♪ ♪ Artworks is made possible in part by... And by... ♪ ♪ CLARISSA: So I guess figurative sculpture is just the broad idea of you know, sculpting the human body for whatever means the person is sculpting it for, so maybe that's you know, historically to show, you know, some act of heroism or you know, mythology or whatever um, the person sculpting is trying to get across or like demonstrate to the people who will be looking at it.

Um, and for me I, I've always been really interested in the body, um, even when I wasn't making figurative sculpture exactly, I made ceramic vessels that had images of the body on it, um, I've just always felt really driven to represent the body for whatever reason.

It's been here a long time.

My role here is as a Resident Artist, so I work in the studios here, and I have a space and I work as part of the studio and the community so I teach and I help around with other things that they need there and in return, I have a fellowship through them this year, the Lormina Salter Fellowship and this show is basically the culmination of that fellowship.

So the, the title of this show is “Not Really Now Not Anymore” in that you know, we only have you know, right now, once and then it's gone so a lot of these experiences are kind of dealing with um, moments in time uh, as they move forward and kind of processing the past or looking to the future.

Um and each room has a different installation in it, um or two installations in it, so the, the figures are grouped so that you can kind of see them interacting with each other.

For me this exhibition uh has been a way of processing the past year and a half to two years of my life, um, so they are, mostly autobiographical installations, and a lot of them are dealing with the loss of my mother and so with the loss of a loved one comes a loss of identity and so in making myself in these scenes like in various stages of deflation or inflation or meditation or um, you know, looking in a mirror, it's my way of working through those emotions and processing um, through the act of making them but also through the act of like seeing them outside myself as representations of that experience.

Ceramics is unfortunately not a super accessible, at home, material because you really do need you know, kilns, you need machinery, you do need, if you want to make larger work, you need a community who's willing to help you push something that weighs 100 pounds into a kiln.

So for me the, the process of building these, um, I build them um, hollow from the ground up.

So if you imagine just a, a, a pot, like a vessel, I would just start at the bottom of the vessel with like the footprint.

So for some of these figures, that's, you know, the bottom of a shoe, and then I just take coils, um, or slabs of clay and I build my way up to the top of the sculpture.

You know, during the process of making these, I'm using clay which is a material that shows you know the memory of things that have happened to it on its surface, you know fingerprints, whatever tools you use, um, the act of working with it is very cathartic because you know, you literally have your hands in like this really, what some people say is a gross material, at least some of my students have said that and you know, you're literally forming it into something and you know, the act of doing that is really cathartic.

So a lot of these pieces are in two separate sections so that I can handle carrying the work myself.

So, for example, this piece is, um, is built with a the top fitting onto the bottom so the, the top piece where the shirt ends meets like a flange, like a lid of a pot to build a piece on top of the other piece I have to wait for things to dry enough that it can support that weight.

So because being an artist, especially a ceramic artist is so community-based and teaching-based um there's a, a lot of the way that I consider a legacy would be through teaching.

Um, so I'm kind of in the beginning of, of watching as students that I've taught continue on and keep making and you know kind of like get really into the ceramic media and so for me because you know, part of my story of why I pursued ceramics was having an educator who was, you know, was really invested in me, part of the way that I think about legacy has a lot to do with teaching.

I think the objects are important but you know, sometimes they go in the garbage, sometimes they go into other people's hands you know, um, but they are important but I think also like who you are to the people around you is also really important.

MARTHA: There are more than 5,000 African American men who fought in the Revolutionary War.

I never heard that I never read that.

Where was this information?

So, this notion of revealing the true history, the true narrative, history is constructed by whoever's telling it, so it's important to tell it.

It is, right?

Time has recorded it.

The title of this is "What The Trees Have Seen."

This notion that time is cumulative, trees record every single year, you can go and find, you know that from elementary school the rings of the trees, you know, it's not just the rings on the trees, it's time, it's recorded the elements you know, it's recorded the temperature of that time, it recorded what other plants were being decomposed at the time, so this recording is happening, it's happening within humanity as well.

My family recently discovered that our fourth great-grandfather Luke Valentine had fought in The Revolutionary War.

And I remember the moment of like reading it and discovering it and my daughter, my eldest daughter Niambi was in the room and I was sharing the stories, we were reading it, and she just burst into tears and I was just startled.

And she said, "Oh if I had only known this story sitting in all of those history classes through kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, high school, college, and law school..." so it was really, that impacted me because it showed this incredible thread that was missing.

LEILA: Martha is so incredibly adept at bringing together abstraction, these are clearly abstract works, but she interlaces them with this narrative of her ancestor, of Luke Valentine, and she works through and really walks through this body of work speculating about what it was that he experienced and so you look at these works and you really sort of feel the emotive qualities of Luke's experience as a soldier in the American Revolution.

MARTHA: This kind of uh, history that was allowed to slip into obscurity, to be silenced.

And at that moment it became really clear in terms of asking the question, how and what was the internal landscape of a free African American man in the 1700s to make this journey.

We lived in Virginia.

Our home was in the, near the foothills of the Blueridge Mountains so it's very mountainous.

And he walked from Virginia to North Carolina to fight in the first battle with the British, which they lost, his regimen, he had joined the militia, The Virginia Line.

They lost that first battle with um, the British.

More than 900 uh, patriots, American fighters like, Revolutionary fighters were killed.

My ancestor was one of the survivors who then walked on to South Carolina and joined that line, militia and they had a second battle with the British which they won and took prisoners of the British and that sort of thing.

So it was just extraordinary to imagine, not just the physicality of that walking, marching, I just heard his heartbeat with internal sound of his heart, the rhythm of walking, the rhythm of marching, the rhythm of confrontation, the rhythm of seeing a new landscape and environment.

I grew up in the south so I'm familiar with the landscape and I know how it, it had impacted me in terms of my vision as an artist and much of my work is about the landscape and our relationship to it.

LEILA: It's really special that you can bring whatever it is that you might carry to these works whether you are a veteran or someone who appreciates abstract work, or just someone who can appreciate the incredible accumulation and density of material.

There's something to appreciate and love in these works for everyone.

One of the beautiful things about Martha is that she just is collaborative.

She always knew that a heartbeat and a pulse would be an important part of the experience.

And so she brought in a beautiful uh double bass player and a poet to think through the same sort of process and journey of Luke Valentine that she herself went through as she made this work.

CAROL: The first poem that I wrote and it goes with the first piece, as Martha had explained it to me.

“Keep the blue light of home, Memories, Habits, Experiences, Family, Friends, Threads of a life, gliding on the wind, Carrying them closer bout to me.

My talismans, entwining structures of being, Memories binding with the learning of the new.” Well, one of the things is that Martha's pieces have so much motion and so much movement in them and it's also intense between the colors and, you know you've got those vertical, “the pathways,” as she has designated them.

And then the surrounding elements are, they're abstract.

And one of the things that we had talked about and she had said specifically when we first had more specific conversations about it is that this is a body of work that people will be able to appreciate in different ways and she wanted to offer them several more ways that they could access it.

So my words became kind of a bridge or a spider web uh, around that or in there so that that was a different kind of story that you're listening to, not just the visual story.

MARTHA: I had this notion of safety and return so my, iconography of this safe passage was to create this kind of linear crossroads, it's like the notion of the crossroads, at the crossroads in African tradition anything can happen, it's the place of magic, it's the place of transition, it's the place of possibilities, it's the place where you can transcend or descend into anything.

LEILA: And Martha of course is thinking about what will happen for subsequent generations and telling stories, telling histories, sometimes through abstract art and sometimes through, just families passing down information and genealogies, all of that is really, really important and it's part of our lived experience as, as, as people, as humans.

MARTHA: My story can be duplicated.

It simply hasn't been told and now, it's a time of telling.

DANIELLE: Creativity was always, it was always a part of, of my life because as a kid, I was an only child, so my mother was like, “I want to get you all the crayons you want and the manilla paper, and the paints, oh yea, go to town, I'm not having any more kids,” so you know uh, it was always a way for me to keep myself busy.

I had never really stopped drawing and painting, I just got better at it, you know I just found that with art I could kind of just create my world the way I wanted it to be.

My mother tried to get me into The School of the Arts when it first opened in '81, but somehow we got our dates mixed up and we missed the date for the audition, but once I got to high school, I really hated the school I was going to, and she was like, “You know what, let's audition again for School of the Arts,” so that was a big deal because now we were focusing on the technical side of how to draw and getting the, the basics down and not just kind of going for it, you know by sight and getting to practice it over and over every day actually helped me to increase my skills quite a bit.

I was really deeply into my own world as a kid.

And when I was in school they're like, "Oh well you know, you need to research other artists and what they're doing and their techniques and their this and that and the third..." and I think because they told me I had to, I think I rebelled against it even harder.

Plus the artists I think that they were exposing me to, I just didn't see any, anything I could get from that, you know like the, the Michelangelo, you know, the statues, and the, you know, fig leafs and all that stuff.

You know I had no interest in any of that, no interest in that you know we just, we, we didn't get to the art that I wanted to see so when people did cartooning or graffiti or the things that really drew my eyes in they were like, that's not real art.

I never really did graffiti but I like the style, you know it just seemed vibrant and rebellious and all of that and I wanted all of that.

So I always wanted to draw realistically, especially in my earlier adult life, I still want to draw what I see.

However, I want to add meaning these days, so as opposed to just drawing a pretty picture I want something that means something.

It, so I did not become aware of Octavia Butler until like 2017.

Octavia Butler's books took things that had happened in history and just looked at how they could come back around again and then I found that there were other books that were considered futuristic and more fantasy, more sci-fi, so I just became fascinated with her stories.

Yea, this one brought me way out of my comfort zone.

The original portrait that I did of Octavia in the chalk where it was literally just her face.

That was more in my comfort zone, you know I just kind of drew what I saw, although I do interpret the colors and the shapes a little differently so it's not like photo-realism or anything, but it's not very challenging.

With this one, I got the idea like, "Hey, Octavia was a Afro-futurist and sci-fi and all of that, hey what if I, you know, could put like an orb of light in her hand..." because part of her stories are dealt with shaping worlds, so if she's shaping something that's not together yet and you know to represent the sci-fi and the Afro-futurism that made it a little more fun.

Although it was a little more challenging because there's a lot of room to fail.

I searched for you, Octavia, I found you in sound bites, interviews, and symposiums.

You told us, when we don't see ourselves in the story's future, just write ourselves in.

I wonder if you know that all you touched, you changed.

I dabbled in writing poetry in college but it wasn't good.

Ok, it was, some of them were interesting, they had potential, I'll put it that way, they had potential.

Once, I picked it back up again once I had moved in at my Aunt's house and there was no room to really paint and I was overly concerned about messing things up, ‘cause I get messy when I draw and paint, so I ended up switching over to using words because it had to come out some kind of way.

I started writing but I didn't share anything with people ‘cause I was thinking, “Nobody wants to hear what I have to say,” but I got so much warmth and encouragement and you know people wanting to hear more and then that petrified me ‘cause I didn't have more.

I didn't have more that was good, at that time I had like four good poems and that was it, and one of them was 20 years old, so you know, I'm like, “Oh wow,” you know, “I better get to writing,” ‘cause they, they were expecting more!

You know, it became another way, another outlet, you know for me to, to get something out, ‘cause I needed to create.

And the whole process of making time for it has been one of those adult things that I've never really been successful at um, and I think that's how there's so many years that go between doing successful pieces of work though artistically because I haven't made time for it, you know I've had to create the meaning, basically and just sit down and say “Hey, I'm gonna do this and we're gonna have to figure out how to do with what we have or find a way to take that scoop full of peanut butter and cover the whole loaf of bread, I don't know, but this has to happen and, and I found it by putting art as a priority it's opened some other doors for me.

DENNIS: So tonight is a super combination of athleticism and also literary and poetry.

We got four of the best poets in the city who are gonna be competing head-to-head they wanted a stage to voice their love for Mohammad Ali and his principles and things like that.

WOMAN: The way that the entire event is going to be organized is almost like a boxing match.

DENNIS: Please clap it up for your first sacrificial poet Charles Hines.

(audience cheering and applause).

CHARLES: So I focus my poem on resilience and overcoming obstacles and so I spin it into just kind of fighting against depression and those everyday things that prevent you from being your best self, from seeing the light.

Every word they say just stings like, like, will I ever be all right, I am not a champion.

In this moment you may not feel like a champion or your best self but always standing up again and just staying in the ring until one day you look and you're like, “Hey, I'm the champion.” KENNEDY: How am I going to put my socks on today and walk a mile in everyone else's shoes while I stay stuck in cement still trying to soothe, I know.

Someone like Mohammad Ali even he got tired and exhausted on days, I'm sure because it's all just so much sometimes so um, the poem that I wrote is just kind of saying that like it's ok to have bad days, that it's ok to have days where you focus on yourself and do things for yourself and you're still a great person.

SLAM: I miss the days when we pulled out boxing gloves instead of handguns.

Before fists became semi-automatic pistols and double-action revolvers.

CURTIS: In 2017 I started Grow House because I wanted to do something different the idea was to take the elements of slam poetry and the competition structure and use it for other forms of art.

JAMIE: Nosey shipwrecks resurface to watch dolphins ornament black braids with gold.

She pulls Mt.

Everest out of her breast and each nail lines up for its turn at getting even.

CURTIS: 2019 is when I partnered up with Dennis, he's an excellent host and he's a great like just people person he's a lot more outgoing than I, I would say I am and so we're definitely a great partnership in that I'm more reserved and he's great at just being a people person.

DENNIS: One of the most prolific and profound poets that I personally know, Walter “Wally B.” Jennings.

Wally B. is kind of like this, this, this, this tree trunk, right?

And he's kind of brought poetry as spoken word down from Tallahassee.

When he brought it here to Tampa, you know from that just blossomed a lot of everything that you see today.

WALLY B.: This earth was not built by brick and mortar.

What you do may make you important but why you do it will make you immortal.

The poem that I have is really about the whole aging process and how it's important for us to really recognize the totality of our life as one cohesive experience, rather than these fragmented parts where we fall in love with one and we hate the other.

And so, with Mohammad Ali a lot of people kind of are able to segment his life into various sections when you talk about him as a young champion and then when you talk about the attention that he got as an activist and then in his latter years as he dealt with Parkinson's and a lot of medical challenges.

So most people they experience or know him and they really, his life resonates with him heavily usually in one of those three areas.

And remind everyone that greatness is always just over the horizon.

D-ROD: Ali is actually one of the few people that can be like, oh that is like one of my like superheroes.

KENNEDY: I just look at him as someone who was so dedicated to getting what he wants.

TRENAJIAH: Just going back and watching old footage of him and just seeing how he was able to just come out on top against some of the biggest fighters and then of course outside of the ring he was just an artistic person overall.

CURTIS: He was one of the first, I would say like one of the first like well-known, like spoken word kind of poet.

GROUP: Float like a butterfly, and sting like a bee.

Ah!

Rumble, young man, rumble.

Hey!

CURTIS: That's the best type of poetry to me is like that authentic genuineness and that's like all Mohammad Ali is, you know?

D-ROD: The fact that he crafted himself as his own character and chose to be true to that come hell or high water, you know with all of the, the weight that each one of his decisions has made, not just for himself but as a representative of his people here in America.

KENNEDY: He, he got something that he had been training for, basically his entire life and he decided to give it up for the good of other people.

I loved him as, you know being a, a black man who was completely confident in who he was at that time that was very not ok to do that.

D-ROD: He became the first, in my eyes, the first athlete that was more than his sport.

I wish I would have had the opportunity to actually meet, see, be in the presence of Ali, worthy of all praises most high.

The poem that I wrote for this event I was trying to take like some of his core tenets and expand upon them and find how I am trying to exemplify them in my life, just as a small homage to Mohammad Ali.

And conviction, spirituality, and dedication, he was respect and giving.

CURTIS: We want Tampa to be a city that people think of when they think of like really dope spoken word poetry, like, “Oh we gotta go to Tampa to go to Grow House” and we really believe in building community and, and working together with other people in the community who have the same goals as us.

DENNIS: Tampa as a whole, outside even just poetry is really blossoming in a beautiful way in the art scene so, and we want to be a part of that.

CURTIS: We're all trying to get to the same place, we all, we all want Tampa to be known as this awesome city and there's a whole bunch of talent here and Grow House just wants to like be a platform to show that and put Tampa on the map basically.

♪ ♪ Artworks is made possible in part by... And by...