0:00:36.669,0:00:37.840
Leonardo Drew:[br]When I get up in the morning, I know exactly

0:00:37.840,0:00:38.840
what I'm going to be doing.

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I'll be working.

0:00:45.668,0:00:49.715
I don't know what the works are actually going[br]to be about,

0:00:49.715,0:00:52.070
but they find their way.

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I was drawing and using colored inks and things[br]like that.

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People in the neighborhood, the projects where[br]I grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut,

0:01:15.750,0:01:19.509
they were telling me about this place called ABCD[br]Cultural Art Center.

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They said that well you have to go there because[br]they have paints and canvases.

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And I said, "Wow, this is all this stuff for[br]free?"

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So once I made my way over to them, I ended[br]up with these mentors.

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A fantastic group of artists who were just[br]there helping kids.

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And I was one of them.

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I was approached by DC Comics and Heavy Metal[br]magazine and Marvel Comics to, to do work

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for them.

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When I saw this black and white reproduction[br]of Jackson Pollock's work, when I was in the

0:02:44.880,0:02:47.360
library in high school, that was it.

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And that was my first take on what fine art was.

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Imagine Jackson Pollock in black and white,[br]but it still elicited such a visceral response

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that when seeing it I was kind of like wow,[br]this is amazing.

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From that point on, I began to question what[br]I was doing up against what I had seen and

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what I had felt.

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More actually what I had felt.

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Probably would have been like fifteen.

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I was still exhibiting a certain type of work,[br]but it had touches of what I had realized.

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When it came time for me to go to college,[br]it was pretty easy to make a decision like,

0:03:31.030,0:03:37.299
okay, you could just do college or you use[br]your talents to go out and have a life or

0:03:37.299,0:03:38.299
make money.

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It was pretty easy.

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It was like, you go to the place where it's[br]going to get you closer to Jackson Pollock

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I studied at Cooper Union.

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I was probably the greediest person there[br]because I digested everything.

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I mean, I was in the foundry, the woodshop.

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You know, like making paper.

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Photography.

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And then I asked for an extra year.

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I had to fight for it, but they gave it to[br]me. [laughs]

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My ability to be able to draw and paint well[br]actually was getting in the way of me realizing

0:04:31.240,0:04:33.184
something larger.

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It's hard to get past something so beautifully[br]done and then at the same time ask the question,

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what's underneath that?

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I decided it was time for me to stop using[br]what I did well.

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So what I did was almost literally tied my[br]hands.

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I said, okay, you can no longer paint or draw.

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And you're going to have to find another way[br]to create.

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This is where I would've stopped drawing actually,

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this is where it ended.

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It was like seven years before I made a breakthrough.

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So from 1982 to 1989, took me seven years[br]of just experimenting.

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This piece came out, which was "Number 8."

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Animal parts, rope, string.

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Everything that you can possibly imagine is[br]in this, all entangled in this one monster

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of a piece.

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It was made up of all the failures or at least[br]what I perceived as failures.

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If you're a "Number 8,"" then that means there[br]is like 1 to 7 that are no longer there.

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It's just like they were all a part of "Number 8."

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One of the reasons why I actually number the[br]works is just to give the viewer enough room

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to find themselves in the work.

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The work should become a mirror.

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There are three areas on this piece, of importance[br]that I should pay attention to.

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So I can't place something here without knowing[br]what's going on over there.

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So this tells this area what has to happen.

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And that tells this what has to happen.

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And then they speak to one another.

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So I know there's a gradation going on.

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For instance, that has a sweep you see.

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"Boom."

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By the time it reaches the bottom, this is[br]the top, it's going to be epic.

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[laughs]

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That way of creating is actually only a microcosm[br]of how I make things,

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because when I'm working on this I'm paying attention to that.

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And that's telling me what has to happen over[br]here too.

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And I can see things that are not working[br]over there,

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that I say, okay, make sure that that's not occurring here.

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And then this helps me by saying, oh you know[br]what,

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this needs that over there you know.

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So a lot of times I can rip things out.

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That piece actually is already made up of[br]at least four different pieces. Yeah.

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And the longer the work hangs around, the[br]better off it is.

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My number's usually seven.

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I'm rotating seven things.

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They're speaking to each other.

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But it is sometimes like seven crying babies.

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You're trying to get to this one, to that[br]one and you're bouncing around.

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And then they leave.

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I end up visiting these things in museums[br]or people's homes.

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And on the whole, those people, those folks

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or even security guards at museums end up knowing more about the works than I could[br]have,

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because they're living with them

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and they've had much longer amount of time to[br]experience them.

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And I only have them for a second.

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I remember making a piece in my apartment.

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At the time I was living in Washington Heights.

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A friend of mine came over and said, "Well[br]how are you going to get it out?".

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I said, I hadn't thought of that that.

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I wasn't really thinking about taking the[br]piece out of there.

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I got smart enough to sort of at least break[br]these things up into like increments of 24" by 24"

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plates so that when I do hang it, you[br]know at least if there was no help around, I could do it by myself.

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Being a person of color is one of those things[br]that you know you will have to contend with

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as an artist.

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You're going to have to realize it and you're[br]going to have something to say.

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When I actually did this show back in 1992,[br]there were things that sort of came out of

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that exhibition, which I have not necessarily[br]returned to, but they have definitely been

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things that people will probably continue[br]to remember and write about, even if the work

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has absolutely at this point nothing to do[br]with cotton or ropes or things like that.

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There's a huge cotton wall piece that I had done.

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At the time I was using my friend Jack Whitten's[br]studio.

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And I didn't have a car; I didn't even have[br]a license.

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My goodness.

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And Jack was living down on Lispenard...which[br]is behind Canal Street.

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That's like, oh it's some almost thirty blocks.

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[laughs]

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So it's like, okay, I put the bale of cotton[br]on the dolly and pushed it in the street.

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And I remember the photographs that came out[br]from that.

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[laughs]

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Outrageous.

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For me, it was very practical to get from[br]A to B, but in fact, if you look at the photographs,

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it's like a political statement.

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Then from there it was like, okay, creating[br]the piece.

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My people's history is not about just black[br]people.

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It's about all of us.

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I mean there were things in that exhibition[br]that went through my body that were huge.

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In 1992, I got it all out.

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It got said.

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For me to just linger on that, it would be[br]almost doing the art a disservice.

0:10:07.840,0:10:10.434
[saw whirring]

0:10:11.520,0:10:14.787
I was there eleven years in a studio in San Antonio.

0:10:14.787,0:10:18.000
I was always going back and forth from New[br]York to San Antonio.

0:10:19.942,0:10:23.861
One of the issues that has consistently come[br]up when people write about the art

0:10:23.861,0:10:26.030
is that they talk about found objects.

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Actually, I don't work with found objects.

0:10:28.701,0:10:31.965
Most of my material are actually created in[br]the studio,

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so I actually go out and I buy material, brand new stuff.

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I actually have become the weather.

0:10:39.514,0:10:44.019
My reasons for having a studio in San Antonio[br]had everything to do with the intensity of

0:10:44.019,0:10:48.453
the heat and how I could actually weather[br]some of the materials that I was working with.

0:10:48.453,0:10:53.585
But what I ended up doing was hoisting onto[br]the roof of the studio these

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eight-foot cattle troughs.

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Buy like six of them and I would cook the[br]materials, sometimes for months and years

0:11:01.520,0:11:03.590
depending on what it is I was after.

0:11:04.222,0:11:08.089
There is the artwork that you physically make,[br]but there's also the journey that happens

0:11:08.089,0:11:09.470
on the inside.

0:11:11.908,0:11:16.165
That body of work was emotionally heavy and[br]I just thought,

0:11:16.165,0:11:19.180
what would happen if you took that away?

0:11:19.180,0:11:21.326
Here we are again with this question.

0:11:21.326,0:11:23.829
We're comfortable, how do I get to the next place?

0:11:24.664,0:11:27.982
So when you get rid of all the things that[br]you find that are comfortable.

0:11:27.982,0:11:30.350
So I said, okay, get rid of the rust.

0:11:31.095,0:11:35.649
It was at that point that the Fabric Workshop[br]had asked me to come up with an idea for a

0:11:35.649,0:11:37.503
piece as I was asking that question.

0:11:37.503,0:11:42.572
And I said, what if I took just white paper--just[br]like Xerox paper, like

0:11:42.572,0:11:47.060
really sixteen-pound paper--and transform that into something.

0:11:47.557,0:11:51.903
What if I took objects and I wrapped the paper[br]around them

0:11:51.903,0:11:54.719
and then released them from the objects?

0:11:54.719,0:11:56.850
Boom, take a razor blade, you cut it away.

0:11:57.324,0:11:58.578
Boom, take the object out.

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Boom, put it back together.

0:12:00.481,0:12:02.220
And there's nothing underneath the white paper.

0:12:02.762,0:12:03.387
Just the paper.

0:12:03.387,0:12:05.329
So it's just a shell in the end.

0:12:05.329,0:12:07.530
So you're getting really a ghost image.

0:12:08.862,0:12:11.050
What happened was revealing.

0:12:11.050,0:12:16.016
No matter what materials I end up using, once[br]you find your voice, that's it.

0:12:20.238,0:12:24.979
[sander grinding]

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There is no escaping your past.

0:12:39.650,0:12:42.491
With certainty, absolute certainty I can look[br]back

0:12:42.491,0:12:45.018
on some of the configurations that I created

0:12:45.018,0:12:48.730
and I can see those projects. I can see the landfill.

0:12:49.227,0:12:51.097
We were right next to the dump.

0:12:51.639,0:12:56.680
I mean literally we could see the dump from[br]our window and we could see the tractors going

0:12:56.680,0:12:58.930
back and forth over the landfills.

0:13:01.142,0:13:03.060
That was what I knew.

0:13:03.647,0:13:05.559
I spent time at the dump.

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I can see the grid for instance.

0:13:13.192,0:13:16.978
Interesting enough, people go on like, "Oh,[br]his connection is to minimalism."

0:13:16.978,0:13:21.434
I say actually it's more like [br]those gridded projects.

0:13:59.799,0:14:03.578
When you're creating, there are satisfying[br]moments and then there are

0:14:03.578,0:14:08.441
moments that are kind of like endpoints--or beginnings.

0:14:11.060,0:14:17.219
My gallery approached me, "What if we allowed[br]you to take on the space?""

0:14:18.235,0:14:22.105
I have the space for a month to actually create[br]in the space.

0:14:22.376,0:14:27.250
What I did was, as always, bought materials[br]like the wood and stuff like that and began

0:14:27.250,0:14:32.618
to wash it and burn it and transform it.

0:14:33.002,0:14:36.105
What we ended up with was this dilapidated[br]wall.

0:14:43.577,0:14:46.764
This thing was a one hundred and nine feet long.

0:14:46.764,0:14:48.440
And monstrous.

0:14:52.334,0:14:56.282
Just because something is big, bombastic,[br]and sensational

0:14:56.282,0:14:59.380
does not necessarily mean that it's successful.

0:15:03.489,0:15:06.465
It was like all of a sudden, I had this epiphany.

0:15:07.935,0:15:10.240
It is time for you to start reaching again.

0:15:10.240,0:15:12.000
This is not quite enough.

0:15:13.310,0:15:18.654
I know this too well and I'm getting too comfortable[br]again.

0:15:23.824,0:15:26.397
Now for the viewer, they can't know that.

0:15:26.397,0:15:29.150
They can only know what you present to them.

0:15:34.004,0:15:37.930
I'm finding out the work is becoming like[br]a monster sometimes in what it needs, and

0:15:37.930,0:15:39.289
I just keep feeding it.

0:15:41.434,0:15:47.722
The fact is I've almost set myself up in life[br]so that I can give completely or commit completely

0:15:47.722,0:15:50.339
to this process of creating.

0:15:50.339,0:15:52.334
I've never been married, I have no kids.

0:15:52.334,0:15:54.470
I love kids, I love women. [laughs]

0:15:54.470,0:15:55.730
But I don't have either.

0:15:55.730,0:15:59.148
So that tells you something about my commitment[br]to like this life.

0:16:00.976,0:16:02.490
We're all reaching.

0:16:02.490,0:16:05.422
I'm not talking just about artists, but I[br]mean we all are reaching.

0:16:06.596,0:16:09.440
As I'm creating, I know that I have the opportunity.

0:16:09.440,0:16:12.490
Whatever I feel or know, I make into material.

0:16:15.199,0:16:16.860
What a journey though.

0:16:16.860,0:16:21.060
I've enjoyed it for all of my life and still[br]I'm intrigued.

0:16:21.647,0:16:22.643
I still want to reach out.

0:16:22.643,0:16:23.255
I still want to reach.

0:16:23.255,0:16:24.116
I still want to reach.

0:16:24.116,0:16:24.868
I still want to reach.

0:16:37.787,0:16:40.812
There's no other way of doing it except for[br]this physical manifestation

0:16:40.812,0:16:42.249
of what I've been through.

0:16:43.634,0:16:48.310
If I were to say what my work was--actually[br]what my work was about--I couldn't tell you.

0:16:48.310,0:16:51.241
Even if I knew, I probably wouldn't tell you. [laughs]

0:17:09.912,0:17:11.790
[drill whirring]

0:17:24.000,0:17:28.155
As I'm moving closer and closer to answering[br]questions, at the same time,

0:17:28.155,0:17:30.520
I'm moving further away from the answers.

0:17:30.520,0:17:34.993
So all I have to do at this point is continue[br]to place my body in the act

0:17:34.993,0:17:37.051
of attempting to know.

0:17:43.305,0:17:48.401
(ambient electronic music)

0:17:48.401,0:17:50.730
To learn more about "Art in the Twenty-First Century"

0:17:50.730,0:17:52.700
and it's educational resources,

0:17:52.700,0:17:57.128
please visit us online at PBS.org/Art21

0:17:57.964,0:18:01.185
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" is available on DVD

0:18:01.185,0:18:06.704
To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAY-PBS

0:18:06.704,0:18:12.203
(ambient electronic music)