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(Music Playing)

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There's lots of levels on which my

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paintings can be approached.

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One can approach it as simply an object

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that has a certain kind of beauty.

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One can approach it as

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an object that has a text in it that has different

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levels of legibility.

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(Silence)

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If one knows James Baldwin and realizes

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that the text in my painting is from an

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essay that he's written, then that opens up

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the painting; gives it a different level of

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meaning.

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(Silence)

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The paintings that address the Million Man

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March were made in the mid '90's,

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a couple of years after Louis Farrakahn,

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the leader of the Nation of Islam

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organized a march on the mall in

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Washington, D.C. about the visibility and

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presence of black men in the country,

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which I find rather ironic, since

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black people have been in this country since the beginning

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before there was even a country

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but we still feel the need to

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assert our personhood.

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(Silence)

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The irony of this march, perhaps, was that

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black women were encouraged to absent

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themselves from work, but not to attend

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the march as full participants.

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When I started to think about making silk-screen

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paintings using images of the march,

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this kind of notion of absence or

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disappearance of women was something I

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was interested in and something I tried

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to find in the images themselves.

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(Silence)

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Like any artwork, things become richer

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if you know more about them,

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but I don't think that's crucial.

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Someone can walk into a museum and not

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know a single thing about a Jackson Pollock

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painting and still have a reaction to it;

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still get something from it. The thing

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that they get from it may be richer if they

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know more about it, but that's like

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anything (laughter), you know, that's

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about being in the world.

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(Silence)

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(Music Playing)