 and I consider that I can drive anywhere after driving in Paris. Happily I found a marvelous polisher and he does the heavy industrial polishing on the sandcasted pieces. They have a surface which is very granular, which is the surface of the sand. I make sure that the forms themselves are emphasized or finished the way I want them and then I give the piece to him and then this way we get the final polish, which for the big pieces is tremendous help. I don't do preliminary sketches for my sculptures. They're drawings for the sake of drawing. I draw very quietly, very meticulously. It may take me three or four or five days to do a drawing, but with the sculpture I'm much more impatient. I want to see it right away. I want to see at least the basic form very quickly. I enjoy the physical labor of making sculptures much more than working at a work table. The first step is to make the sheets of wax, which I stack up until I have four, five or six large sheets. Then I start cutting and working and bending and I use heat and hot instruments to cut and to weld the pieces together. In this way I build up slowly by adding pieces or subtracting them, the basic shape of the sculpture. The last few sculptures happen in relief. I think it's because I'm combining these sculptures with another material, which is a silk or wool, and it seems to lend itself to a flat relief surface rather than a three-dimensional one. Taking a hard material and a soft material and making them work together, this is my way of trying to relate African sculpture to my way of working. Of course I am not African and my cultural background is certainly not African. But I think on the other hand I have a perfect right and more than that a certain obligation to learn and to explore a culture which is related to me racially. This little bronze aluminum factory that I found in Paris is really quite a marvelous place. And we've been doing a series of sandcasted aluminum. I usually bring them a plaster made from my wax model and then they do the sand casting. I haven't returned to live in the States since 61. Of course there were many personal reasons. I met Mark, I decided to get married, I raised a family, and I made long trips with him to India, to China, to North Africa. And it was the thing that changed my approach to art and my approach certainly to western art and its relationship to me. Things never come out the way you have them in your head. It's always a process of changing, of rethinking, of trying to get into material form what you have in your head, which is something probably never really happens. What is pleasant however is to see pieces that are five or six years old that stand up, that one is happy to see again, that one is happy to have around after three or four years. This is nice. This is something that makes life worth living. The time I read about John Brown was when I was about 14 years of age. His whole life story had just utterly fascinated me because of the kind of man he was, the absolutely fantastic determination to abolish slavery. In the back of our house over the rim of the hill is a grave where one of John Brown's sons is buried. To live at the foot of this grave is many, many thousands and thousands of miles distance in time and in living, from living in a ghetto in Chicago. When it finally happened that two beautiful kids came into our life, oh man, it was such a glorious feeling. It's a legacy, a legacy of knowing that so much of what's inside you, so much of yourself is going to be engendered in another person is going to go on. But man, that's a sense of history there, of future history. I think a man without a history is nothing. Being an artist, it's a lonely activity. You dig down in yourself. You try to draw out something. That's important meaning for you. Something out of a whole vast bulk of ideas. Your total existence. I used symbols, or as images, black people that symbolically represent the masses of black people in this country. I use this image to talk about the condition of man, the injustices of society. And yet when I use this image, I'm not addressing myself solely to the black people. Hopefully that I'm creating an image that cries for justice for all oppressed people. I dig teaching so much. For me, it's where it's at for a great part of my daily existence. I find that youth turns me on. They're thinking, they're feeling, they're reacting. In a very positive, constructive way. In 400 years, I came from a land that did not know how to read. English did not know the Christian customs. And I'm sitting here and notice with you today. Man, that's a damn good showing. These people who have never been defeated, they have maintained a strength. They have magnificent moral courage, a beautiful spirit that has caused them to survive. This has been the source, the basic source of my inspiration for not only my works, but for my being, for my sense of pride, for my own personal dignity. I've thought about it a lot. How I do these things, how do I think, how does an artist think? Because it's a fascinating thing, you know, because you're getting to say, why am I so goddamn unique? Do you need something outside yourself to get this thing going, to say, well, why don't you be an artist? I can see where somebody could get wrapped up in a reflection of a moon and paint on black velvet, the reflection of the moon on the water and a palm tree coming off. I wouldn't question that person could convince, probably convince me that this is a very meaningful thing to him and he gets turned on by the moon reflecting on the water. But I could still say that as far as he's convinced me through the work itself, man, that cat ain't doing a damn thing. It's like a cat marrying a chick because she's pretty. She got all the features, all the facial structures of the so-called ideal concept of beauty. He marries her for that service thing and could care less what's inside. And isn't that the tragedy, not only in art, but in, I mean, I'm white, Mr. White. Do you black guys see me until we really dig the essence of each other? They'll always be friction and fights between us. I fight with you to understand you. And maybe in understanding you, I'll understand a little bit more about myself. And if my people had a little bit more guts and your people had a little bit more love, maybe we'd be aware of it as we were supposed to be, as human beings. You and I can do it. My father won't do it for you. Your father won't do it for me. So I teach. That's why I look forward to each day. I never get up in the morning and say, oh my God, I got to face another day. I get up in the morning and I say, what a thrill it is to live. What new beauty is going to come into my life today? What new hope for man is going to come today? Using the circle as a form, basic form for painting. It is very symbolic to me. The circle is never ended. You know, and I believe that life is often this way in terms of stages of one's being, so to speak, starting from babyhood and moving on. If someone had told me before I came to live in New York that I would be living in New York, I would have told them they were crazy. But I came in New York because I needed the contact with other artists. And I fell in love in New York. And I don't think I ever will really leave. I think the secret of being able to do a lot of things is to think about one thing at a time. I got involved with children when I first came here as a means of making a living. And I found I dug it. A tremendous amount of satisfaction from being around kids. And they give me a kind of inspiration too. I found out that the Museum of Modern Art was looking for someone who had some experience working with children. And I went over to see what it was about. I got very excited about it, got very involved in it, and ended up directing it. The basic philosophy of the children's art carnival is that we are trying to develop creative human beings. Young people who are capable of the kinds of thought that goes into creating, say a painting, a piece of sculpture, a collage, is ultimately the same kind of thinking that goes into producing a creative human being. Flexibility, imagination, the ability to rearrange and change, realizing what something is and at the same time being able to see it for what it could possibly be. And we feel this is what is missing in so many people's lives, not just the kids in Harlem. One thing that art does give is a sense of self with the fact that there is something here worth seeing. Even if nobody else can see it but me, I've gotten a release here. There's a part of me on this piece of paper and that's very important. Down in my studio I have a pretty good idea of what I want to work on in terms of a major piece. I usually start with a sketch and I block out the canvas with chalk after the sketch is done and I know pretty much what I want it to be. The mood is the main thing that we're interested in. I block in most of my round paintings with color washes so that I don't have heavy impasto underneath the tissues. And from that stage the canvas dries and then I move to the tissue stage and I block that in and the tissues really build the structure of the painting. Actually the structure starts with the sketch and it's already pretty much laid out but the strength of the painting is supported with the tissues. After that's dried for a couple of days, I move in with my heavy paints for my accents and contrasts. It's not actually just to putting the paint on the canvas. It's how much time goes into the thought that's needed to get the results that you want. To come up with a divergent, to come up with something that is not already known or already given that could be good for me, not necessarily good for you but at the same time something different from what is already known. And this is how a person grows. It's a constant hitting points over and over again as you would in a circle. You know, you go back and you repeat but every time you spring out a little further and you come back and you spring out again. In the city of Chicago I have a daughter whose name is Cecilia and a lot of our experiences together are just experiencing things. Nature, experiencing works of art, the experience of just doing things together and so sharing one another's reactions. I think that's an important parent-child relationship. I like to visit, especially here, where you can see exotic varieties of plants, cacti and see how they grow, the way the forms develop out of one another, the way they grow toward the light and counteract gravity. Some of the forms relate rather directly to some sculptures that I do. You see that cactus over there? Yeah, that kind of form is something I'm really interested in in terms of my sculpture. You know, a lot of the forms are light, maybe either wing forms or leaf forms. You know, you can kind of look into them and see a lot of different things. Sometimes they're kind of like animal forms as well as sort of vegetable or plant forms. That's the way they come out of one another in all different angles. I really find it interesting working with modeling and contrast to working with the welded stuff because of the idea of being able to... I worked on this piece for a period of about three or four weeks, really. I made like a small kind of model before that one point. Then later went on to make an armature that I would model the clay over. You know, another thing is just a little bit more predictable. You know, you get the armature built, you put the clay on, you know, you can build it up, you know, really in a shorter space of time. I was wondering how long you think it will take to get this cast, like if I can get it finished in the next day or so. I would guess that it will take something like three days molding from pulling the molds to the core. I think if you could come over possibly on, you know, like four days from now and kind of look over the thing and see for sure everything suits you and maybe you could help us take it up the hoist and be here when we cast it. Foundry work involves, you know, really two artists. John, aside from his work as a sculptor, I must be a caster and myself, developed working in a way that has been very good because I can discuss both the casting process and how it relates to what I'm doing as well as develop variations on that piece for subsequent cast. Okay, it looks good here. Now let's bring this one up out. Hand it across to the right place. You know, and putting the molds together, it's like very important that everything gets aligned just right. I mean, you could end up having, you know, an incomplete cast. I mean, you know, the metal wouldn't flow all the way through. You know, we've got to watch the expenditure down here. That's the only one that's critical. Good. Sorry. Looking good. It's taking a while. In the pouring operation, you know, it's very important just getting the metal at the right temperature, pouring it, you know, at the right time. You know, that determines a lot about what the piece is going to look like. Now, break me a trough now. Yeah, I'll get more metal. Yeah. You have to start breaking out the piece as soon as it's practicable so that, you know, the mold itself is in its most pliable state. But you don't know that it's really worked out until you break the mold off and see that the piece has actually been cast, you know, that the metal has gone where it's supposed to go and you've got the thing complete. I'm glad it came out right, you know. But really, doing that piece and finishing it is important. But, you know, this is a kind of ongoing process. And, like, it had already led to the next thing in terms of my thinking. Now, Al, let's pull one. Yeah, like so. You got to hurry. All right, Al, let's go with it. Hold it, hold it, hold it. Okay. I think if the artist was the only person in the world, he wouldn't paint because you paint in relation to other people. Suppose, for instance, a friend visited me and I wasn't here and he left a card so that I would know he was here. And the things that I do are like leaving my visiting cards so that my works say Romeo was here. Not long ago, a young artist picked up some of my visiting cards off the cover of Fortune magazine. He was going to the little gallery, the Sincere Gallery, named for the famous African prince who led a mutiny in the 1830s aboard a slave ship. I'm on the board of directors along with Norman Lewis and Ernest Critchlow. We three established this gallery to give needed exposure to minority artists. And I think that we have some little obligation to the young deserving people who are coming along. I really appreciate you coming over to see my work, Mr. Bearden. Everything looks just fine. I think it's one of our real fine shelves that we had here. The same movements that I see in the painting, I see continued in some of this sculpture like that piece over there, very similar to your painting. And it seems like you're very fond of this kind of underlating movement. So this gallery gives these artists a kind of a pat on the back. Of course, it was a little different when I started to paint, which was doing the height of the oppression. I had been trained at first as a mathematician. But when I got out of college, it was nothing to count but the unemployed. So I took a studio on 125th Street above that of Jacob Lawrence. The great poet and novelist Claude McKay was in the same building. And if we weren't at my studio, we usually went to the studio of Charles Alston. We met the artists and the intellectuals and we had a real little going community. So this was a great deal in enhancing whatever development I've made as an artist. As for my own work, what I've tried to do is to take the elements of Afro-American life in this country as I see it. That is to place it in a universal framework. For instance, in my show at the Museum of Modern Art, I have a baptism scene. And I've tried to relate the people in my painting of the baptism of a myth even back in Africa. I've used a certain mass to try to show the heritage that relates these people in my painting back to a certain past. However, I constantly, with the encouragement of my wife, who's helped me so much, try to reach within my own consciousness and memory and bring forth people that I've known and seen, and I'll let them take their place on certain works that I'm doing. Some stand and some sit, some sleep. Just what they want to do after the painting gets started. I use papers often that I paint myself, others I buy colored. I use some photograph often from magazines, pieces of cloth and other material. In many ways, it's like putting a symphony together, a piece of music, a certain melody going of colors, and then certain contrapuntal elements that play against this. One of my works I call The Block, and it's about a particular block, a hundred and thirty-third street in New York's Avenue, that I've tried to, in my imagination, x-ray and tell something about the life of the people. This block is another calling card that I've left. I said, I've observed and passed by that I was here.