever I could find, and
I would do this basically
something based on one of the
traditional African masks
and interject.
The person.
So I made these this portrait
series. And
because although I'm in New York,
I always was projecting back
to New Orleans in terms of what I
did. So I never felt real
comfortable that I felt comfortable
what I was doing.
But it felt sometimes
like you out there by yourself.
Okay. I did a solid
after that, after that series that
did it was called a Solid State
Series.
These three I'm showing you in the
show at the Museum of Modern
Art about two
months ago.
And and, and
like, I get in trouble some time.
I used to get in trouble with
the art community.
And what happened is
that
you get put out of the club.
And and so I had
to create out of this
very small studio,
I had this television.
The name of television was Solid
State.
You know, I don't know what the
overall brand was, but it was
this particular brand was solid
state.
So I'm looking at these images
that.
Coming out of something that's
a solid state, which is a
contradiction to the type of images
I'm looking at.
I think this was at the Emmett
Till's funeral.
And then there was Gandhi.
And it's and if you.
The other thing is what's unique
about Moseley's piece that they use
it on something that's blue like a
blue chair.
Blue is becomes a metaphor
for the blues.
These things become ways
of giving another layer to meaning
so that as you move from
one part of the other, there
are other things in here that will
grab you. There's also a numerology
going on which me
I chose the number three because of
my relationship with Egypt.
So if you start looking and you
start counting, you will look
at these pieces over and over and
over again and what you saw the
first time. You may not see the
second time.
That sounds just like the music that
we create.
Okay. I'm actually going back
to just doing whatever I do because
I don't follow the rules that
have been set up that you do one
thing and you continue to do it.
I had problems eating watermelon
as a child because all the
images I saw
were based on this
negative way of looking at
watermelon.
And in 1962,
because of the civil rights
movement, I was forced to
join the Air Force to get away from
the United States.
And I wound up in Europe.
And it was dangerous
stuff that I was doing, the
type of duty I was doing.
But there was this picnic,
and I'm the only African-American
among these salad guys.
And somebody brought up a truck of
watermelon, and I never
saw white p watermelon like
that in my life.
And I'm staying on the sideline
looking at this because
I've been denying something that
they have made me feel
that I shouldn't enjoy the pleasure
of. So
this piece became a break from the
revolution as
I eat this piece of watermelon.
The other thing is that,
yeah, it all of it
has all of that humor in it.
The other thing is that I'm using
wood that I'm finding on the
streets,
which we like to think are found
objects. But if we study African
art, we know that the master
carver would go into the woods
till he finds something.
Or it could be in stone.
And what? But the point is, is that
that is what they would carve out
of. So the idea of found out is I'm
not sure what that is.
All I know is that it
represents a form
that I can make something out of,
whether I it's called a readymade
or whether it's called
just I don't usually block
a wood that has a history
and a character that allows
me to release whatever is inside
of it.
Okay. Now, again,
this is another body
of work that 36
pieces in this series.
They all would carvings of
of pieces that I found
on the streets of Brooklyn, in New
York. I would drag them home and
drag them over my studio.
And I began to do these carvings.
This particular piece, which I'm
going to show you, is called Voices
from the Belly of the Earth.
One thing I found about me that
was different from a lot of my New
York African-American
artist friends was that
I never.
I always wanted to know something
about Africa.
And I always want Africa to be a
part of what I did.
Some of them, I felt, were trying to
get away from Africa because
in order to fit into another
structure.
But for me, Africa
was very, very important.
And also I began to hang with
Latinos like
Puerto Ricans and Dominicans
and and Cubanos,
because there if you look at
the genesis of their work,
they never abandoned Africa.
Africa is an integral part.
When you look at their music, when
you look at their dance, when you
look at every part of who they
are. And of course
that's also New Orleans, because
New Orleans is the most Caribbean
city in,
you know, in on the west and
on this hemisphere.
So I'm finding all of these pieces,
the words big smile, and
I'm doing these pieces and
eventually this is what happens.
And then and peace and love from
it. Well, again, they go from and
it's an installation because it goes
from the floor.
A flash.
Okay. This is the piece called
Passages.
And I'm looking at a lot of stuff
now that are coming out in these
galleries, which are very
interesting because I've been doing
this stuff. This thing here was done
in one 1985.
So I'm looking at forms that
I like to think that I
created and
I'm watching what young artists are
doing. I'm saying, Wow, I'm
brothers, so I see why you all know
me, but I don't know you.
But as now I'm saying, I'm joining
with you and I
like to feel that, hey, there
is an energy there and a synergy
there that you
are embracing.
And I just happen to be the old man
in the room right now.
This piece called Passages.
Then I there was some I
was talking to
around the day and we were talking
about my folkloric series.
And, and what had happened
was that this was
in the the late eighties
where there was a debate
because there were all of these
self-trained artists
who were beginning to get
recognition.
And then there was a lot of African
artists who were beginning to come
to the forefront and they were
trying to put the work as pop art
away. But it was their own
invention.
But in terms of me, I'm
looking at this debate because
a lot of my academically trained
African-American artists were.
Jealous because
the people who are getting the
recognition want the self-trained
artists.
But at the end here, they had
studied this stuff all
their life.
But now America is looking for
something new.
And my contention on that was that
the energy is in the south train,
and that's why people gravitate
to it.
Because if we we deal with
it from an academic point of view.
There's something about that that
it becomes redundant and
the artist is supposed to always
be searching for the new.
That's what we do.
That's why you search and you
struggle through this process
because you are searching for
something that you cannot put
your hands on.
But when you find it,
you feel it.
That's New Orleans again.
This piece was for.
For Nelson Mandela.
Okay. This is the piece in your
collection, which I haven't seen in
years. And then my
gallery in New York showed it
and I was looking at today and as
and when they first seed, it looks
very different than the rest
of the stuff in the show.
But then if you know the history.
Of the less.
And how do we look at beauty?
How do we look at all of these
things which I'm questioning and
looking at?
You begin to understand that this
piece is more rich than
just somebody who
is primitive.
I don't have any academic training.
And I got into it with a couple of
my friends who knew who knew about
my background.
But at the same time, this
is in New York and New York and it
can be very anti self train.
New York has this idea
of of
I guess, supposed to consider itself
very sophisticated in some way.
And here I am saying I can take
everything you got, put it within
this other context and you still
can't reject it for what it is.
Okay. This is an interesting piece
that's on Martin Luther
King Day.
There was a riot in
Miami.
And in the name of this piece is
Martin Luther King.
McDonald's in Miami is
burning.
And what had happened was that
McDonald's had put an ad out
that said do nothing de.
So of course I want to record that
now. I thought the piece was great
enough to be bought
years ago, so
we still have it.
So that lets you know that
everything that's supposed is good
does not see the light of day,
maybe for years, because it's just
too close and maybe you're
adding a layer to it that
s the people aren't just not
comfortable with.
This is papier maché.
I went to New Orleans and I saw a
a 15th century Spanish
pig's maché crucifix.
That let me know I could do papier
maché. But also, New Orleans has a
pygmy tradition within the carnival
floats the idea of precious.
We'll see what makes it precious.
What makes it precious is something
that you feel gives you
some idea of your survival
and makes you feel good about it.
Could be a coin.
So this idea of precious and
here I'm using something that's
sent away to India,
something to be refined
and sent back to the United States
is sellable.
Paper.
And then I'm saying I'm putting a
price on it and saying, if
you want it, this would you have to
pay for it.
Which challenges the whole idea
of canvas and art
and precious metals and all
of these. And I'm taking all the
whole thing on to try
to make sense of how do we
see ourselves and how do we see
what's been discarded in terms
of its preciousness and beauty.
Okay.
This piece here is
called The Couple In, all
because it deals with miscegenation.
It it was supposed to be
in a show in Virginia.
And the show we had Groove
was commissioned to do these pieces.
But what happened eventually was
that the show was canceled
because I don't think the people
like what?
What was being said by certain
artists in the show.
The idea was that
I don't know if you know it, but
George Washington sat
at least 100
babies of color.
All of this is documented.
So as somebody who also is very
interested in history, all
I had to do was study this stuff
and then find a way to make
something out of it that represented
whatever all of those issues
are around the idea of
interracial relationships in
this particular situation.
This is the piece.
Carl going home.
Are the people who bought
it wanted me to change the name to
going south.
They almost didn't buy it because I
refused to change the name.
Eventually, I did buy.
There's a numerology on here in
terms of the three suitcases, but
also the mother, the child
and the doll.
All of these things.
So there's a rhythm that's
within these pieces that
that that you respond to, not
just on a three dimensional level,
but you also expand them on a two
dimensional love as if they are
paintings.
This is a group of people I
did in Nairobi series in Nairobi,
got in trouble.
But this piece is called The Work in
the Boss.
And it's a humorous story because
the worker had stolen some of
the boss's chickens.
And I'm listening to these two,
Olga. So and the
worker was saying, No, boss, I
didn't steal them.
But we knew that he had.
And the idea of that exchange
between the laborer and
and the owner, and
that goes on beyond
race and class, and it goes
on all over the world.
This piece is called Well,
it's called Father Milo Miles.
It has Kenya on it, but I don't know
if you know about the Milo Miles.
The Milo Miles were the people who
integrated who
took down the colonial power
call England
and became liberated before
the civil rights movement in
America, because this was done in
the early sixties.
Now, what makes these figures
important to me, these twin figures,
and that is they all had
dreadlocks. I met these old men
in Kenya and they have dreadlocks.
Well, where did they get this idea
to as a social commentary
to put dreadlocks on their hair?
Well, okay.
I've been to Egypt, spent my
whole grant
one year, 5000 miles from
the action down and went to Egypt
for five weeks and in
third floor. And I could tell you
and I hope some of you go to Egypt,
go to Cairo, and you go on the third
floor. I don't know if he's still
there, but there's Tutankhamun's
hair.
What do you think?
Took a hammer. It looked like
Tutankhamun's hair had dreadlocks.
Okay, Now, so what
happens? The Mahmoud takes that
from Tutankhamun.
And then what happened?
We get to Jamaica.
What does the Rastafarian do?
They take from the mouth mouths and
they do dreadlocks.
So? So now you've got a
proliferation of people who
are dealing with the hair and
the textures and the crankiness
and all of that stuff.
And and we got a whole
new form as it moves from one
people to the other and one
generation to the other that
expresses something about them and
that humanity.
The the bottle tops are
called Tuscumbia.
Tuscumbia is the elephant.
The elephant is probably one of the
most powerful are the most powerful
ammo in the world.
So the elephant becomes
the strength.
Within this piece.
So there's metaphor in all
of these all of these pieces
on that level.
Okay. This is part of my
dialog series, which
this piece here is done with,
with the idea, the comedian and
humor.
So it's like listening to radio
or listening to television and you
just jotting down all of these
different layers.
And they have
they have an energy about
it. And the play is that how
do you mix these things up where you
tell the story using words and
imagery?
That still speaks to
my in this case, my reality.
And at the same time, speak to
the history of African-Americans.
Okay. This is a piece that I
really love this piece because I'm
listening to the radio and
this little lady
of of of, of, of,
of, of of European
origin.
She's on radio talking
to this black sister.
They're having this conversation.
And what are they talking about?
They talking about diversity.
That's.
I can't. I can't I can't make this
stuff up. And it's all based on
documentary.
You know, it's a real thing.
Some show, some way.
If you look for you could find
somebody giving this conversation.
This is I'm showing is
because this is my
second commission.
This. How many people go on the
Schomburg?
I'm people. Nobody Schomburg.
The Schonberg is the is
the the archives
of of Black history
in America.
That's in Harlem.
Well, I happened to get that
commission and I was commissioned
to do this piece on
what this rapper saying on one side
of the street is Harlem Hospital
and the other side is the Schomburg.
And the Schomburg is an important
institution. Matter of fact, it's
more important to me than I believe
the Studio Museum at this
point.
This is this church that was
bombed in North Carolina
by the Klan.
And I got an architectural
rendering of it some kind of way.
And I did this, and I'm making an
kissy out of it.
I'm even older than KC.
If you knew something about certain
types of sculpture in
terms of African culture, there
is a chest cavity and
within that is the energy within
the piece. So what I'm doing, I'm
putting bells, I'm putting the
oyster shell.
These are indigenous to New Orleans.
So all of these so oyster shells
can be amulets.
They can be like cowrie
shells.
But I'm using indigenous
things that pertain to my
experience, but they serve the same
purpose.
This a piece for?
I got. I decided to try
doing something.
Now, this is blue.
Somewhat.
But again, this is for.
For Sydney Beach.
How many people know Sydney Beach?
You know, again,
all these things are historical in
dynamics and it's called a blues
for the beach chaise and chaise
outside of Louis Armstrong Sydney
beaches, probably one of the
historically best known
musicians. He played clarinet.
And you've heard him all your life.
You just didn't know who he was.
This is when cotton was king.
And I went and found out what the
size of most of these sat these
sacks were.
And I did a whole narrative
piece on this on this whole idea
of cotton.
Now, after that,
I begin to run out of energy
in terms of wanting to do papier
maché, and I begin
to I'm really
in New Orleans full time
now, and I realize
I want to do something different.
I want to challenge the idea of
New Orleans esthetic because our
esthetics is based on has
been decided that it's about color.
And I'm saying and I wish people
were calling me a colorist.
Well, okay, I want to challenge that
whole idea.
And I started doing pieces
like this.
And also they showed other skills
that people didn't know I had.
They didn't believe I had.
And all of these people are just
people in my neighborhood in
New Orleans.
Then I began to do these black
and white pieces,
which changed the whole project.
And it also messed with me
economically because my galleries
want me to do papier maché.
This piece called Bride of Jesus.
This piece is called Waiting
in Congo Square.
This piece is called Is
Blind Man going
to the Marfa Ceremony.
This the Marfa ceremony is
at least to the Mississippi River.
To throw flowers in the river,
to
basically honor the ancestors
who didn't make it.
This piece is called for Ernie Cato
This call No tears for Ernie Cato.
I had the privilege of growing
up across the street from a place
called a Dewdrop in the dewdrop
any way I can.
Tina Turner played
Big Mama Thornton.
Joe Turner.
Sam Cooke.
All of these people came to New
Orleans.
Allen Toussaint.
And as a child, I
have seen to these
people making and playing
their music.
So Ernie K-Doe was
one of these people.
And he's a New Orleans legend.
So when he when he when he died,
it was one of the biggest funerals
I've ever seen in New Orleans.
So that taught me that it's
not the politicians who get the big
funeral.
It's people who are revered like
Ernie K-Doe.
Okay. Second line and you can see
where it is.
Okay. This was
from my music series.
In terms of drumming in the Great
Hall, these are traditional
African drummers drumming
in the New Orleans Museum of Art.
And anybody know my history?
No.
I love the take on the museum
there because I wasn't allowed
to go to that museum until
I was 11 years old.
And I didn't go back
to it until I was
22
because we it was segregated.
Okay. Young musician.
Okay.
Ciao. Since the show.
These Mardi Gras Indian
crew qualify fire.
And this is not carnival, folks.
But the ritual of the of the
Indians, the masking tradition
is unbelievable.
And to be a part of that,
just the sheer energy
and the magic.
This is Zulu.
And what I really love about
this piece with the little sister
who is dancing and how she's
empowering herself.
And I mean, she's controlling this
whole space.
Gesture is such a powerful
medicine.
And it says so much
about who we are.
And in New Orleans, people
can be appear very sexual
in that gesture.
We we we do dances
where we stick our booty out.
And it's also is a protest.
It's a protest that say we can do
anything we want to do.
And there's songs that like, do what
you wanna.
And it's a it's a protest against
the establishment.
That's New Orleans.
This is Congo Square.
This is the river
the revolution has.
So, so. So this is just the second
line.
This is a wedding.
Where I can really expand and
somebody gave me enough money to
frame them the way I want to.
But is jumping the broom.
This is my family church,
the old church with Saint John.
And the new church is the new Saint
John, the Hills.
And those are the parishioners at
the bottom.
The history is that the little
church in the middle section
was it was,
How can I put this?
It was.
It's created its own school
and
and and built this church
in 1862.
Wendy's flavor in.
So what does that say about these
people?
That's powerful juju, right?
Okay.
We have in Louisiana, we have more
twins born in any place in
the United States outside
of Nigeria.
Tom, that's still today.
Okay.
The piece on the right is
the one that was an
incident where the
young foot, because of drugs and
I'm relating to the piece that you
have.
The young man was killed and
his father was the drug king.
So when the police came
and the fire
department come, they're supposed to
clean the streets of the blood.
They didn't.
I went out there and protested and
I asked a group of friends of mine,
Let's do a demonstration,
because I want to make something out
of this whole thing.
So this piece called Scrubbing,
it goes scrubbing, sweeping
and healing
because of the nature of the fact
that they had no
understanding of the preciousness of
human dignity.
So they did what they did.
They left the blood on the ground
just like it was.
What I can't allow that to happen,
just being who I am.
Okay.
We all know what bottle trees are.
What? I had a bottle of your.
I had bottle fence.
Yeah. Okay.
This tree is.
Is is the tree
in my family cemetery?
There was this metal gate that was
born inside the tree
to let you know how old the tree
was.
Okay, fences again and
you go late back to the second piece
where you saw that Dona with the
with the constructive tree.
But gates
fence is what are they?
Are they barriers that keep you out
and keep you in?
All of these things are constantly
being played out in my work.
Okay.
The the the, the
the surveys that are on the
metalwork of this person's house.
If you go how many people know what
a peristyle is?
They know what they've seen are
Haitian. They they are voodoo.
They have AIDS.
This is pervasive throughout New
Orleans. New Orleans.
You could tell who was there when
they came.
The Saint Louis Cathedral.
They had these diamond shapes,
these diamonds that you go to New
Orleans. People say, well, those
diamond shape hardy beautiful.
In a way. What I do with them,
the they that they celebrate
freedom because they mean crossroads
of life.
So you saw the Africans who came
there were doing things
to teach the future generation
how to get ourselves.
And I need the yoke of this
oppressive system.
Now the flowers are
very handsome because they are
Bellflower.
They are poisonous.
So anybody that knows that
you look at this very dim.
But yeah, it's a very beautiful
piece.
Now, this is an interesting piece
because I became artist in Residence
for Noko, which is the
High school
of performance art and visual
and dance music, whatever.
And they asked me to do a residency
and I told them I didn't want to do
a traditional residency.
I wanted to take the kids out of the
studio space and
take them into use
this space, which is how many people
heard of Homo Plessy?
How many people are in a separate
but equal?
That's that's this is took place
right there in New Orleans.
And so so the train station
is right across the street from here
where he got on the train and was
arrested.
Okay. So I took.
So you see what happened?
Better than me telling you.
Memorial.
Memorial for Homer Plessy.
You understand this is making art.
This is making art out of
what's there.
Understanding that you
in a certain environment and
so what can you do with that?
And so you come up with
things like this, which those
kids will never be the same because
now they realize they don't have
enough, they don't have all the
money, they don't have all these
materials, and they can find
a way and find materials
that speak to whatever they want
to do. And because creativity
is a natural extension
of who you are.
So you don't have to deal with
somebody else's rules in terms
of how you create.
You just have to trust that
what you're going to do is valid.
First chance for you.
Now this is I
there are these things called
crawfish or crayfish,
and I wanted to do something
on that because crayfish
after Katrina, these
things just would bubble up out of
the area in my backyard at the time,
just had all of these crawfish
mounds all over it.
And I said, Wow, But that was
during Katrina, because if
you dig down three feet
in the ground in New Orleans,
you're going to hit water.
So we have water running on all
under there.
And so I decide
to cast these mud.
Little objects.
And they started with casting
paper.
Then they went to bronze.
Okay. So I decided I wanted to go a
step further.
I got one of my
one of the people who who
understands New Orleans,
but also is willing to give me
the money I need to do this.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
And it's called Homeboy.
Okay.
Just everyday objects.
Come back to watermelon.
Someone who stole my
watermelon.
Just the simple object of
a what's the thing?
Fire detector?
You can make art out of anything.
This cross was the
Union Cross in my family cemetery
because we had black Union soldiers
that were buried.
So in New Orleans, I have all
of this history and I can go
to it or I can see it and experience
and decide I want to do something
about it. And it always can
transcend into something else
that allows you, the viewer,
to come in and participate
in possibilities that you wouldn't
experience unless somebody
decided that this was valid for
making art out of.
We all have seen this.
This is an interesting piece because
it's cotton growing in
a bucket.
And the house that this was that was
this my
neighbor on Viera Street
and those who know my old
neighborhood, he
was
he was a mechanic.
And he would plant these
cotton balls every year
because the kids who walked home
from school would see
these these
they had never seen. We don't see
cotton. We only see in terms of
shirts and material.
And here it was.
This was cotton growing
on a cotton bush.
Anybody have ever touched it?
It sticks. It's hard work.
But the key beyond that for me
was that it was
against the law then and is still
against the law for any individual
to plant cotton.
In Louisiana.
How about the rest of the South?
I know in Louisiana.
So that lets you know that
if you do this, you can go to jail.
This is a dead
possum.
They're beautiful.
Yeah.
And think about a dead possum.
You see, if you play, they play
dead, you know.
So you got all of those connotations
added to it in terms of us as human
beings.
Okay. This is an interesting piece
because the flags are
this This is Patriot Day, but the
flags are all the
flag is backwards.
So so I don't know, maybe
this one. And here was my neighbor
who was very patriot and
and his father was in the military.
But when he put up his decorations
for July
the fourth or whatever that year,
he put the flags up backwards.
So I just loved it because of what
it said.
Okay. It's called Three Rooms.
This is still part of my work.
A series.
Where this big hole in the ground
and it is
flowing all of this water and
stuff.
And this is two pieces.
Okay. This is the builders part of
the builders.
This is an interesting piece because
Carol Walker came to town
to do her piece in Algiers,
and she did this beautiful piece.
But when I was going to Algiers,
this this this
ship called the Trader
was going
out to the Gulf.
Now, anybody who know what Algiers
is in New Orleans.
Algiers, where they they
when they brought the enslaved
people to the
New Orleans area, they kept them
cross the river there in Algiers.
So now here I experiencing
this ship called the Trader.
So the contradictions are always
the metaphors and
just trying to give you some field
to think about it.
That's oil now.
Okay.
And this was the show, the 300
year show I had at Noma.
I think I had 53 pieces in the show.
Playing with manmade
materials like, you know,
paint and also playing with natural
fibers.
The the piece in the
in the in the broken wheelbarrow
is called Gathering of
the Bones, the
piece that you see across
from playing in time.
Matter of fact, the piece playing in
times I was sold
by somebody here in
in in Los
Angeles they sold it in
at the the big
basil thing.
But the the other piece is across
from it is called
five lines and four spaces.
Okay, so I'm leading you to this
piece. This other piece in a minute.
Here we go.
The piece, the back piece there
is is is called
Four Generations Not Yet Born.
That's why I talked about because
this piece with you for the
largest slave
revolt in the history of America,
guess where it took place?
In Louisiana.
And the people did not make
it to the mint where
these African people and these
white because it wasn't just black
people.
The the the the whites who joined
mostly Irish.
They did not make it to the mint
which is in New all that's the
armory.
And when Jefferson
understood what these people were
doing, he said that
if the rest of the world knew what
these black folks were trying to do,
we'd all be in trouble.
Because that's where the mouth of
the Mississippi is.
And if these folks had made
it and taken over and black, put a
black at the mouth of the
Mississippi, it'd be a totally
different country now.
You understand what I'm saying?
Yeah, This is an interesting piece.
It's call waiting for a serious
conversation about the South.
And I can go on about
the controversy with this piece.
And it was about how much you going
to pay me for it?
Yeah.
This piece is called.
What's it called?
It's called
Everything's for Sale.
We understand what all that's about.
Okay. You know, somebody's selling
their clothes and all of this
outside, but it's also takes
on this contemporary meaning
as far as I'm sorry, in terms of art
making, how do we value
what we do?
How do we make social commentary
in that whole process?
Okay.
This is a there are three pieces to
this, you know, white picket fences
and these and all the houses are
within like a triangle.
This is the
it's two slides, but really one
should be above the other.
But we didn't have a chance
to put this right.
So it's the Danziger Bridge and
the Mississippi River.
And during Katrina, black
folks weren't allowed to go over
this bridge or go over
the Mississippi River.
So we were stuck.
In the city.
You hear me?
Okay. And people died.
Okay. This piece was for Jacob
Lawrence.
It's still Jacob Lawrence.
It's in the Minneapolis Contemporary
Museum.
And again, it
deals with when Jake came
to New Orleans because he visited
New Orleans quite a few times.
He wound up doing a whole series
called The Work, a series.
And those of us who have stood and
understand the history of somebody
like, I think the most important
African-American artist in the
United States, Jake,
would see these workers and he
would do this whole body of work
on it. Well, when I saw the
series, I was always impressed with
it. But then when I understood what
inspired him to do it.
Well, of course, then I got to have
a dialog with them because that's
what I'm doing. I'm having dialogs.
This is the way we bill,
where you see families, that's one,
two, three. That's five, five
families of the same family, because
this is what people do who don't
have much money.
The the similar thing to this
that that really attracted me is
that when I was in Egypt and
people build the same way they build
a building and then when
one of the children get married,
they add another trauma,
they add on and you get these
incredibly these incredible
compounds in terms of building.
So I didn't know that
we in New Orleans had a relationship
to that. I started looking at houses
like this.
Now, this is my project that I'm
still working on right now, and I
want you to see it.
And if anybody think I'm spending
too much time, let me know because I
will just run through them.
But this is this garden that I've
built and use that name in this
tragedy is using
art in the transformation of
a community.
It was a drug infested,
horrible neighborhood.
And I bought the property
and people say, well, you trying to
gentrify? I said, No.
What we want to do is keep the
people that are here.
But what are we going to do?
We're going to use our art making
process. So I commissioned five
artists to do pieces, and we
built this garden.
And one of the first things we did
was we found out who lived in
the neighborhood, who were long
gone in terms of ancestry.
And we made these plaques.
I think in this situation we have 36
plaques all around this white picket
fence. I'm sure we know that
what the symbology of the white
picket fence is in terms of
prosperity, in terms of America, and
that you made it.
And and and what
became fascinating was that not only
on Mardi Gras day, Mardi Gras
Indians come and
pay homage to these people because a
lot of them were the ancestors.
But the people who knew these
families, they also
came and would put flowers, just
like they'd go to grave and put
flowers.
So that made the garden sacred.
The techs in the back on the wall.
You gonna get another picture of it?
It it was.
I have this Croatian friend and
who's I think his mother is, is,
is Catholic and his father
is Muslim.
So he understands something about
being caught in a conflict which
has nothing to do with his
humanness.
So when I saw this
piece by, I said,
Rajko, I see I want you to put this
on my wall because
black folks keep thinking
that this is about race.
This is not about race.
And this is about our the
way we see people and how we
marginalize people.
The sculpture is a friend of mine.
She was the first person I
commissioned.
And I Warren, I, I
saw a similar piece like this in
another place, and I asked
her if she would do one of her my
own pieces.
And the first response when she
well, first of all, people are
saying, what is this stuff?
We don't know what this stuff.
And I say, Well, what does it look
like to you?
And they would go on, I said, and
then see what it looks like
mountains to like I said,
now I say, it could be anything you
wanted to be.
Now, if I was to remove
this piece, I'm sure I'd have to
fight because But what
it did, it opened up a dialog
in terms of allowing these people
to understand that whatever they
thought it thought process,
it was not limited
to somebody else's concept,
that they can open up their own mind
and do what they do.
A part of his flowers for the living
at a certain time of the year.
What's going to happen is that
mining laws will take over
all of the flowers
for the living.
That's a lady named Mary.
She's like the queen, ma'am, of the
neighborhood.
And you're going to see what happens
with her in terms of she.
We had her to
paint the fence.
And that also meant
that this is another yard
I have when we made this out of
dealing with, you know, the
senseless killing of children.
And people begin to understand
that this this junk that was coming
from the houses, coming on neath
these houses that people had thrown
away for years and Bibles
that now is being used.
Beyond that.
This piece. You can see it on the
fence called Spirits.
It's just sweetgrass.
Just we getting ready to do a larger
piece on this, but it's going to be
a two dimensional piece.
Now, remember the fence,
the bench there
we see that, you know, see what's
happened.
Okay. This is for houses.
This is my fence.
Become a bottle fence become
yard art, as we call
it, in the south.
This is in all
the war is found, democracy
under attack.
And the other one deals with Black
Lives Matter.
And I'll come back to
talk of the painting here.
I'm sure some people look at it and
they go, Oh, man, this is a
beautiful, abstract painting,
but has nothing to do that attract.
Those are
a across the street.
And the person
who I did this two person show
with named Tina Framer, a
photographer, we
were looking for something to ground
this show in because her work
is is it's
it's she doesn't use
storytelling like I do.
It's very different.
It's coming out of her particular
language.
But for me, we call this in search
of four leaf clovers.
This piece called Spring.
Just the whys, the crosses,
all of these things.
And this is right after COVID.
Where. It was Mardi Gras day.
And I can look down the street and I
didn't see anybody.
I didn't see the Mardi Gras Indians.
This was the way my community
looked.
Mardi Gras Day 2020.
And that's not New Orleans.
Back to my Rufus.
This piece here, it's
is called
We Are Always in Survival Mode,
Another Fallen
Man.
That's Mary, who you saw in the
photograph using this
medicinal gone because one of our
beds is medicinal.
And there she is painting
the fence which gave
her and the community ownership.
So who's going to violate that
When the queen mom of the
neighborhood paints the fence,
it takes on a whole nother
significance in terms of community
building.
This piece is, is
it deals with
vandalism of two of
two who are victimized
through the brutality of
distorting these two.
Why would somebody do this?
Is the question that I'm asking.
This one is one of my favorite.
This is a tattered quilt.
Looking at we know an
African-American quilt making is
about. And we realize
that to me, is no more than a
collage in terms of taking all
of these little piece of tattoo that
we throw away and then
we put within another construct.
But it's a narrative.
It tells a story about the human
condition to tell the story about
who we are.
Where I wanted to do it in black and
white.
And so this one, we come up because
that that old quilt, somebody
was going to throw it away, attempt
to throw it away and it's tattered.
So that gives it another
level of
of of of of
dealing with, again, the human
condition.
Okay. This piece is called.
Oh, what's his car?
It's called Sunflowers
for.
For Ukraine.
This is the roof was one of my
latest pieces.
Again, changing the whole
idea of how do you make art,
but yet putting it within.
There's a perspective there
using the idea of three different
panels that are very similar
in what? As if they're like
using a down jack in
terms of his wall pieces.
But at the same time, they're
telling a narrative about my
community and
what happens when you get to it,
like getting to the top of the
mountain.
This is one of my latest
pieces, 12 feet.
And it's called Happy Birthday.
And in parentheses, we celebrate
you. And there's this old lady at
the bottom here.
It's our birthday.
And the whole community came
together and it's a carnival
to see these people dancing.
And. BERGIN is that and celebrating
this old lady, which is beautiful.
Okay. This piece has another history
which deals with the
the idea of the
the 1811
revolt, because once
these the reenactment
members made it to
the myth, they win
this catharsis.
People were crying and stuff and
people saying, Oh, what's that?
I say, Because
our ancestors didn't make
it to the.
They were beheaded.
But here we are today
symbolizing that, and that has
incredible significance.
Well, that wasn't the reason why
I did that. These I did the piece
because the person who did this
reenactment, he
didn't understand that.
So he went and took the thing to
what we call Congo Square, which
has nothing to do with
this particular celebration
at that moment.
So but he's not from New Orleans.
Okay. This is my sister.
This. I've done this in the last
three months. It's called
transitioning.
And the fascinating thing is that
she and I talked about me
doing this piece, but the
fascinating thing to me was that
her bedroom, you look down
my bedroom, that's a cemetery back
there.
And then what?
On her pillow, Dinosaurs.
No, I can't make this up.
So I looked and I said, MAXINE, I
say, look, I
you know, I want to do it.
And I've done many pieces of my
sister.
So she so she gave me a smile and
she got two hands and she's at peace
with herself and she ready to leave
here. She could do anything.
And all of a sudden, she said she
shook her head.
I took two shots
in. I waited till she died.
And then I did the piece.
And and the piece was cleansing for
me because I didn't realize I
agreed that much.
So it was a real catharsis
to even do.
It was a hard piece to do
because I wanted to get it right.
But I also realized that
I will never hear my sister's voice
again.
So that means that.
And she's in.
I'm the only one left in those
branches.
So. Except my kids.
So this is my sister
and we are and
we call people like this shack
bully.
That means they run the whole place.
They run the whole family poor.
My sister was tough.
So this piece deals with
the history of
what's the purpose, what the
tourists deal with the tourists, who
comes to the Mississippi
and they look out and they see
the river and they see the
Saint Louis Cathedral.
What is the relationship between the
Saint Louis Cathedral and the
Mississippi River in relationship to
New Orleans?
Well, the church sanctioned
slavery
and the river was the passageway.
So this place
was a natural thruway
to contain this idea of slavery.
And if it wasn't for the Saint
Louis Cathedral, slavery
could have been ended a long time
ago. But they made a contract with
the French and Spanish government at
that time that if you bring
these slaves in, we will.
And we make them Catholic,
they remain slaves.
But you can have your force that
will help you to build this new
world.
Cynical, isn't it?
But real.
Okay. This piece here deals with
its interior exterior.
It's called Memories.
It has a lot to do with that
coconut which comes out of
Zulu. And if you ever go to New
Orleans, you'll understand something
about Zulu and
the fact of of
when you go to South Africa,
something how black
people turn the tables
and tell stories on
whoever the oppressor is.
But the oppressor thing that they're
telling the story about themselves.
So it's.
And that's what Louis Armstrong was
King Zulu for.
So we need to understand now, if you
remember, that this is
dealing with the bench.
What bench is we talking about?
We talking about the bench of the
Supreme Court.
See, it's like there were I can't
remember the name of the
of the artists who painted flowers.
I think it was the 15th century, but
it was the same thing.
And you watch the flowers die.
But he was speaking about the ills
of society because
that's what he felt he can get away
with and still speak the truth
to the power structure.
So artists are not I'm not doing
anything that hasn't been done
before. So this piece is called
White Bench with clapboard
siding, toucans
and invasive wildflowers.
And this is the last piece.
It's is
called View
from Inside my studio with
Self-portrait.
Thank you.
Oh, sorry.
Thank you so much.
Now I want to welcome to the stage
R.M. Muschietti, who is a curator
of the Hammer Museum's Current
Together Intime exhibition.
And he's going to have a dialog
with Mr. Birch.
And then I want to remind you, we
have coffee, tea and cookies.
And you can meet Mr. Birch in person
after the program.
Okay.
Oh, thank you.
Thanks for coming, people.
Thank you, Mr. Burch.
Thank you.
It's really amazing that you made
the journey here
for this talk. And I wanted
to start by asking you a question of
something that it's a question,
actually, that I've read that you've
often asked yourself.
And it's.
In regard to New Orleans and your
relationship to New Orleans.
You said in a recent
interview, you said you asked
yourself very often if this
place existed to create jazz,
then what can I bring to the table
that can rival that visually?
And especially, I think
after, you know, looking at the
the arc of your work from 1968
to the present,
how you might
answer that question and maybe
I think for those in the audience,
you know, you started with the
question of jazz in relationship to
work, but how you see yourself
even moving through it visually.
I still see myself.
If I could be modest,
I still see myself on that journey
because it's not me who will
determine the relevance
of what I do.
It's you.
So that's best
the main thing.
But in terms of what the
music has taught us and
it's this natural extension
of storytelling and telling
the history of particularly
African-American people
in that part of it
in New Orleans in particular, but
turn out in the world
and how that is transition
to this next level where you get the
blues.
I mean, why the blues before that?
But eventually where we got hip hop,
it's all the same stuff.
It's all the same.
And it's a beautiful journey
when you begin to make these
connections.
I was talking to somebody earlier
who was talking about
he brought up one of the Beatles
and I said, Yeah, Muddy Waters
hadn't gone to England.
We may have never heard of the
Beatles.
And he just said, Oh, I see.
Also, there was a brother who sounds
just like Elvis Presley, except it
was Elvis Presley who sang like him.
So when you know these things
historically, you can flip them.
That's what the audience did.
We flip them.
And then you have to think about
it. And for me, my
thing is to constantly challenge
you to make a lie out of me.
And what happens if you find out?
I know what I'm talking about.
Seeing that as the mysterious part.
That's that's Little Willie Birch,
who at
about four years old, challenged
the policeman, the sheriff
who called my grandmother, Kitty.
And I said my grandmother as Miss
Kitty.
And he came into our yard
in Bertrand Ville,
and I did not know who
he was.
And I was telling him around the
store today.
And what happens is that
he looks at me
and my grandma and say, You see that
one?
He's trouble.
So the night my uncle
and my mother came in my uncle's car
and put me in the back of the car
and took me back to New Orleans.
And I didn't go to Bertrand Ville
for a couple of years.
So that's just part of the story.
Somebody was writing an article on
me, and I'm telling you, man, I know
part of the story, but I don't know
all of it. You know, in terms of he
I remember being in Bertrand Ville,
you know, and I told this dude,
you know, like my grandmother was
Miss Kitty and but I don't anymore.
So I said, Maybe you go ask my
sister
what happened.
She could tell you.
He goes, and then he come back.
He said, Willie, you know
who that dude was that you told
to call your grandmother, Miss
Kitty? That was the sheriff.
So right there, my family realized
that they had to protect me.
But it still was part
of how they trained me.
I became the outspoken one in the
family.
So this is passed on.
There's somebody in everybody's
family who will be the one
who will be the self-righteous one
and call everybody to attention.
That was my sister.
And me. I do it in terms of my art.
So that is but it carries
that same progression.
So, so in terms
of and the music does
the same thing.
From bodybuilding.
How many people have ever heard of
bodybuilding?
See before there was a Louis
Armstrong on how to do name
Bobby Bowden.
If you look at my book Celebrating
Freedom, there's a band for
bodyboarding.
Bodyboarding died in
an insane asylum because people
weren't ready for what he was doing,
but they sound defeated at that.
You hear Louis Armstrong say,
Can you hit that? No.
That wasn't started by him.
I start that ballyboden.
So we need to study our history.
And we at a different point in
America, too.
We are not a very well-read
people.
And there are reasons for that.
Well, fortunately, I am a pretty
well read person.
So I'm challenge you to
read.
If I can keep you ignorant,
I can take you anywhere I want to
take you.
This is what's happening now.
This is why you think they're
banning books.
See, it's all goes back to
the same thing.
If somebody I mean, you look
at somebody like Frederick Douglass
who learned to read and the lady who
taught him how to read didn't know
how dangerous that would make him.
So we need to understand, you know,
people aren't ignorant
if you expose them,
but we are not well read
in a lot of my European friends,
they look down on Americans.
Because we don't know a damn
thing about who we are.
We don't know about the suffering of
Europe.
We don't know how we get
existentialism.
We don't know how we create worries
like Dada.
We don't know. We don't even
understand what Impressionism was.
Impressionism was.
Was embraced in America.
But the Europeans didn't like the
idea of Impressionism.
Why not?
It was the Industrial Revolution.
They got all this smog.
How? Okay.
I don't know where I'm going to go
with this.
I will say, okay, I do want to ask
you this question about unlearning
Mike Skilling in a way, because
I've thought about it in
relationship to I mean, that's what
you're talking about.
And this is kind of maybe a flimsy
Segway, but.
You know, we talked earlier about
this kind of process of maybe
are opposing as
a folk artist at a certain point.
And in some ways, that was like
after going through a
kind of academic
life and then kind of unlearning
that that kind of history.
And yet, you know, in talking to
a lot of these references come out
like from the history of art, for
instance.
And I'm just wondering, like,
how you see yourself
navigating.
That kind of art, historical
terrain and your place within it.
Because what
what you characterized and what
we've seen tonight in the in
the narrative of your work
is that it's not fixed.
There is like a constant shift
that you're doing in a way, I
would say, you know, to undermine
yourself maybe, or to undermine
the expectations of people,
you know, to characterize your work.
And so, you know, in
some ways what you're doing is
you're also like defying
historicism.
And even in the first work, you said
this is an assemblage or whatever.
So you, like, you would even take
away the category of assemblage,
which, you know, from like a
historical standpoint, it's like
it's the only thing we have is like
the idea that like we can,
you know, put things into certain
kinds of like categories to be able
to, you know, start to understand
them. But ultimately, it's
like always a little tenuous,
you know? And so from the very
beginning, you're not allowing
that. So how does that relate.
To, say, it's going to be the
shortest sentence I'll make tonight?
It's about survival.
Oh,
okay.
I think it's I clearly I talked
too much in my question.
I mean, but to go to this question
of like the self train, because
another thing I've you know, I think
I've ever read that you've
said once is that in some ways all
artists are self trained.
Are you?
So how how would you kind of
characterize that maybe in
relationship to this question of
survival and.
Wow.
Well, you know, one thing I
learned in I learned to trust
cause and how do I do this
this way? First, when I was
about five years old, five or
six, I started following
this parade.
I didn't know it.
And next thing I know, I'm ten
blocks away from my house.
And I'm scared because I turn
around. I don't even know the
community because I've never been
down Simon Boulevard that far
before. But there were people in the
community who knew me, and they
said, See you.
You get your little butt back
down. So here I'm following
till I get back to the projects.
So there was an energy and an
authenticity and a magic
that was happening that allowed
me to respond to it naturally.
So the same thing I could say in
terms of what was going on
in the eighties when I began to
really experience and accept
something that I had been nine,
which was the self-trained artist.
They were the most authentic falling
down, they were the most authentic,
the most authentic stuff I thought
was being made in America.
And here part of some of my
peers were objecting because
they felt that they had gone through
all of this torture
and academic training in
Europe. Thinks of our European
institution.
And now what are you doing, y'all in
France And these folks who don't
have any training, but what they
have is something that's innate
and that is their need to create
and create and tell a story
that is uniquely theirs, whether
they deal with it consciously or
unconsciously.
And and so I'm
looking at all of that, and it's all
over New Orleans.
I'm looking at Mardi Gras Indians.
I'm looking at all of these art
forms that are just naturally
there that you draw with and you
take for granted.
But what it is, is expressing your
existence and your identity
as a human being.
And and so that's why I when other
people come to New Orleans, one of
the friends say, Wow, man, I come
here, boy. And it just make me feel
so good, you know?
And I say, But do you know
the history of how we got to be
that way?
Do you know the history of why you
can shake your booty in the street
today? Because all those things
were suppressed, but black
folks still went out there and
do what they do.
Because it was the only way we
can stay sane.
So these things are just natural.
If you trust yourself and
and I like to feel
that as a human being first.
I learned probably
a long time ago
to be myself.
But the main thing was that I had
people who would protect me,
who would allow me to do that.
Like my grandmother, like my sister,
like my neighbors.
There were people there that
pool my if I was going around.
And that's the idea of community.
That's what a community does.
But we losing all of that.
All right. And it had the
possibility of being lost.
So that's why I said to you folks,
what are you going to do?
Are you going to be cardboards?
Cardboard copy of Living
and Live a Fantasy.
Do you want to be real?
And I can't answer that for you.
But you you got to invest
something in it to get something out
of it.
And I think that's beautiful.
When I meet young people who are
no longer inhibited by just being
themselves like, you can't dance
or singing.
I mean, you think about it at one
time when they brought these people
of African descent here
and they didn't have any
clothes on for whatever reason.
They were primitive.
Now, look at your generation.
Yeah, most y'all don't have or half
the clothes.
So there's a flip.
There's a flip.
In terms of the reality.
And now you can express yourself.
Now you can go overboard
sometime.
For somebody who's 80 years old, I'm
saying, Wow, Come on, sister.
That's too much.
But but.
But the point is, is that
it says something about who you're
going to be and what you're going to
be. And so these are just
natural things.
And that's the that's the thing.
It. And so it's
about survival.
Because if I didn't do it, then what
would I do?
Would you say I mean, it's I
hope that this isn't, like, overly
reductive, but I was also noticing
this kind of like thread of
observation or this kind of
like observational tendency in your
work, which is so much a
part of the kind of later work,
especially when they become black
and white. Mm hmm.
But,
you know, like the eighties and
thinking about, like, the way in
which, like, television became
a kind of mediating device for you,
at least in the way that it's
depicted in your work.
And I was just wondering about,
like, I don't know, your own
relationship to television, because
it's not just because of solid
state.
But you mixed the it's mixed the
newspaper because
I was in the I got
in that Part II movement in New
York, and we
would demonstrate and we would
sometimes a television reporter
would with us,
but we didn't say what they wanted
to say. So come 6:00.
In terms of the civil
rights movement that I was really
involved in the sixties in New
Orleans, we didn't see that
it was the people from Europe who
came and exposed the inhumanity
of that.
But here in America, we were
surprised.
So then you question what is the
newspaper about?
You know, and you could go to
somebody
who was friends of John Key,
like like the Korean brother
who did the television
now. Yeah, right.
You know, but if you read
about him and he
comes from upper class, so
the idea of what he was doing, he
already had a natural built in
freedom on certain levels to
do this.
Well, I think if he was poor, he
probably would have been a
little bit so crass.
Got something to do with the ability
to take chances.
All of these things are
built into how
you decide what you
have the right or not have the right
to do.
So in the end for
somebody like me.
If I don't do this.
Then what am I going to do?
And who am I trying to satisfy?
Am I trying to like
this in a lot of my literature
and saying, I want my mama to
understand?
It's important that Anna understood
that she could relate to this stuff,
although she may say, Boy, that's
dangerous stuff you're playing with.
The point is, is that it
may be the end, but she had lived
the same situation as I have.
So you want to at least
educate those people around you
first and then maybe every
once in a while the rest of the
world can catch up to what you're
doing.
But it usually.
I what?
I mean, how many years it took
people to understand
that Rembrandt
died basically poor.
But we know he's one of the greatest
guys that ever lived.
So why did he die poor?
What was he doing that drove
that? They wouldn't pay him?
He wouldn't pay the aristocracy.
So money, as I talked
earlier about what a
repair taught me,
was that an artist has one
foot in poverty and one foot in
there because they need you,
because of what you do
and how you make them feel
when you're next to them.
But at the same time.
You dangerous.
And but
you have to understand that
that's not a given and you have
a responsibility.
With that kind of power.
But honestly, powerful people,
we agree. Those in other cultures,
you know, agree always.
See.
So I dedicated my life
to that at 13.
And I've tried to be true
every since. And that means sometime
you feel them out there by yourself.
But you're never alone.
There's always somebody will come
and validate what you're doing.
But it's not.
This is not an easy journey.
It may seem that because I'm 80
and all this stuff, you know,
and I don't look half bad, you know?
You know.
I keep saying, but.
The bottom line is that
this is a this is
this is. This is it.
I mean, look how many musicians
who you don't even know about
or you don't know. You know, and
there are certain artists who die
with more money than we could ever
understand, but yet we don't know
them.
And how much I mean, this will be my
last question maybe, and then we'll
turn it over to the audience.
But I mean, to that end,
it's very clear that you've also
taken on the responsibility of
somehow mediating
New Orleans, I mean, both in
your work but also in yourself.
And for you, what is that
like?
That it's a mix play.
Because I see in
I see man's inhumanity to
man, like I see sometimes young
black men
killing each other for
whatever reason.
But then I attempt to understand
how do we get to that and what
society has,
what the position that society has
put them in that
believe that that's the only way
they can gain whatever these
powers trinkets are.
So.
If I'm able to reach one of
them. And I have because I've
taught kids like that.
And and you usually can look in
the eyes when they are not dead.
And I've seen kids
who were in Baltimore
locked out of the system and
finally, just to travel.
Take them outside of Baltimore.
They were able to begin to
put a face on that.
There were other people who
live different, and some people live
like they live.
So what do we.
So why should I
feel that the only place that
I can ever exist is within the walls
of this place?
And who put me in here?
That's when it gets dangerous.
Because now what are you going to do
about.
Maybe you can write, you know, And
we always think that everybody has
to be an artist.
I'm interested in writers
that mixed in which you say
because the writer for the last,
what, 30, 40 years now
have dictate to a large degree
what artists create.
Because.
You have the ability to write
for people who read and
usually have access to money.
I, fortunately for me, decided
that I was going to survive
regardless. But that's because I
come from people who
taught me that I was going to
survive all.
Oh, so it
is just my faith on that level.
I can't explain it beyond that.
I don't believe you know, I can't
take credit for it, you know?
I mean, but but
it's like the tennis shoes
hanging in, you know.
You know, we still hear.
Do we
have some time for some questions?
And there are ushers
who will select.
Just raise your hand if you have a
question.
I'm apparently not allowed to
help this process.
We I have a saying, too,
that I give
my friend who
at the time we were very close.
He used to say when we were
in New York together.
Don't be afraid to make a fool of
yourself.
I don't care how ridiculous the
question may sound
to you at the moment.
If you feel you want an answer.
I ask you and sometimes is
not ridiculous at all.
Most of these things, they
are real.
If you need a ridiculous role model,
I'll be one.
So please.
Hi. My question is for Mr.
Burns. Thank you very much.
I really enjoyed the whole
presentation.
But besides your last name being
Birch, when you were working
with the trees and some
of your sculptures, was there any
particular tree, the name of a tree
that you like to work with the most
that you kept finding?
That's what I was interested in.
The name of the trees.
I.
I like the yellow pine.
It's a hardwood.
Which is very interesting, but I
like the way it calls.
Okay.
I mean, when you get into
oak and stuff and there are
different types of oak.
There's a saying that there's
something that you learn early
when you want to be a woodcarver.
The sharper you to the.
Are more useful for
cutting
soft wood, but
the daily tubes
are when the wood is hard.
So it's little bitty things
that you learn in terms
of carving that you can match
the tool with.
What are you trying to get out of
the two?
So.
And you learn that.
You learn just through practice.
You learn. There's a man, a book
named by a root.
Ah, okay.
It was my Bible to
learn how to carve.
And you never forget these,
you know, these different
techniques.
And
and I had a great teacher,
so.
I became. So everybody wanted me to
be a coward. And everybody said,
Were you a sculptor?
But my contemporaries say,
Norman, Art is.
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, and there's a price for
that.
I don't know if I answered your
question.
You said that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's hard to define, too,
but it's still out there once in a
while.
I just never forget, you know,
whenever it's.
We can.
Did you?
I did. I did.
Welcome to L.A..
I refrained from using the term
griot. It's a French term.
I use the term jali.
You are a memory keeper.
And thank you for being here.
I'm going to riff a little bit
because my folks.
Cried on Christmas Day.
I spent about six years in St James
Parish.
So I relate.
I was just curious.
My concern was some of the social
structure redefining
the narrative.
I see yourself
as a historian,
as well as an artist.
And I appreciate your stories.
I appreciate your your references.
And that's one of my concerns,
especially when you see the flag.
You see, I was I was at a soccer
game or what they call a football
game at 41 Nation from Canada.
Central America and the Caribbean.
And if you look at their flags,
they resemble the United States
flag.
You know, that's it's part of we
go. And another thing you were
talking about was the.
The the papier maché
on the the guy with the
hands out.
Mm hmm.
The first thing that came to mind
was Roy Ayers, 1973.
Red, black and green.
If you think about it, you know what
I mean? Mm hmm.
And I'm just curious.
There was some there was some some
figures of some things that I
remember being in New Orleans, in
Louisiana, especially in the
country. I take it you're a city
boy.
Yeah, that's was my problem.
And I was thinking of the magnolia
trees.
I was thinking about food
like gumbo.
I was thinking about the levees.
Mm hmm. The swamp.
The the the.
You mentioned the crawfish.
That. That was my first time seeing
those mounds.
Yeah. And.
And I remember picking those
crawfish out.
So I love your.
Your visuals, and
I. I do see
more. I'd like to see more of your
work. I think you're going to be
here for another 20 years.
Well, I have a lot of work.
Oh, that's just just.
One personal question.
I was just curious what your
grandkids or your kids call you.
They call you Poppy.
No, no.
My grandchildren call me grandpa.
Okay. Okay.
Okay.
And a couple of years ago,
my oldest daughter wanted to call me
Willie.
I said, no way.
Well, thank you for being here.
Thank you.
Yeah, Hi.
Well, I'm up here.
Over here.
Back there.
Hi.
Okay, I see you now.
I want to know, like,
you know, seeing the bodies you
depicted in your work, they're so
symmetrical.
I mean, the arms are off.
They're very realistic.
I know you started since you were
13, and I feel like
it comes from practice
at this point.
Do you use rulers or
certain, you know, utensils
to get the body
perfectly symmetrical?
Or is it just by, you
know, playing it by ear in a sense?
And I also want to know how
your grant process
applying for grants and working
through them and gain rewarded for
them, how that's progressed.
And speaking of your career to now.
Uh, I'll start with the last one.
The last one is the grants, because
that's in part the last
grant I applied for was
the using
art as a tool in the transformation
of a community.
And I applied and
they applied for a $5,000
grant. Now what
I wanted was just to get the grant,
to get the credibility
that what I was doing.
If I wanted to, I could apply for
another grant.
Okay. Do you understand that
the reality was that they only gave
me half the money
and I said, I don't need 20
$500.
And the person who was
responsible for getting the grant,
she got angry with me and
said.
Well, we don't even like your work.
And I say, Well, I'll show you.
Because I felt that she was silly
because she was defining art
and the need her term.
And I'm saying no, be
what I'm doing goes so far beyond
this idea of art, because art
is not even a word
in any language except English.
Other people don't make art.
Did we know that?
Yeah, I mean, I think
so. This idea of art.
What is art?
Art is an expression of who you are.
So it becomes real tricky in terms
of how we get baited into these
ideas of defining
things. And once you define them.
They are editing cars.
So I am so, so
so now on the same young lady, when
we did the opening the first time
and there was a beautiful article
in the Times-Picayune on it.
Looks like about 100 people came to
celebrate the garden because of
where we were.
And I felt bad for her.
But all I could do is go up and give
her her.
Because.
We all have these
moments where we because
of whatever reason, we we
don't understand and we don't want
to understand.
And and and I've
become cynical.
And as
quick left as I am, I
still
have been a young, ignorant
person to understand
that people change.
So, you know, I give you a hard
day and we'll see.
But that's not the you know, it's
but it's I don't know if I'm
answering that part of it in
terms of my figures.
I, I had
I remember
in all to get in graduate school.
It's a it's a long story.
But because I graduated from
Southern University in New Orleans.
To get into Maryland Institute.
They made me take 18 credits
to show that I could play.
And yeah, today everybody
go, Wow.
But they really didn't want me in
there because they knew the type of
work that I was doing.
But I wanted to go to Maryland
Institute for one main reason
the library.
I had never in my life seen
an art library that extensive
in all my life.
Now, Howard University
had offered me a full scholarship,
but I'd gone to Southern University,
so I didn't want to go to Howard
because I knew the
practice and the art teachers
and the people were there.
I wanted to find out what this
so-called European institution
was about.
So eventually they had to let me in,
although they made me take 18
credits before they went by.
But then I.
But then when I got in, I just beat
them up.
That's how you get the Africa
Land Black Series.
You know, you take all of that
and you turn it on his head
and then you say, And I deny that.
So that's my personality
and my challenge.
And I love that.
I love turning those contradictions
into another sense of reality.
So everybody's not me,
but
I'm not easy to discourage,
obviously.
But at the same time,
I have.
I have failures,
but I can admit them.
You know, I have shortcomings at
time, but I can't miss them.
The key is that.
My belief in me giving
something back is so
embedded in my consciousness
that.
The price that those
enslaved people pay
to stay alive, like putting okra
in their hair so that we have food
to plan like the
people of Louisiana.
My elementary school was
named Tom.
This was a black dude who owned
slaves.
Okay. My junior high school
was named Carter G.
Watson, who is the father
of African American history.
To extreme somewhat,
but yet for
black people to get a school name
Carnegie Watson in New Orleans
in 19 what is
52? Because I'm 11 years
old and I realize
how hard these folks
probably had to work.
She got some bad Mojo's.
They didn't beat the system.
So for me to be less.
Then that effort.
I mean, come on, you this.
And that's why I keep, you know,
like my right now you have a lot of
I've never heard of this many young
black kids committing suicide.
My generation, that
was rare.
Now we know a lot of white kids
commit suicide.
So what is that about?
But black folks committing suicide
after you have
made that journey and at least
you can survive and even do what you
want to do, some of the things you
want to do and you trying to pass
this on to the next generation.
Come on.
That makes no sense to me that, you
know, you decide that because
there's always tomorrow.
End with built into the philosophy
of New Orleans as just
a special place.
It's all there.
So these are
the things that I have my own myself
on. And so I never
and I say it honestly, I never
had the problem of being by
myself.
And I think that's important to.
I think we have time for just one
more question.
Hi.
Hi. Thank you so much for this
talk and conversation.
I have a two part question, one for
Aram and then one for you, Mr.
Burch. And I wanted to hear
you talk a little bit about the
process of curating
Mr. Birch's work into the totality
of the show together in time.
And then Westerberg, I wanted to
hear you talk a little bit about
going along with the kind of title
of the exhibition together in time,
what you were talking about, about
the kind of future, the
the futurity of of our social
relations being based on class
rather than race and what that
relationship is.
But and you can take him whenever
in whatever order.
Well, I can say that, you know, I'm
one of five curators
who worked on this exhibition, which
was something of an experiment, I
think, for the curatorial department
and for the museum.
But I'd say what it ends up
producing, hopefully in like
a kind of like
interesting way, is that it creates
certain kinds of like incongruities
rather than trying to like
come up with, you know, definitive
narratives about either what
the collection is or
what art history is.
Because, you know, this task, I
think, is really difficult for
museums. I don't actually understand
how it works, and especially if you
have like a limited
acquisition budget that you're
working against or you're
working against other institutions
that are much more voracious in
their own kind of collecting
strategies.
So, you know, it's that's
like one small part of it and just
like the logistical sense.
But it
was a.
You know, as a work that was
recently introduced to the
collection.
And I think collectively we
felt we really wanted
to kind of honor that
and really highlight it as a as
a key acquisition of the last few
years.
But specifically, you know, I keep
going back to this like
observational quality of the
work and this relationship
to television and a certain
kind of, you know.
Pretty extreme violence.
It's also like depicted in in
the work, and especially when you're
seeing it relative to, you know,
other pieces
that you showed tonight and how
you know it.
It stands apart in some ways.
And it's a it's a difficult piece to
to to deal with,
I think, in that way.
And and
being able to put that
in dialog with
artists that I don't think that
you've necessarily shown
alongside, but that
we might be able to like look at
certain kinds of like, um,
similarities but also differences
that that play out when you know,
you think about this moment in 1988,
you're mediating, you know, your
experience of
being in New Orleans or being in
New York at that time, in
New York at that time, and,
you know, alongside other artists
that are also mediating
entirely different kinds of worlds
and perspectives.
But in some ways, like,
you know, thinking about television
as a as a conduit
for it without work
in particular.
Yeah, well, I.
In when I when I
heard that the Hammer
had purchased that piece.
Well, the hammer has another piece
of mind to.
So they have they have a print
that was donated by Axelrod
I believe somehow
and and that
print is also in the.
In the Whitney Museum collection.
So I just found it interesting that
I thought it was a big jump
in terms of
the piece that.
But they have in the collection.
And when I first heard
about it, the first thing that hit
me was that is.
Why would they purchase this piece?
Because although
it's narrative.
Does the curator think
it pertains?
This is you know, this is
all it is to this piece.
Are do they have enough
within what they're trying to do
to see the double entendres
in the piece and the contradictions
in the piece?
So if there was
a chance for a real dialog
where they could talk
about what created
those environments.
That would really enhance
another understanding of
those kinds of situations.
So so
when I was invited.
That gave me another chance
to make sure that that becomes
part of the dialog.
So.
It took me, what, three months
to accept your invitation.
But eventually
I talked to a few people and
I said, Okay, man, this may
be more important than I think
so. So I'm here
and. And you're there.
And you are just as inquisitive
as I was, and you should be.
And hopefully everybody will go and
look at that piece, because on
a certain level, as I was telling
the care of the chief curator here,
are you?
That piece is different than
anything else out there.
That's wonderful.
As an artist, you can't miss
it. And it's no bigger than that.
And you see all of this other stuff
which we know and and basically
and I, I
think can
be perceived not to put any stuff
down.
More derivative
of what we used to
be.
And yet my piece still fits
directly into the dialog
as we have it today, which speaks
to the the
the power of the piece to
speak truth to power.
So I'm filling in most of
my work does that is because they
all based on the moment.
That's where I get my inspiration
from. That's why I showed you the
last ones I've done is because
I'm I'm interested
in what I did.
But I don't want to come here and
show you a bunch of folkloric
pieces without you.
Understand that?
My journey.
Got another 25 years to.
Yeah, maybe another five
years.
Because if there
is something that I'm excited about,
like right now with the Supreme
Court.
I'm going to find how to speak to
that in the language that speaks
about the Supreme Court in
2023, because
not in two and
not in 1989.
But so my language has to change
because the moment has changed.
And so the language, the new
language I'm creating is
about defining
what I'm creating in the knowledge
that you have of the creative
process that pertains to now.
I hope that doesn't sound too
complicated.
But that's the way my mind run.
I have to create in
the moment.
And the moment is how
inventive can I be?
To make the similar
statements like the one I made with
with scrubbing and scraping
and healing.
With the one that we see
here.
They both come through the same
strain, but the different incidents
made me do different
things. Now, I don't know why I do
that, but I never followed
the rules.
I let the word dictate
the rule.
I was telling somebody earlier,
my whole philosophy is that
and it's due to the music.
Content dictates
process.
Process does not dictate count.
So in New Orleans, when you listen
to the music, the
music is created
out of the suffering and pain
of what those people were
experiencing.
So my items are that same
understanding of the creative
process.
I don't care where I let you not
turn Skowhegan haunting all this
stuff. I tell it to all you young
people saying that and they become
confused initially.
But if you are not taking
the content that drove
you to do that piece and
then building a
narrative around
that, that speaks to what
that piece about, and then allow
that piece to speak for itself.
Because there will always come that
tension where you don't know what
you're doing.
And you have to have to know.
You just have to follow that you're
trying to resolve conflict.
That's what. That's what making art
is about.
So it's not about you.
It's about the piece.
So thank you for that question.
Yeah.
Thank you so much, Mr. Banks.
Thank you.
Thank you. All right.
Have a good evening.
All right. And we'll reconvene
upstairs for those who have that
energy for.
Thank you, brother. Thank you.
Yeah, well.