13 minute read
FOREWORD | DR. LESLIE KING HAMMOND
Joyce J. Scott, Mobilia Gallery
Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer
Artists, as creative makers in today’s world, find themselves with complex, nuanced challenges to construct and design images of critical relevancy to African American, Black, Diasporic and BIPOC communities, however they define themselves. Whether visual, written or spoken word, dance, performance or music, the artistic intent is weighted with an urgency to be a catalyst for social change, explore narratives that are truth telling, revealing, affirming, and positive, poignant portrayals of Black life in America. This publication is an insightful focus on Larry Poncho Brown as an artist and designer through a conversation, his own evolutionary story and decades of an expansive range of imagery he has created. This has been a project, years in the making, that is a testament to his artistry and commitment to the communities he holds in high regard. It is also a pivotal historical contribution that begins to address the critical void in the recognition of creative makers in the ‘Up South’ Middle American region of Baltimore City. Caught between the rural agricultural South and the industrialized urban North, Baltimore as a crucial contributor to the legacy of an American cultural heritage, has been under represented in the annals of historical documentation. Poncho is Baltimore born and educated as are MacArthur Fellows, mixed media glass sculptor Joyce J. Scott and renown author Ta-Nehisi Coates. They each share different provocative views of Baltimore, and as such represent an intellectually rich - yet, geographically under recognized potency of this locale. This publication is one of many forthcoming initiatives to redress, reveal and elevate the legacy of Baltimore City, its creative artistic makers, designers, artisans, tinkerers, doodlers who believe that the arts are fundamental to the quality of all lives. Larry Poncho Brown has thoughts, a story to tell and a robust proliferation of empowering, positive, beautiful representations of Blackness, that need to be studied for the clarity and agency he instills in his subjects, in this community that is his home.
Leslie King Hammond, PhD
Photo by Kirth Bobb
Larry Poncho Brown in Conversation with Dr. Leslie King Hammond
LKH:What was it like to grow up in Baltimore? Where did you go to school? What were the occupations and education of your parents?
LPB: Life in Baltimore always felt like one big non-stop family reunion. It was still a community of extended family, all working under the paradigm of it takes a village. I went to school at Eutaw Elementary, Mount Royal Elementary and Liberty Elementary, just to show you how many times my family moved during that period of time. I also attended Garrison Junior High School under the tutelage of David Humphreys. Later to attend Carver Vocational-Technical High School, where I blossomed as an artist under the guidance of Mr. Chenal Alford.
My father, Larry O. Brown, Sr. was a linotype operator, turned printer, turned vocational education instructor in the area of printing. My mother, Diretha Victoria Hall was a stay at home mother, that mostly worked domestic jobs, cleaning houses, even as a parking lot attendant. Both of them were parents at a young age, and my mother really didn’t have many skills. She later worked in food service, as a dietary aid at St. Agnes Hospital where she ultimately was close to retirement before she passed.
LKH: When did you know that you had artistic potential to become an artist and designer? Who or what were the particular influences and supports in your path to become a professional creative maker?
LPB: First through my father who was a self-taught artist. I was born into an environment of creativity. I can say that under the tutelage of Chenal Alford, the commercial art instructor at Carver Vocational High School, single-handedly was the person responsible for guiding me down the path of becoming an artist. His lessons, his approach to surviving as a creative were heavily imprinted on me at that period of time. He also instilled the importance of mentorship and how each one of us was responsible for teaching each and every person in our community. One of the things Chenal Alford expected of me from the time I graduated high school to attend the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), was to pay it forward by giving workshops and lectures to his students every year at Carver Vocational-Technical High School until he retired as a teacher. He also transferred that responsibility of help-
Photo by Kirth Bobb
ing other artists, where I think was where I formed my artist advocacy foundation. Influences came directly from entrepreneurship. Most of the people who attended vocational education during that period of time in Baltimore city only had high school educations and were able to start businesses immediately after high school, even if they had no desire to attend college. I was trained and apprenticed with several people who were in that position. I adapted and adopted the way they dealt with their own businesses while formulating my own early on.
LKH: How did you begin to develop your thematic focus on Black imagery and why was it important to your aesthetics and ethics? What are the catalyst or muses for your creativity?
LPB: I began to develop my focus on black imagery in high school. I always drew from comic books, but I began to switch from what I had been seeing to utilizing people of color, specifically African American people, in heroic positions. From that I eventually continued to find ways to incorporate people of color in the majority of my works. I wanted our people to see themselves represented. When I first started in the art business, there wasn’t a lot of representation of people of color. And so while it is on trend now, back then we were all longing to see positive representations of ourselves. Some of the catalysts or muses for my creativity was of the woman. I’ve always seen great power in the women around me in the communities I grew up in. No matter how men and women were viewed and their roles were defined, black women always rose to sheroes in our community. And I had hoped that the same energy would be seen in my work. But I also saw the black man being marginalized in our history and in the media. I
felt the need to focus on creating strong black men images, including full-family images. Those were most of the muses, as you can say, of the subject matter of my work, from as early as my high school years.
LKH: Are there any particular artists or artistic movements that have provided inspiration for your own projects and/ or commissions?
LPB: My favorite artist on planet earth ever is Charles White. The way he depicted our people and the mediums he used and being such a technician of those mediums intrigued me very early on. To this day, despite the fact that I have seen many master artists’ works, Charles White’s work, most resonates within my spirit. His balance of strength and vulnerability is masterful. I went to see the Charles White’s Retrospective in New York City, and it was the first time I was emotionally overtaken viewing an art exhibition. Some things you just can’t define in words, but his work speaks to my spirit. I also was intrigued by AfriCOBRA because I am attracted to bold color. I saw them using all these badass colors in their works, and their pieces were very Afrocentric. I like to think that it has carried over in some of my work, but those artists, that was probably one of the biggest artistic movements that had an impact on me, and having met several of the artists from that movement were truly an inspiration for me.
LKH: In the work of Baltimore artist - Joyce J. Scott, New Orleans artist - Willie Birch, and Chicago’s Theaster Gates- each have a very important connection to the place that community plays in your artistic practice and the business of art. Please describe the origins, activities and importance of community in the life of your artistry.
LPB: It’s very simple. I was born a lower middle working class child, from a lower middle working class family, in a lower middle working class community. We saw the good and the bad living in that existence. In order for us to survive, we had to work together. That same adage followed me through school and was my basic approach to how I deal with artists and how I dealt with my community. I have often devoted much of my time to middle school, elementary school, high school students of Baltimore City. I have developed programs and curriculums for different art projects, despite the fact that I had no real intention to become a teacher. It’s the backbone of who I am. I came along during a period where artist like Thomas Stockett, Robert Torrance, Ernest Kromah and a slew of other
Photo by Kirth Bobb
famous Baltimore artists, that ran with my Dad. I came up watching them, and I also saw the attitudes that many of them had while doing their work. Many of them had low aspirations for what they thought they could achieve in the arts, and many of them didn’t get a chance to get celebrated until they were much older. I was young enough to experience that, question that, and try to address that as I approached my career as a professional artist.
I think that my Baltimore community awareness and being a steward of my community cannot be removed from the art that I create or my artist advocacy. As a matter of fact, I think the two of those go hand in hand. I am not just an artist for artists’ sake. I am an artist that likes to be an example to other artists of what can be attained by elevating their gifts and communities.
LKH: How important do you believe the arts - visual, performance, spoken, written, poetic words, dance, design and music are to Baltimore - in this era of a relentless 21st century pandemic, riddled with grinding conditions of social injustices, poverty, health care disparities, climate change, limited educational opportunities compounded by systemic criminalization of BIPOC citizens?
LPB: As an BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People Of Color) citizen, that’s a big sentence. But what I will say that I believe the arts are a departure from the hard realities of life. Art truly beautifies our world and lives. It shows us positive possibilities, while also making us question what is not right with our world. It shows aspirational possibilities. It frames us in a way that the media never could. It projects us in a way that history books have not recorded. I believe that, at the core,
visual arts, performance arts, spoken word, dance, once you remove those things, you remove our lifeforce and place us in danger of culturicide. Baltimore is a city of culture, just like any other city in the United States despite all the things we see that seem like generational ancestral curses.
I see these things as being very important. I don’t see it to be any different, even though we’re in a pandemic. The role of social injustice is just as alive today as they were back then. Poverty in our inner cities is just as prevalent today as it was yesterday. Healthcare disparities are even more than they were before. And the criminalization of our people has always been part of how this country continues to keep us at bay and under control. Racism is still at the core of most of the problems we are faced with despite how much we have advanced as a culture…. but we remain BEAUTIFUL.
So, I am very aware of how those things work, and I can’t see, as a young black man, how that wouldn’t impact my imagery. I think there is a certain level of perseverance and strength in my work that is there regardless of whatever subject I’m trying to depict. I think the global scheme of what’s happening is a microcosm of what’s happening in this world, especially in our communities. I am a realist and understand that these problems will exist long after I leave this planet. I just hope that the arts continue to bring these subjects front and center, and I’d like to think that my work is relevant and current and a reflection of all of those things that we feel in our communities. I also hope that as we steadily begin to lose the right to freedom of speech in this country, that censorship does not permeate what topics can be depicted by artists, or that we will have to begin to dumb down our work to appease the many voices that desire to be heard.
LKH: What is your vision, plan, next steps for future projects and collaborations?
LPB: I was diagnosed with cancer four years ago, so my vision and plans have changed. I’ve now had to accelerate the “legacy” aspect of my career. This book is one faction of that circumstance. I do plan, in the next phase of my career, to move completely outside of my comfort zone to working on projects that further bring light to black creatives and creatives of color. I am currently working on a documentary entitled The Golden Age of African-American Art which is an interview of over 35 artist, gallerists, and art dealers that discuss the pivotal period between 1985 and 2005, where African-American art became mainstream under a movement that had never been recognized in our written history. I would like to think that the projects that I do now will continue to elevate and bring attention to not just the artists on the fine art realm, but for all of the commercially-successful artists who have painstakingly driven their intention to have their works represented and supported by their communities through accessibility of their work.
LKH: Are there other future thoughts or concerns you would like to address?
LPB: Divisions in art are beginning to change. Fine art was never intended for mass consumption, or for our community to appreciate Black artists. Artists were viewed in one spectrum, are now beginning to be viewed in other spectrums. Artists from the fine art realm now are bridging a divide between commercially-successful artists. There is a pool of artists that have reached celebrity status like Charly Palmer, Paul Goodnight, Synthia Saint James, Annie Lee, and Charles Bibbs, that our communities readily recognize, where they may not really recognize a Charles White, Elizabeth Catlett or Romare Bearden. It is great that we are beginning to see the success and attention to Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald. One group really has permeated the veil of community, and the other may have a larger challenge of doing so. It is my hope to continue to represent commercially-successful artists and give them the accolades that they deserve for changing the accessibility and perspective of art and creatives in this country.
Photo by Kirth Bobb
