In September, 2006, Code Z profiled 4 influential male artists in Atlanta, Georgia. Here, we present the companion to that piece: 5 artists based in Austin, Texas--all of them female--making their own new ways through the art world.
Just a few short miles from downtown Austin, Texas, Epoch Coffee is populated with denizens of the city; they are as much a part of the ambiance of the scene as the track lighting, earth-toned paint, comfy sofas and circular tables: white guys with dread locks and beards, women dressed in secondhand-store clothes, tattoos, body piercings, laptops, used books and sandals. And except for five women seated in a back corner near the unisex restroom--Beatrice Thomas, designer and textile artist; Deborah Roberts, painter; Cauleen Smith, filmmaker; Senalka McDonald, painter and photographer; and Sharon Bridgforth, performance artist--everyone is white. For these five black women, all leaders in the local art scene and all with national reputations, this coffeehouse is emblematic of how they navigate Austin: They find a place in the midst of the scene to express themselves.
“As women and African American women, where do we fit in?” asks Deborah Roberts, alluding to the struggle to find galleries willing to show the work of an African American artist in Austin. Most black artists in Austin feel disenfranchised from the factors that make Austin a livable city for others. “I’d like someone with some money to fund some studio space for black artists,” says Thomas, “I don’t know how my white friends do it.” The live music scene, the night life and even the art galleries and arts funding institutions privilege work by white artists.
After Roberts asks her question, Sharon Bridgforth leans back in her seat and says, “I’ve been based here, but I’ve done most of my work out of town. I’ve received some national funding that has afforded me the opportunity to work.” Indeed, Sharon, a Lambda Award--winning writer, has forged a national following through the support of organizations across the country. “Part of the isolation of working in Austin is that my collaborators live all over the country,” she says. Fortunately for McDonald, Smith, and Bridgforth, they’ve found some support from organizations at the University of Texas at Austin. Smith teaches on the faculty in the Radio, Television and Film program, McDonald recently graduated and Bridgforth teaches in the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS). The university has helped to provide facilities and materials along the way, and all three women note that there are individuals within departments and fellow artists who understand their plights and, consequently, try to help.
“Where do I have to be to hear the tom-tom drum beating?” Cauleen, who was born and raised in Los Angeles, asks in reference to finding collaborators. Though she often needs to look beyond the borders of Austin for collaboration, the identities of many are folded into her characters, and thus location is not always an obstacle. She navigates alienation by being a citizen of the world. “To anyone who sees my work what they’re seeing is me and they’re seeing the millions who roll with me right now.”
Despite the lack of local support, though, all five women continue to produce work. Roberts, an Austin native, has received the Art and Culture Award from the National Women of Achievement, Inc. in Philadelphia and the Presidential Point of Light Award from the White House. Her work has been purchased by such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey, Bill and Camille Cosby, Dr. Johnetta Cole and Marsha Warfield.
Roberts’s work plays with the tensions between ugliness and beauty, bringing to the fore what others might dismiss or completely overlook. By incorporating body parts in patterns, the eye must focus on the details within the pattern to see the human elements at play. The judgment of beauty is now redefined via the patterning of images one would normally reduce to an image of lust, grotesqueness or, as she puts it, “ugliness.” In fact, she takes the images that are not often considered beautiful by the larger culture and redefines them. “I think if I had a choice, the message I would like the world to know is that we are a thriving and beautiful people and that we walk not in a monolithic way, but in a very diverse way. I want my work to show sorrow and happiness, all at once. You don’t just look at a person from the outside.”
Beatrice Thomas’s work, in many ways, is in conversation with Deborah’s. Thomas is concerned with recollecting the discarded through artifacts that people might initially see as scraps. She primarily uses textiles, but she often incorporates other media into her work to add texture. “If we can remove that disposable mentality about stuff, there might be a little more room to engage each other in a cleaner more honest, less convoluted way. Regard your surroundings and stop privileging objects.”
Memory is woven into the work of Beatrice Thomas. Because the materials she often uses have history, the material carries that history with it and, once it’s brought together with other pieces, creates a new history. In many ways, the artifacts used in Beatrice’s work often have utilitarian histories that find new utility within the artwork. And although her work often employs African American cultural iconography, she warns that this is not a myopic lens through which to view her work or that of any other black artist: “I wish people would get over the black factor. It’s not the first thing that pops into our heads. Stop trying to read race into everything we do.”
Sharon Bridgforth points out that practicing her art is a “spiritual practice; it’s like breathing. I’m very privileged in many ways and I am also opening doors for others.... The work is a spiritual expression.”
Sharon Bridgforth’s work spans genres and, at times, transcends the boundaries defined by genres. “I want my work to invite people to be in the present moment and be completely honest in the present moment and to celebrate. I use blues as medicine, as laughter, as celebration.” Love Conjure/Blues, on the page, takes on the shape of lyric poems; on stage, the work takes on the personas of her subjects, to dramatic effect. A testament to the power of her writing is that whether it’s read by or witnessed from the audience, she continues to receive awards and favorable reviews. The bull-jean stories won a 1998 Lambda Book Award and was nominated for a Lambda Best Fiction Book Award and an American Library Association Best Gay/Lesbian Fiction Award. Love Conjure/Blues won a 2004 National Black Book Award. Currently, the work from Love Conjure/Blues, having already met success in book form and as a stage play, is in preproduction for a feature-length film.
For Bridgforth, this work extends the tradition of women working in the jazz idiom on stage. Her work has not only the flexibility of the human persona but also the various registers of improvisation provided by a jazz aesthetic. “The jazz aesthetic as it lives in theater is female based. The feminine that has birthed this thing has been written out of the history books. In terms of being a living artist benefiting from the ground that has already been broken, I had the blessing of being mentored by women who helped [break] it: Laurie Carlos, Robbie McCauley and many others. So I was able to come in a time where there was a movement, where there was already language and collaborations. So I feel that I benefit from other people’s blood.”
Much in the same way, while extending a tradition that came before her, Cauleen Smith, whose feature-length film Drylongso premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, doesn’t see herself as an activist for the black community; her work simply touches lives. Period. She’s okay with doing activist work without the lofty label. But you soon get the impression that she’s being too modest. She’s often concerned with the subject of alienation. By addressing those on the fringes in her work, she often finds a space to invite those personas in. Whether the character is an alien to Earth in search of true love, a little girl in Mali wanting a photograph of herself in a new skirt or an actress willing to lose the comfort of an ostensibly stable relationship for a shot at stardom, Smith’s work always offers a voice for the outsider who wants more out of life and a clear focus on the obstacle in his or her way. “I think I make films because it’s a collaborative medium that instantly forces me to find a process that pushes the boundaries of whatever issues of alienation I might be feeling. So there’s the tension of the process and the bringing [of] the content to fruition. I’d like to grow up so that my work is no longer about alienation. I think of alienation as a state of teenage angst, but I can’t seem to get around it.”
For Senalka McDonald, a recent graduate of The University of Texas at Austin with a BFA in Studio Art and a BA in Cultural Geography, her work takes another approach to addressing alienation. Sometimes the figures in her paintings are put in compromising positions, and the angles from which we view them make this clear. At first glance, the setting might be seemingly benign--a playground, a park bench, the comfort of home--but a closer look often reveals the possibility of danger and even broken trust. The sexual tension of her work could be compared to a Kara Walker painting, but instead of a slave and master as figures, McDonald presents an adult and a child; instead of black-and-white silhouettes, McDonald’s canvases explode with color. The tension of safety and precariousness are often at play. And what’s at stake is often sexual innocence. At first glance, McDonald’s work may seem pornographic, but her work delves deeper than the genitalia in view on the surface. Like Cauleen Smith, there’s an exploration of the interior and exterior identities of her subjects that also reflect her. “It’s hard for me to talk about my work,” she says. “At first, they were just about child molestation and I was seeing a lot of it in the media; it was in the news a lot. So, it just got stuck in my head. But now--now that I’ve graduated and [am] not around people my own age--I feel like it wasn’t about child molestation. I’m starting to feel like it was about my own insecurities and my feeling like a child and my not being able to protect myself. Outwardly, yeah, they may seem to be about child molestation and pornographic, but really they’re about myself.”
And so the Code Z question emerges: From where do the images and conceits of the work come? McDonald says that “being a young, black, Latina in America, I have always known what it is like to be unlike my American peers. This caused me to question many human actions and analyze them entirely. I feel that human emotions and relationships fuel our past and serve to shape our futures. Having grown up always questioning the dealings of humans, they are what I choose to focus my artwork on.”
There are many stereotypes placed on the black community of Austin, but “supportive environment” is usually not one of them. Most of this community is located in east Austin, which has not only pockets of revitalization but also areas of poverty in contrast with the thriving downtown area mere blocks away. But the work of these five women helps to broaden the spectrum of the community, even if the artists often find themselves on the fringes of it. As a result, these women have embraced each other’s work and have supported each other when institutions wouldn’t. Bridgforth points out that practicing her art is a “spiritual practice; it’s like breathing. I’m very privileged in many ways and I am also opening doors for others. I’ve mentored a lot of people. For me the joy is in the process. The work is a spiritual expression.”
Cauleen Smith points out that Deborah Roberts was one of the first people to support her film work. According to Roberts, “It took a lot of personal growth for me to say I want a film person in my exhibit. We are a diverse people. And every black experience is the black experience. We can’t be defined by living in east Austin alone.”
This southwestern city may never emerge as an artist colony for black filmmakers, writers and painters, but, if the work of these five women is any indication, the art coming from it will continue to reverberate far beyond Austin’s city limits.
