Theaster Gates in "Chicago" - Season 8 | Art21

Theaster Gates: One note. No
harmonies.

No harmonies yet.

[singers vocalizing]

One, one, one...

One, one, one, one

One, one...

One, one, one...

I think I've been given the ability to see things.

I can see not just the thing in front of 
me but the potential inside the thing.

[vocalizing continues]

The world is ripe for a making, for a remaking,

for a reshaping.

Art has the ability to help us 
imagine that the world that we live in

is really just today's condition.

[Host] Welcome, uh, to the
Stony Island Arts Bank.

We are so thrilled, uh, to be
opening our doors for the first time.

[applause]

Um, the vision of the project
was conceived by our founder,

artist Theaster Gates.

When he learned that the
building

initially was, uh, slated for
demolition,

it is out of his life as an
artist

living in this community

that the Stony Island Arts
Bank was born.

Uh, ladies and gentlemen,
Theaster Gates.

[pottery wheel spinning]

[Theaster Gates] I came to art in a pretty non-conventional way.

I have a degree in urban planning and 
some background in religious studies.

And I ended up in the ceramics studio.

I think one of the reasons that I really like 
clay so much is because it's the thing that, like,

no one thinks about. It's, 
like, always under your feet.

I love that clay is always asking,

"I can only be as beautiful as you can 
think me to be and work me to be," you know.

And that's just super cool.

I grew up in Chicago.

Uh, the neighborhood I grew up
in is called East Garfield
Park.

We call it the west side.

It was a rough, rough neighborhood.

[Singer] Walk with me, Lord

Walk with me...

[Theaster Gates] I had had this anxiety all my life that 
my neighborhood was being torn down--

systematically, it felt--

and that there was nothing I could do about it.

But there was this kind of 
like hedge of protection

that I felt was around me and my 
family through the Black church.

[Singer] Hello, Lord

O, Lord, He is won

He is wonderful...

[Theaster Gates] I gravitated to the gospel choir.

It wasn't about church.

It was about the voice.

♪ I love the Lord ♪

♪ He heard my cry ♪

And then everybody sings:

♪ I, I, I ♪

♪ Love ♪

♪ The... ♪

And it was like, this, like,

kind of my first encounter
with creativity.

The Black church allowed me more space to dream,

to imagine the probable,

to imagine that the world was not a series 
of abandoned buildings but, in fact,

just a world waiting to be restored.

♪ Just a closer walk with thee ♪

♪ Grant it, Jesus, if you
please ♪

♪ Daily closer walk with thee ♪

♪ Let it be... ♪

[Theaster Gates] This is like my staging.

I get to kind of look at
works...

that are in process..

I really wanted to be a potter full-time.

Every time that I would load 
a kiln fully of my work,

it would cost me 700 bucks.

It was too much.

And so I stopped making pots and was looking for a 
thing to do

and remembered that I had good hands, that my dad had taught me how to build stuff.

And so I started using these found materials.

As soon as I stopped using clay,

the contemporary art world 
became interested in my work.

— You don't think that we need to tie
these together...at all

— Well, it's--it's, uh, once that back wall
is--is on,

it will...

— Tighten it up.

— It will create a box

[drilling]

[Theaster Gates] A lot of the big work 
happens out in the wood shop,

in the metal shop.

Often the materials that we have 
are kind of a backdrop for projects.

They become the structural material 
that allows us to do things.

And then sometimes, they become kind of new works of art.

Here's one of the earliest 
Civil Rights tapestries.

It's basically fire hoses 
that had been discontinued,

sewn together, and framed.

And this body of work grew out of me starting to 
have a conversation about the history of protests

and the use of the fire hose in 
places like Selma and Birmingham.

[humming, music playing]

And these things that we imagine don't have value

are things that we simply stop 
seeing as having had value--

materials like the tar on top of your roof.

It's about me figuring out ways of forcing 
it to be something in front of you.

♪ I want you ♪
♪ I want you ♪

♪ To walk with me ♪

♪ Walk with me ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ Please walk ♪

♪ Walk with me ♪

♪ Oh ♪

[Singer] Oh, my, my, my, my, my, my

Sometimes, yeah...

[Theaster Gates] My dad was retiring.

He was a roofer and was giving me all his tools.

My dad at the time was 80.

I thought, "Man, it would be super 
cool to do something with him."

And so I asked him if he would consider 
making a series of roofing works with me.

And it was a real breakthrough moment.

[tapping of bell]

I'm always kind of interested 
in, like, what's the soundtrack?

♪ O, amazing ♪

♪ Now I can see... ♪

♪ Now I can see... ♪

I decided that I would lean on my parents' history

and my history with Mississippi

and--and use these songs that I learned there

in the South in church growing 
up to initiate a new music.

In a way, gospel would be the root.

And then the Black Monks of Mississippi--

this band that I created--

we would ride that root to invent 
a new monastic Black chant.

♪ Oh, now I'm found ♪

♪ I was so ♪

♪ Blind ♪

♪ And now I'm found, yeah... ♪

[Man] I can't see you, Lord.

♪ I was so blind... ♪

[Theaster Gates] In 2006, I accepted a job at 
the University of Chicago.

At the same time, I bought my first 
house on the block Dorchester.

Two years in, the building 
next door to me was available.

Once I bought it, I was broke.

And so I started gutting it.

That becomes my raw material that become works of

art that then help with the 
restoration of the building.

That work, those cycles, those processes,

they still have to do with just simply being able 
to see beauty where it lives without pretense.

A year later, in 2009,

we bought a third building.

Once we found ourselves with 
these buildings on the block,

they became very quickly kind of repositories.

One building became a repository 
for an album collection

that was this former record shop called Dr. Wax.

We started playing soul music on a Sunday brunch.

And that was pretty cool.

— Um, for folk who are here for
the first time, welcome,

to Black Cinema House.

We're very proud, uh, to have
you here, honored.

[Theaster Gates] One of the buildings that we restored 
was this gorgeous brick building.

And we put a screen in it.

We made it real nice.

People come in, watch great movies.

Over time, more buildings were added.

We did 32 units of mixed-income 
housing for artists.

It's doing really, really well.

And so I started thinking of myself as an artist 
that was intervening simply by acquiring buildings

or being a partner with others 
who are acquiring buildings

and imagining that culture could 
live alongside the violence

and over time make it pause,

make it stop,

slow it down,

make it go away.

I think that when art and culture is present,

when it's doing its thing well that it becomes

a kind of magnet for lots 
of different possibilities.

The city of Chicago gave me this building that 
is called the Stony Island State Savings Bank.

The building was in bad shape.

There was no bank that would give me the 
resources necessary to restore the bank.

And so we used the marble partitions from the 
bathrooms to create these small bank bonds.

And then we went to Basel, 
Switzerland, to Art Basel.

And we sold the bank bonds. I'd like to 
imagine that we sold them to Swiss bankers.

We sold those bonds for 
$5,000 or something like that.

And we sold a couple hundred of them.

We raised a million dollars to get the party 
started for the restoration of this bank,

that in a way the bank 
produced its own new currency

that then helped to restore the bank.

I love that!

[indistinct chatter]

When you go to the bank,

you can kind of imagine it as this 
new repository for the Black image

and the Black American historical experience.

♪ ♪

— Uh, what a miracle that
we're all in the Stony Island Arts Bank.

Thank you all for being here,
right?

[applause]

It's become really clear to me
that when, um,

people believe in the place
where they live,

when they invest in the places
where they live,

when we make the time to know
our neighbors

and our friends and we say
"Thank you" to the world,

beautiful and amazing things
can happen.

And I think that the Stony
Island Arts Bank

is one clear reminder that
beauty can live anywhere

and that beauty has the right
to live everywhere,

even at 68th and Stony Island.

[cheering and applause]

[Theaster Gates] I want to make the thing that makes the thing,

that there's a way in which 
making the thing is cool.

But to be able to make the thing that 
makes the thing is super cool, right?

And I think that I'm still kind
of principally involved involved in that,

so do I want to have shows?

Yes.

But do I want to have spaces 
where shows might be created?

Yes!

[vocalizing starts]

The vision that I have for what 
art could be or what art is,

it's kind of a big vision.

And it's a vision that doesn't 
really have a lot of boundaries.

Can art and culture change communities?

It does it all the time.

It is so evident that when art is present,

things are better,

even in the toughest circumstances.

I'm asking questions of what the Black 
world might look like if we invested in it,

if we gave a damn.

[vocalizing continues]

[soft electronic music]