Leonardo Drew in "Investigation" - Season 7 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

Leonardo Drew:
When I get up in the morning, I know exactly

what I'm going to be doing.

I'll be working.

I don't know what the works are actually going
to be about,

but they find their way.

I was drawing and using colored inks and things
like that.

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

they were telling me about this place called ABCD
Cultural Art Center.

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

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

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

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

And I was one of them.

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

for them.

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

library in high school, that was it.

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

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

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

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

what I had felt.

More actually what I had felt.

Probably would have been like fifteen.

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

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

okay, you could just do college or you use
your talents to go out and have a life or

make money.

It was pretty easy.

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

I studied at Cooper Union.

I was probably the greediest person there
because I digested everything.

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

You know, like making paper.

Photography.

And then I asked for an extra year.

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

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

something larger.

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

what's underneath that?

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

So what I did was almost literally tied my
hands.

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

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

This is where I would've stopped drawing actually,

this is where it ended.

It was like seven years before I made a breakthrough.

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

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

Animal parts, rope, string.

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

of a piece.

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

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

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

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

to find themselves in the work.

The work should become a mirror.

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

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

So this tells this area what has to happen.

And that tells this what has to happen.

And then they speak to one another.

So I know there's a gradation going on.

For instance, that has a sweep you see.

"Boom."

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

[laughs]

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

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

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

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

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

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

this needs that over there you know.

So a lot of times I can rip things out.

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

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

My number's usually seven.

I'm rotating seven things.

They're speaking to each other.

But it is sometimes like seven crying babies.

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

And then they leave.

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

And on the whole, those people, those folks

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

because they're living with them

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

And I only have them for a second.

I remember making a piece in my apartment.

At the time I was living in Washington Heights.

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

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

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

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

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

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

as an artist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My goodness.

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

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

[laughs]

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

And I remember the photographs that came out
from that.

[laughs]

Outrageous.

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

it's like a political statement.

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

My people's history is not about just black
people.

It's about all of us.

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

In 1992, I got it all out.

It got said.

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

[saw whirring]

I was there eleven years in a studio in San Antonio.

I was always going back and forth from New
York to San Antonio.

One of the issues that has consistently come
up when people write about the art

is that they talk about found objects.

Actually, I don't work with found objects.

Most of my material are actually created in
the studio,

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

I actually have become the weather.

My reasons for having a studio in San Antonio
had everything to do with the intensity of

the heat and how I could actually weather
some of the materials that I was working with.

But what I ended up doing was hoisting onto
the roof of the studio these

eight-foot cattle troughs.

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

depending on what it is I was after.

There is the artwork that you physically make,
but there's also the journey that happens

on the inside.

That body of work was emotionally heavy and
I just thought,

what would happen if you took that away?

Here we are again with this question.

We're comfortable, how do I get to the next place?

So when you get rid of all the things that
you find that are comfortable.

So I said, okay, get rid of the rust.

It was at that point that the Fabric Workshop
had asked me to come up with an idea for a

piece as I was asking that question.

And I said, what if I took just white paper--just
like Xerox paper, like

really sixteen-pound paper--and transform that into something.

What if I took objects and I wrapped the paper
around them

and then released them from the objects?

Boom, take a razor blade, you cut it away.

Boom, take the object out.

Boom, put it back together.

And there's nothing underneath the white paper.

Just the paper.

So it's just a shell in the end.

So you're getting really a ghost image.

What happened was revealing.

No matter what materials I end up using, once
you find your voice, that's it.

[sander grinding]

There is no escaping your past.

With certainty, absolute certainty I can look
back

on some of the configurations that I created

and I can see those projects. I can see the landfill.

We were right next to the dump.

I mean literally we could see the dump from
our window and we could see the tractors going

back and forth over the landfills.

That was what I knew.

I spent time at the dump.

I can see the grid for instance.

Interesting enough, people go on like, "Oh,
his connection is to minimalism."

I say actually it's more like
those gridded projects.

When you're creating, there are satisfying
moments and then there are

moments that are kind of like endpoints--or beginnings.

My gallery approached me, "What if we allowed
you to take on the space?""

I have the space for a month to actually create
in the space.

What I did was, as always, bought materials
like the wood and stuff like that and began

to wash it and burn it and transform it.

What we ended up with was this dilapidated
wall.

This thing was a one hundred and nine feet long.

And monstrous.

Just because something is big, bombastic,
and sensational

does not necessarily mean that it's successful.

It was like all of a sudden, I had this epiphany.

It is time for you to start reaching again.

This is not quite enough.

I know this too well and I'm getting too comfortable
again.

Now for the viewer, they can't know that.

They can only know what you present to them.

I'm finding out the work is becoming like
a monster sometimes in what it needs, and

I just keep feeding it.

The fact is I've almost set myself up in life
so that I can give completely or commit completely

to this process of creating.

I've never been married, I have no kids.

I love kids, I love women. [laughs]

But I don't have either.

So that tells you something about my commitment
to like this life.

We're all reaching.

I'm not talking just about artists, but I
mean we all are reaching.

As I'm creating, I know that I have the opportunity.

Whatever I feel or know, I make into material.

What a journey though.

I've enjoyed it for all of my life and still
I'm intrigued.

I still want to reach out.

I still want to reach.

I still want to reach.

I still want to reach.

There's no other way of doing it except for
this physical manifestation

of what I've been through.

If I were to say what my work was--actually
what my work was about--I couldn't tell you.

Even if I knew, I probably wouldn't tell you. [laughs]

[drill whirring]

As I'm moving closer and closer to answering
questions, at the same time,

I'm moving further away from the answers.

So all I have to do at this point is continue
to place my body in the act

of attempting to know.

(ambient electronic music)

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(ambient electronic music)