 All right. Welcome everybody. We'll get started tonight. I want to thank you all for being here, of course. And tonight we're here for our dialogue with our artist spotlight Rodney Ewing. And Rodney has been so generous to allow us to use his art during our more than a month celebration. And more than a month celebration and SFPL is our black history month celebration running from January through February. And really, we try to do it all year long, but extra special during January and February. So Rodney we thank you for that and we're honored that you allowed us to use your images. And I'll just give some quick library announcements and then we'll turn it over to Rodney to share his work. And we want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Eloni tribal people and acknowledge the many Ramya Tush Eloni tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards on the lands in which we reside. The library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members from these nations with whom we live. I encourage you to learn more about first person culture, land rights, and other indigenous writers, artists, and we do all this and I will provide I put a chat link into the chat box it has great links to reading lists about native culture. The library also wants to acknowledge that we stand in solidarity with the black lives matter movement and support collective action to end structural and systemic racism and institutional racism within our own house the library and our community that we serve as a whole. The library has an updated racial commitment statement which I'll also add that to the document. The document will serve tonight I will take notes as Rodney talks lots of things come up and I'll add those to the document. It has lots of reading lists, lots of links to upcoming events at the library. And we have a library to go service so you can place all of these books on holds anything that comes up tonight you can place those on hold and pick them up, please wear your masks when you pick up from our library or pick up anything from our beautiful city. We're starting our 16 one city one book and this is happening launching starting March, March 1, and we'll be celebrating the work of Chanel Miller, whose book is about her sexual assault on the Stanford campus and the subsequent court hearings that she had to deal with. So very powerful book pick that up today from your library to go your friends of the library bookstore, or your favorite local bookstore shop local. We have all these partners associated with this and many events associated with this. So this will run from March to April and have a lot of events like this one. We have Isaac Julian and conversation with the amazing Judith Butler and Celeste Marie Bernier, who will be talking about the women in Frederick Douglass's life. There is an exhibition at the McEvoy Foundation for the arts, and it has been extended so when they do open again, you'll be able to go see this exhibition, make an appointment, it's gorgeous and lush, and I can't wait for this conversation. Each time so please come out March 4 at noon. And the gorilla girls I can't wait for that either so feminist art group movement come check it out they have a new book as well. And again support local borderland books is our shout out and so is Marcus books, the nation's oldest black owned independent bookstore. Again, we want to thank our friends of the San Francisco Public Library for helping sponsor all of these events, particularly around campaigns like one city one book and are more than a month celebration. And now, without further ado, tonight we have artist Rodney Ewing. Ewing's drawings installations and mixed media work focuses on his need to intersect body and place memory and fact to reexamine human histories, cultural conditions and events. He is pursuing a narrative that requires us to be present and intimate. His work has been exhibited at the your frat Museum of the Arts, the drawing Center in New York, and in San Francisco, root division, Jack, Jack Fisher gallery. Nancy to me fine art, altar space, ictus projects and ictus projects. He has been an artist and resident at Recology, the young museum, as well as Jersey and Woodside California headline Center for the arts. And be my center for the arts, all in Omaha, Nebraska, all amazing places. The Jesse is very cool if you have not been there. Go check it out. Woodside. Fun little drive. Ewing received his BFA in printmaking from Louisiana State University and his MFA in printmaking at West Virginia University. Ewing's most recent work I can please believe is still available online and Nancy to me is fine art. And he's going to confirm that with us. And I will put all these links in the stock you can get to Rodney through our page. And we will have time for question and answer at the end of the event. And Rodney I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you so much Rodney. Thank you so much for having me, Anissa. And yeah, thank you so the San Francisco Public Library. I know it's been a very useful tool in a lot of my work. And I'll even talk about that in my talk tonight so glad everybody could come. It's good to see some some friends on the screen as well. What I thought I would do tonight is just give you a cross section of my body work and talk to you about my process and how I use a lot of different mediums of different disciplines to create my work and try to use to be in very specific ways to talk about things like identity and race and space. So let me share my screen with you. Let me just go back. A little bit about my background. I have a background in printmaking I studied printmaking is an undergrad at LSU and graduate work in graduate school at West Virginia University. And there was some, when I got into grad school, there was definitely a turning point where I felt that printmaking as a single medium wasn't doing enough for me to be able to talk about a lot of the complex issues that I wanted to explore and to create the kind of narratives I wanted to explore. Although printmaking was very influential and helpful is as somebody who draws a lot and somebody's kind of process oriented in the work. I started looking at other artists at the time who were using different ways to talk about about about some topical issues. So I just want to introduce you a couple of my, a couple of my influences. The first this gentleman here Alfredo Yar, and this is from a series he did called geography equals war, where he was documenting through these, through these images that were reflected in his articles about this, a belief is that Italian company who was taking their, their toxic waste and dropping it into this into this small town on the coast of Africa. And that just, that just initially to show me that there is, there's really dramatic and cinematic ways, and but still thoughtful ways you can approach the subjects that sort of get, sort of get people's attention. I would work for her in a heartbeat if she somehow she knew who I was and asked me. This is from one of her. This is a scene from her retrospective that was at the Guggenheim and what she did these are tables that are. One's inverted and in between them it is sandwiched amounts of earth that is actually growing grass and basically these are epitaphs for for young men who are losing their lives in South Central Los Angeles to do the gang violence and young boys who are who are kidnapped and sort of embroiled in these wars and Columbia and see a little mirrorless another one my influences. This is called how to build a cathedral and I'm forgetting for the slide being so small but it I'll describe it to you so in this installation is a bed of coins and suspended between the chandelier of human bones is a column of communion wafers. So sort of taking these these objects and within a subject and breaking them down and assembling in a way that maybe people have never seen before, or using them to create a different type of narrative about a really painful subject was really attractive to me. So this will start here. This is a body where it called rituals of water and this all started for me back in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina. My family from Louisiana I went to school there as I said earlier, and sort of watching the scenes on television and seeing displacement of poor people and black and brown people sort of being pushed around and displaced by water once again. Made me really think about how water has been an element. In the African and African American diaspora from transatlantic slavery again all the way through the hurricane Katrina so I started sort of doing a lot of research around that area. And I did a lot of writing first before I really decided about what the images were going to look like. And so when I finally get to the point where I was ready to start this body of work. I sourced photographs from from old rocker types from images of slaves through civil rights movement and I didn't want to just do black and white photographs of black and white pinks rather black and white photographs. I wanted to make the have the medium tie closely to the conceptual idea, which was when these these figures look like they're being moved by water being dissolved by water in some kind of way, or being composed of water as we naturally are. So the process became to draw these these images out first and then I would dump washes of income water on the page, and then I would just walk away. And with that allowed me to do was sort of to create this call and response between myself and in the process was going on it was it was in some certain ways I was not in control of what was going on. And then as a series evolved I started adding another element I started adding salt to the to the mixture, which also created this this texture that you see here in the body. But again, I kept the, I kept the idea and the process the same, doing a sort of a sketch of the images I wanted to use and then flooding it with with the with the ink and water and salt solution, and then sort of letting it dry to a point where I could sort of see what I wanted to keep and what I needed to create more detail around and which what part while I was happy just to have as a sort of like this wash effect. I also started incorporating a text into these pieces and a text either represents synonyms of water or adjectives around water. And just to sort of make these, these pieces that more or adds a narrative to the pieces, another piece in that series. And I'm don't consider myself a natural painter, it was, there was something I definitely had to teach myself during this process, especially, especially working with ink which is in this way which is really close to watercolor and I found myself sort of getting into this meditative process and it was a very, it was a very slow, especially if I wanted to build like really deep blocks because the paper was so thick that absorbed a lot of water and a lot of ink. So having to go back and forth and and cover spaces over and over or over again. It gave me a certain level of intimacy with the work that I never really had before because I think most pieces for me up into this time and have been developed pretty quickly. And just to do maybe one or two of these paintings working simultaneously will probably take me maybe a month, maybe a month and a half. And again, I sourced the original material is all from photographs. So about that same time about halfway through that series. The work is so much set around narrative. And I feel like as as consumers of stories, we have a tendency to hold on to a lot of fiction, fictionalized characters, we hold their stories and their events, a lot closer to our hearts. And sometimes then we do of actual individuals. So I wanted to find a way to sort of bridge that, that gap, use the sort of exploit that love, and bring this sort of back into the narrative of actual people so I came up with a body work called fact and fiction, where I started using portraits of actual individuals have gone through some traumatic experiences in their lives, and, and they have these marginalized stories but also sort of, and also at the same time use popular pieces of fiction based literature to make it more nuanced telling of their story. For example, this is a image of Henrietta likes, and it's accompanied by a life of Milton's paradise loss. And it's basically asking a question. Did I request the maker for my clay to mold me man that I solicited the from the darkness to promote me. And I felt that what happened to the Henrietta in her co-opting for her body and her cells without her permission or permission or family. I felt that was a really appropriate quote, especially since I think one of the original versions of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the prologue, opening prologue is is this quote. The project along is as much as the other projects that I go into also involved a lot of research with this it was researching sometimes it was researching images, and stories of individuals, and then trying to match text to it sometimes I would find a story or really interesting piece of text and hold on to it until I could find an image that that matched it. This is the image of Emil Griffith, who was a boxer from probably the late 50s through late 60s early 70s. And he was a bisexual man. And he always thought it was interesting and kind of strange that that more people during his day during his prime that more people accepted that he actually killed a man in a ring and but rather than accepted sexuality. And this quote from this Ursula K. Caleb Wynne book. And the quote reads, What is hard is to keep alive on a world you don't belong to image of caudate Colvin. And this poem is about being a refugee, and thinking about the bus boycotts and the civil rights movement and pre civil rights movement for African Americans in America. It must have felt like get you were a refugee there was there were certain things I found in his poem that that paralleled the existence of African Americans pre civil rights and during civil rights. You know standing something that your grandfather did or being a refugee means you standing at the end of the queue to get a fraction of the country. There's so many pieces of paper with pictures of leaders. These pictures they stand in for you until you go back to you go back home. And for those who don't know who aquatic Colvin was she was the first person who refused to give up her bus seat before. I'm losing her name. She refused to give up her bus seat. And in the end of LCP didn't want to use her for a spokesperson because she was 15 years old and she was pregnant and unmarried. Another image from the same the same series. This is George Steny junior. He was sent to the elected chair when he was 13 years old for a crime that turns out that he did not commit. And talking about that story, him being 13 years old, maybe 80 pounds at the time that it's not only struck me about his death, but also sort of like the death of that of the innocence of that town where you can actually look at a 13 oh boy of any color and think he was capable of doing something that that horrendous. So this is a quote from the little Prince. I started thinking about narrative and space and who occupies spaces and what told what stories get told in spaces. So I came up with this body work, or this conceptual idea about the history of the of the Fillmore in the western edition and how it's has this history of displacement of bodies being being moved so as a lot of people know like doing the 40s, it was mostly Japanese neighborhood and those individuals were displaced and put in internment camps during World War Two and then African African American population moved into there and thrived for for a long time. Until about the 60s and 70s were redlining and urban renewal start taking place and promises of African American individuals being able to return to that neighborhood after it was a sort of fixed up, which never, which never happened. And so I wanted to find a way to talk about the Japanese American experience and African American experience and and have their stories intersect in a visual manner so this body work is called and tethered and the whole body works called and tethered stories stories of Fillmore and it was a project that ended up in Nancy to me gallery. And I worked with another friend of mine Monica Monday and we both separate bodies of work around this topic back in 2016. So, these are partial silk screens and these are drawings that I have overlapped images of as best I could have both cultures, sort of being moved and disappeared at the same time. And so a lot of these images actually come from the San Francisco public library from their from their archive section, where I was, you know, you were able to go through and and look through donated photographs from their archive and scan them and photograph them as you need. So again, trying to have these show individuals is sitting at the same at the same space, but maybe not at the same time. And here I found myself using printmaking again, just like it was doing a fact in fiction, but I'm using printmaking in a way where I'm not really interested in making. In addition, or making multiples of these images. I'm using printmaking specifically printmaking this way as sort of extension of my drawing hand. And as I was working or getting ready to start working on that body work. I knew I was going to do work like this I knew there's going to be a certain amount of work in on paper, but I want to actually find an object that sort of tied both the cultures together and and the contention of the point of contention or the point of commonality was was was the house was a home and what what images of what pieces of the home could I use that were accessible that could display their stories and the windows were just seemed really easy for me there was there was so much potential with them as far as, you know, first of all physically they're flat, I can print on them. I can print on both sides of the window. As you can see a little bit in the background and some of these, you can see the other side of the image sort of peeking through. So, as you're walking into this space you get a story coming one way and get a story going another way. That's the detail of one of the one of the windows. Back in 2018, I was lucky enough to be awarded a residency at ecology, the city dump. And this is installation shot of the of the finished work from what I did from what I did there it was a three and a half month residency that takes place here to city dump in San Francisco. And I really enjoyed it because it gave me opportunity to work in 3D again. I hadn't done I hadn't done so in a long time. So I had enough space and enough tools there to sort of take advantage of working in three dimensions again and building everything there. So that when you apply to ecology you, you know, you sort of have an idea you sort of write a proposal about what you're going to be doing there. And the idea that I had going into there was totally different from what you're seeing now I had this sort of this grand idea that I was going to be doing some printmaking and doing woodcuts and you know, go out to the to the dump and collect stuff. Every time I went there and about a two week mark I, I got a little nervous because I wasn't quite sure what I was doing so I actually had to sit there one day and sort of inventory. Everything that I had there. And once I finished my inventory I realized that I was collecting detritus from people's homes so a lot of things you see here. The method that I'm using here is laugh, which is, or comes to the term laugh and plaster which people's walls to be made up be made up but when you're when you when people are reconstructing homes and building new homes and nobody uses this anymore people you sheetrock. So there's always, there's always this stuff left at the at the dump. I started finding drawers and I found a lot of photographs. And so what I realized what I was doing was I was saving parts of people's homes and, and I realized what I should be doing is sort of creating pieces about the current state of gentrification and this current state of gentrification and what's going on in San Francisco with with its residents. So, these also incorporate a good deal of text that that I've written that I composed, and the number represents the hour of the day that I came up with this with the pieces of text. Another great thing about the dump is that you have the time. So you can collect side of collecting things and not knowing what I was going to do with them, but it was okay to leave them laying around until I knew what I was going to do with them. This particular piece started just finding one basketball then I a couple months later a couple weeks later I found another one and I found another one they were sort of sitting in my studio. You know that I sort of remember the incident that happened in the mission neighborhood where, where a tech company sort of showed up to the local soccer game and try to move the new residents out because they had a permit. And these guys have had a regular game in the mission from like every Thursday for as long as they can remember and the idea that that individuals don't know the term of who got next or they don't know the process of who got next is that that's what you do in the school yard you you want to get in on a basketball game or soccer game or whatever court games going on you ask who has an action you sit and you wait your turn. And that idea they sort of like. They interrupted that process and it never occurred to them just that that asked again is to soccer game. This is when it started inspired this piece. Another installation from that body of work. I found this suitcase full of photographs it must have been 30 years with the photographs, which all had to be altered because because we college is a public company and you can't use any photographs and let's start altered past a certain period of time. And so he's a detail of that. And to find that that suitcase full of photographs was, was strange because that in a sad and kind of like because that means that's the end of that story. That means that there was nobody else to hand that suitcase of photographs off to there was no other family members, possibly in that line to sort of preserve that history. Another piece from ecology. This is a new different body of work. This is from a series called longitude latitude. And what I was doing longitude latitude is sort of creating this intersection between memory in place. And I kind of finding different ways to sort of express those memories. So with this one called high cotton. It starts off looking like a typical cotton field, and as it as the field moves closer to the viewer, you realize it's not cotton it's their actual bones. And this is sort of a reaction to the love and romanticism that still exist around and to bill himself. And this is my response to it. The actual crop that was actually grown, or the actual, the actual crop is actually harbors was, you know, human labor. This is a piece that was done in one of the residencies also from longitude latitude. Most of these works were eventually shown at Museum African African diaspora in 2019. So with this piece, it's, it's more about a tradition of the West has with the continent of Africa how it sort of takes people and resources and without permission. And this is sort of represents the sort of the event that's sort of happy now where certain amounts of e waste electronic waste, or bring bought back to the to the continent of Africa to be sort of be dealt with by by the residents and turn into like this new type of economy. At some point. I didn't want to deal with the figure all the time. I wanted to find a way to create narratives without. Without always having to attach it to an object or figure even though there are figures being projected in this piece so this was done in 2015 at a residency at the museum. Days and occasions, 17 seconds of black days and occasions is one of the few projects I actually sort of rotate back to over and over again I usually move from from project to project and usually pick up a different medium every time I do a different project. But with this piece of the human language is so you know, language just goes on forever. There's always different permutations and different ways you can say things. And it's always really interesting to come back and see how I can use language in a different way to sort of like encapsulate moments. But with this work at at the young. All this, all the text that's generated here is generated around black lives matter. And so all the discussions that I was involved in articles I had read. Overheard ended up in this piece. And yeah just sort of took advantage of the space at the D young where I could actually have the text on this paper sort of wrap around these these screens and so people can navigate it physically and conceptually. And I'm not no longer shop. This is where I did the whole work here so it's the curator date. Kevin Chen said he measured it after he said I did 180 feet of drawing. Most recently, sort of branching into my interdisciplinary approach to creating work. I started a residency at the headlands in 2019. And while I was there in the project space. I had developed or come up this idea about using children's blocks to illustrate difference of different lessons that black children have to learn versus their white counterparts. And I use the children's blocks because it's, it's usually the the first instrument of first basic toy that as children, we use to like learn colors or shapes, or, you know, our beginnings of ABCs or numbers. But here I, again, I'm using them to illustrate the different lessons that black children have to learn to survive. So these, these children's blocks are three feet by three feet by three feet. So they're almost, they're big enough that I actually a person if they're open to could actually fit inside of them. And on the sides of each, each one of the blocks are these are these lessons from the talk that that she's been given to African American children about how to be safe. So keep your hands visible at all times. Watch what you wear. And so these are a combination of a silk screen images on there I painted the blocks and constructed blocks. Also during that time. I created this piece based on a conversation I have with my father. Many years ago, where he we were sort of lamenting what I just happened to Trayvon Martin, and, and he was talking about how what happened to Trayvon immediately brought him back to being a 14 year old kid a 15 year old kid when Emmett Till was killed. I could see him sort of turning into this 14 year old again. And he'd never really talked about being afraid of anything. This is a man who did two tours of Vietnam and never really talked about that kind of fear but seeing him talk about Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till in the same breath. And that story sort of stayed with me so with this with this diptych. It's me retelling that story that that that event that happened between the two of us and I decided to construct the places. This is the Bryant Street store where Emmett was falsely accused of a whistling at this woman. And this is the structure where they took him and ended his life. And to create it. I sort of sort of wrestled with this for a while like I could draw it. I could draw the buildings that would be easy enough but it didn't seem like it furthered the narrative any any further so what I decided to do is use old building materials to create two old buildings. So these both construct constructed of old old old housing life. And this sort of brings me up to my what I've been doing recently with with the state and shelter in place order that came down last year and me being lucky enough to be close proximity between my house and my studio it's only a couple of feet apart. I was able to create work from home so I had this idea of I had all this ledger paper that I found when I was at my residency in at Recology and I knew I was going to do something with it do some kind of drawing on top of it or do some kind of work on top of it. I also realized I have this over over the last 10 years I've really gathered this whole huge collection of silk screens that I've used in really specific projects. And I wanted to challenge myself to see what I could do with existing materials that I because now I have an archive of images. And see what would happen if I combine them in a manner in a manner that I haven't really attended for but I could still have these conversations about identity and in race. So I started reconfiguring them and overlaying certain screens that I had no attention to them actually have any kind of visual conversation with each with each other. So to keep myself sane I also gave myself the challenge to create one of these every day and a half last year. And these are all on old ledger paper from an insurance company and which allowed me to sort of create my own paper by by layering them and attaching together so I can create any size paper I wanted any shape paper I wanted. And I could also do things like go back in and hand color these these images to make them a little bit more vibrant. Also during that time this is my friend Tahiti Pearson. Also during that time I was told to be in residency with Tahiti at a residency here in San Francisco called space program San Francisco. And again because of the lockdown we couldn't be in the same space together. And so Tahiti has a practice of, as you can see behind me doing these beautiful intricate designs on paper and on canvas. And he and I met a couple of years ago. We were both in a group show and we just started talking after that about trying to do some kind of collaboration together. And, you know, schedules being what they are. It was kind of hard for us to get together but space program sort of made that happen because when during their, they had an opening and Tahiti I ran into each other again and so when they asked us like, what do you guys want to do we both said separately like yeah we want to work together so when it happened because of the quarantine. Tahiti would pre cut work, and then he would mail it to me and then I was silk screen on top of that work, and then sort of send him images back so. That's another one of his pieces. So we end up doing pieces like this together so. This is cropped. So I think this is about five feet long in total, and about maybe three feet, two and a half feet to two to three feet wide, I mean, in height. And it was, it was daunting and a lot of fun at the same time because you know I really respect his work and he I respect the time he puts into to make all these cuts and the last thing I want to do is like, you know get it here and print something on it and work. And it's another one of images to color our collaborations what he did and yeah so we did nine pieces, I think, in total, and over from the period from April to about June or July of 2020. And we had really no communication it was no really no communication about like, where I would ask him like okay, you know this is what I want from a cut, or he wasn't asking me about oh this is what I want. This is what I see you printed on on the pieces that I cut. And it was, it was definitely a true sense of collaboration where where we sort of made this thing this third thing that was a that was that was neither one of our bodies work but it was, it was something we we created together. And every time to he was send me something was always some kind of new kind of process so this one's mounted on the wood. And is where you can see where he's this is actually he cut out the pink section here then replaced it with a section that was cut and placed back inside. So it would take me a couple of days to figure out what images that I wanted to print over print the print to go along with his work. So yeah, as you can see through my body work I kind of move in a lot of different ways and, and a reason why I do that is simply because I'm just trying to find the best way to communicate ideas to the viewer so sometimes it's a sometimes as a print sometimes it's drawing sometimes installation, maybe sometimes it's all three. It's, it's, it's viewer first and then anything that any kind of skill that I have any kind of models I have about art making it's always used to uplift or enhance that story or that subject. So, thank you very much. Thank you Rodney that was wonderful such beautiful work. And we're going to open it up to questions you can put your questions in the box or you can go ahead and you know, unmute yourselves. And I'm going to sort of stay in the background. Let's see. I mean I can help you like find some questions but I don't see any quite yet. I'll start how about I get the ball rolling. Oh there we go. Oh yeah I have a question hi hi Rodney. It's Sophie. So, yeah. I have a question as, as a, you know a young artist who's looking to walk that fine line that you walk where you don't really shove your point down the viewer's throat but you really like let them find it out for themselves. I'm really wondering how you walk that line like if you have any tips for that and any tips for finding a concentration that is really meaningful to you. I think it all boils down to intent for me. My intention is to. This first of all is to honor the subject. So, in some ways, so a lot of ways I have to step back and not make this like oh just look at this cool thing that I can do. Even though at the same time I want to make sure I'm bringing all my skills to bear so it. So on a technical level and aesthetic level, all that's being all that's being used and all that's being highlighted. But what I guess what I'm looking for is is is sort of that that civil dialogue. I'm looking to communicate ideas and start discussions and even have disagreements I could be wrong with some things that I put out there. You know, some things could be offensive. But what I think what all boys down to for me is making things accessible. So that's kind of the line I kind of walk this. I guess you can say it's a guideline it's or it's a structure or some kind of foundation but it sort of keeps me. It sort of keeps you on this path of making things that are bigger than myself that are that aren't about me that makes any sense. Yeah, that makes total sense. And just by the way I love you and I'm very proud of you and I think all your work is incredible. Oh, thanks so love you too. There is a question in the chat box. Where can we see some of your work in person. Yes, if SF mama or, well I have a, I'm in a group show SF mama that hopefully opens again in March. It's called creativity crisis. And it's basically artists doing work during during the pandemic so it was curated by Corey Keller at SF mama so I just saw Instagram this this week that they finished the installation and so yeah the museum just in you needs to be open and and people can come view it. There's also a group show that should be happening at St. Joseph's art society. I'm not sure when that's going to happen again with everything sort of being on lockdown right now. Hey Rodney it's Michael I have a question for you. Oh, it's so good to see you. Just a fantastic slideshow that was a real treat to see it all. Your art has always been so timely and it just seems so reflective of the times we're living in right now I'm curious to know if you've noticed an uptick in an audience for your work and maybe a more mainstream audience for your work since the beginning of your themes have sort of played themselves out in the last year and certainly during COVID. Yeah, I think there's actually there's been a lot of attention to not only my work but a lot of individuals who do work like this. And I think, well I can only speak for myself but you know I've been doing this work for a long time or doing these kind of themes for a long time and you know, fortunately, unfortunately, you know, our nation is at this at this point where all these things are being expressed in over different medium over different platforms and in arts just being one of them and, you know, I'm just telling my story. I'm just telling my viewpoint and it's it's art is my filter to just sort of figure out how to handle a lot a lot of these things, a lot of these pieces, and a lot of the things going on in the world so Yeah, I'm glad to see that people are paying to do to my work and friends work who are we're dealing with these issues but I think what the art community really needs is a consistent voice with this coming from galleries and coming from museums and coming from institutions and challenging who's who's making this work and and and not, you know, not making a special event, not making it. Not making it one of words, but a constant dialogue that's always happening within these institutions. Well you are certainly one of those voices and have been for 20 to 30 years. I echo what Sophie Young says I love you and I'm so proud of you. Thank you. Have a YouTube question. What does a workday look like and where does reading and looking for research and how does that fit in and where does it fit in a workday. For me, it looks probably like a workday for everybody else it looks like this on a zoom. I teach full time so I'm on I'm on zoom from anywhere from 830 morning until 330 afternoon. Yeah. Research is kind of staggered for me. It's a lot of things that I'm sometimes a lot of things that I'm some things that I'm doing currently the things I've been re I've restarted maybe three or four years ago so for example the the piece at the headlands, you know, I hadn't made those those children's blocks actually made children blocks out of paper. And so it had them laying around I had those sitting around for like four or five years and then what happens came around was like, you know, I panicked for a second like oh I don't know what I'm going to do in a space like yes then it sort of calm down and figure out like oh yes, you've already done the research for that you've already done the work for that so now you get to make these. So, things that I'm reading right now might not appear, you know, for a year maybe six years maybe 10 years. It's, it's a long process for me and it used to frustrate me like oh I need to get these things out quicker but it's, I'm okay with just sort of being slow and sort of meeting the things that I'm making. And yeah, I try to, you know, try to make work after my work days over or on weekends and things like that. Yeah. Thank you. Question. Can you hear me. Yeah, I can hear you fine thank you. I wanted to talk a little bit about Doris Salcieto or how we pronounce her name I saw saw her show at the SF MoMA, and I was moved by her work as well I think that I remember the shoes, the little the shoes in the, I don't know if they were boxes made out of scan but could you talk a little bit about how her work resonated with you because there is a similarity I think as far as the intention. A sense of mourning. And loss that I see in her work and the different way she approaches it in a different materials that she approaches it, but the materials that she use of all very specific and profound and it's, it's, it's almost hard to put in words, at least for me. When I saw that that that retrospective at the Guggenheim. You know, each room each for each object was very specific in its intention. So overall, for me the overall theme was this capsule in a sense of mourning and a sense of loss and and the materials, you know whether it be a garment made out of burnt needles, or a room of a rose of rose petals of five pedals pedals that have been have been stitched together or the large furniture is that she's reconstructed the concrete or again the shoes that also represent loss that are embedded within the walls, each one of those have his have their own specific voice, but they sort of lend themselves to the to the whole choir of her for body work and there's beautiful, but they're beautiful to again to highlight that subject or highlight that that certain condition in that body of work. It's so personal on the one hand isn't it. You're talking about loss and you both do talk about loss. It's so personal and society in society. So, thank you for, yeah, expanding that a little bit I appreciate it. You're so welcome. Hi, Rodney. Yes. Hi, it's Catherine. I actually, I had trouble getting in on the zoom so that I went to YouTube and that I couldn't forget how to contact you but anyway here I am. Actually, if I can do this correctly. I can show people another. There we go. Rodney Ewing. Oh, sweet. Yeah. I love your talk. I just wanted to thank you for that. And that was just it. I thought I would show you large work because the first time I saw your work you had done something, of course, of the bombing in Philadelphia and I've since become friends with young Africa, like Africa. So anyway, thank you for the talk. It was wonderful. And thank you for your art. It just, it helps us get through these horrible days too. Oh, you're so welcome Catherine and thank you for always for your support. Oh, really my pleasure. Absolutely. There's a couple more in the chat and you know, feel free again to unmute yourselves. Beautiful work. What was the scale of the Emmett Till wooden buildings. Do you design how your work is installed. That is hardware and logistics and no one mentioned you were in a group show at the main library the African American Center. We love you at the library loves you Rodney. So the that piece called the piece with the about Emmett Till that piece is a 48 by 96. It's on two panels. Yeah, I have an idea about how I want things installed. You know, when it's when it's 2D work, it's, you know, it's easier. I really don't concern myself too much with it. But things like the windows. The way they were hanging in that in that shot. Yeah, there's loosely kind of, you know, I kind of know how I want them to look. The children's box, they've been installed. They've been installed in one other place. And the curator there, the, the, the trail of paper that is this inside the box before you get to the children's box he he thought of really in a way to install them on the wall I need to ask him how he how he did that one day. And it worked out for that space as well. But yeah, I guess as probably as I get more complex in my work and I have really specific ideas about how I want the work to read. Yeah, I'll get involved in that but I'm also really open to like, you know, that curatorial eye or, or that somebody else's eye that maybe I'm missing. I'm missing something in installation and was certainly open to it. Thank you Rodney. Anyone from our meeting room want to ask Rodney a question. Give it a few more, you know, 15 seconds to let those questions come out. Okay. Also, I want to remind everybody Rodney you, I'll ask the last question. So you have those quotes which I love you're like a librarian's dream I put lots of links that Rodney talked about during his event in that chat box so you can find all that stuff but the ones where you have the quotes did the quote come first or did the art come first. Kind of both sometimes it was the art came first sometimes the quote came first. Excellent. Yeah, one other question from my friend Ramacan. And he says, how do I navigate the difficulty expressing private world of black experience in a public arena. Yeah, I think we both you and I both and a lot of our friends who were black artists weeks, we have to navigate that all the time and you know how much do we tell. And how do we, how do we present that in a space that that's usually not for us and that's usually what I'm thinking about is like how do I present these ideas then in spaces that usually we're not. We don't, you know, we don't have that access to or people don't usually find that work in and, and I think for me it's just thinking about what story I want to tell. And, and how to construct that in a way that's, again, as I said earlier, make an accessible, not acceptable I think those are two different things. I think I can still make work that's accessible. And, and it's still and it's still loaded with all the trauma and grief that that sometimes it goes along with, you know, being who we are, and in our history. And I feel as long as I'm making those those those distinctions very clear. Then, then I can find my I can I can find myself sort of making that work and, and bridging that gap and, and, and sort of bringing people across that golf to like, this is what I'm going through or this is what this is what my history is this the history of my people and, and this is some of the, the differences that we have and, and hopefully if they look hard people who look hard enough they can find some universality in that. Thank you so much. Right, I am going to hello again. I want to thank Rodney for being here, and everyone can feel free to unmute now and give the we're in a meeting so we can actually see each other and hear each other. So let's give Rodney a big hand and much love for sharing your work with us on the library. Thank you Rodney. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good night everyone. My Baltimore family says hi. This one is a little too late for them, but next time. Okay, okay. Thanks a lot Rodney that was awesome. Thank you. Really great. Amy, what's up? It was so good to hear you talk. It was so good to see you.