 Welcome to this week's episode of In the Studio, entitled The Invisible Man. I'm your host this week, Alex Silva, and my guest today is Kareem Daniels, an artist and many other things. But Kareem, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, so I'm Kareem Daniels. I'm from a small town in North Carolina. Actually, it was an old tobacco plantation called Grunge Land. And the reason I know it was a tobacco plantation was because they had a sign that reminded us all the time. But I was a foster kid. I grew up with six different foster families, which was partly the impetus for the project was me trying to pay homage to my different fathers. Okay. Tell us a little bit. The Invisible Man is part of the title of an art project that you're going to be debuting at the Brickhouse Art Gallery in Sacramento. So it's a photo exhibition, and I don't want to call it a documentary because it's not kind of documentary quality yet, but it's called The Invisible Man reclaiming the image of the Black Father. So part of the project is, again, to pay homage to those guys and also to talk about the fact that Black Fathers do exist, even though the narrative is that they don't. Right. The title is reclaiming. Reclaiming. Right, because in the media, of course, there's been all sorts of stories about the absence of the Black Father. The absence of the Black Father. I mean, that's not really true. Fathers that are there, yeah. So besides going through six foster home, or families, was there any other thing that kind of triggered? I mean, obviously, you've been working on this project for what, about a year now, you said? So what was it that sort of decided now is the time to do this? Well, one of the other things was I was talking to, I was talking to my nephew on the phone, and at the time I was trying to decide, I like to reinvent myself and try new things. So I've done comedy, I do poetry, I've done a vipassana, which is like a 10-day silent meditation retreat, so I've done a bunch of different things. And photography's always been an interest, and then Tony Harvey from the Sacramento Observer told me to stop playing and go ahead and get a camera. So I bought a camera, and then I was talking to my nephew, and we were talking about his kid, and he was telling me a story about being at the mall, and he saw a younger Black man with his daughter, and he went up to him and was like, you know, keep up the good work. And so that was like the impetus, and it was like, oh, okay, that's what we're going to do. And originally it started just as a photo exhibition, or do you always plan to do interviews, because I know? Originally it started as photos, but I wanted to do interviews because I wanted to give them a voice, because nobody actually gets to hear that voice. You know, you'll have one or two people on television occasionally, but I wanted to give regular guys a voice. Chance to speak for themselves. So what will people be seeing at this exhibit? And then I'll mention when it opens and so forth. So the way the exhibit is established, I actually start from fathers who have infant children and go all the way through generations. So as you go work from one room into the room, like I said, you start with infants. You see fathers doing things with their kids from toddler to teens through college graduations. And then the last set of photos on the exhibit is a family that goes from a father to his grandchildren, or great-grandchildren. And the exhibit, you've also incorporated the video interviews? The video interviews. So I've interviewed about 10 people. So I've interviewed comedian Vince Morris, who's been on Showtime, HBO. He's been on Comedy Central and BET. I also, since the last time I talked to you, I interviewed Steph Sanders, who used to do comedy with Patrice O'Neill. Trenton Davis, who won the NBC standoff, comedy standoff. But I did interview more than comedians. I interviewed one gentleman who's three, he's had three sets of kids, so which kind of sounds bad, but it's not really. He was, he adopted a kid in his 20s because the child's parents told, he was the child's basketball coach and the parents told him that he wouldn't make it if he didn't take him with him. And so he did that, then he was married and he ended up, he was getting divorced, but he ended up raising his sons from that marriage. And then he has two younger sons now, so from another, yeah. But he talks about how he's learned through each level of children. And then I interviewed, I tried to interview one of my friends who has a disabled child, but we could never kind of make that work. But I did interview Steph and he talked about his, he works in education, but he talked about raising gay children. And then he has a son that passed this past year, so he talked about that, which was really interesting because he talked about the fact that they got a chance to say goodbye because the son had a terminal illness. So, so that was really interesting, it was really insightful. What is the sort of the most surprising thing that you learned in this process? I mean, obviously you got exposed to a huge diversity of experiences. Well, it's interesting because you can get men to talk about anything but themselves. So, you know, they'll, we'll talk about basketball, we'll talk about women, we'll talk about just anything but yourself. So to get them to actually open up became interesting. And then there were people that I couldn't get because they weren't, they just wouldn't, and I think that was part of what happened with Mark. But one of the things I got from him was he was like, you know, his son became disabled as a teenager. So he was like, you know, in the stereotype that black men run at the sign of trouble and he was like, it's my son, what am I supposed to do? I supposed to take care of him, like I can't throw him away. Like wouldn't want to throw him away because that's my son. So that was really. And did you come across any challenges besides the difficulty in getting the interviews that were surprising or something that was difficult? Or did it all go pretty smoothly? Mostly the getting the interviews were tougher than getting the pictures. Almost everybody agreed to the pictures. Right. There were a couple of people that wouldn't let me take their picture. And then there was actually one lady who, once I told her what I was doing, I had taken a family photo of them. But once I told her what I was doing, she actually asked me to take a picture of her daughters with their father. Oh, that's a separate thing. That's very nice. So in talking to all these fathers and interviewing, I'm sure they gave all sorts of advice and knowledge and wisdom. Was there anything that stood out? There were two, Trenton, when I interviewed Trenton, one of the things that he said was, he's learned a lot of patience. And then the fact of loving somebody else or putting somebody else first all the time was a thing that made him grow a lot as a person. And one of the things he said, and I'm kind of paraphrasing was, he said as a father, it's his job to make sure that she realizes her purpose in being here in a shorter amount of time than it took him to do it. Right, to help her along. To help her along. And then another gentleman, an older gentleman, he was saying that his father used to ask him to do the brakes on the car. You know, like do stuff like that. And he was like, he didn't want to do it because it was a word. But later on, he realized that his father was asking him to spend time. And he didn't know how to do that. So he would say, let's do the brakes. And he said that he explained to him that he wanted to spend time. Then he would have been more than happy to do the brakes. So over the years, you found that the older fathers sort of gained wisdom that they wanted to apply to the next generation. Right. And do you think that this is, I don't know if you talk to older or younger, but do you think generationally things are changing? Well, so I talked to everybody from somebody who's in their 70s all the way to people in their early 20s. And the thing that I realized is that some guys learn from the mistakes of their fathers, and they wanted to be different fathers because of that. Some guys, one younger guy that I interviewed, he, in him being a father, he understood that his father didn't have the tools to be the father that he thought he should be. And so that's the thing that's changed. So there's a lot of forgiveness in that aspect. And then just a lot of guys are just either they're trying to be the father that their father was, or they're trying to be the father that their father wasn't. I see. So it helps you getting a lot of sort of healing, almost like back healing, not just with the younger generation that's being raised, but better relationships with the fathers and grandfathers. The grandfathers, yeah. Because now they have an understanding. That level of wisdom. That level of wisdom that comes, yeah. Well, let's talk a little bit. So the exhibit is at the Brick House Art Gallery in Sacramento. And when it starts on? It opens on May 31st at 6 PM. I'll have DJ Mike Brim and DJ Master Dragon. I also included who are also included in the photos. Because Master Dragon isn't Mike's sons, but he's one of his mentees. And so I wanted to include the guys who were mentors as well, because that's a part of another aspect of fatherhood in the black community. So you end up with a lot of coaches and whatnot who step in where there are absentee fathers and do things with the kids there in those places. So it's a community parenting? So it's a community parenting. So it's being raised by the village, which was what happened with me. Would you mind talking a little bit about that? I mean, how is it that you wound up with six different? So my mother left when I was six days old. And she left me with my grandmother. My grandmother was an alcoholic. And so her niece actually took me from her. And so part of it was they were older, so people would die and I would end up living with other people. And then when I got to be a teenager, one of my friends' parents saw me making the trek back and forth to my grandmother's house because she didn't necessarily take care of her as much as anything. So they saw me doing that. And so they decided that they wanted to take me in. And so that family, the father's name was Buddy, we call him Buddy. He was about six, three, about 250. A big guy. Big guy. But he didn't finish high school, but he taught himself math enough to learn how to work on the equipment at Fieldcrest. And he became like their maintenance person for all of their factories. He was the guy that they called to come in if they needed something. And he worked in the graveyards here. And so I was involved in a lot of things in school. And he would come pick me up from school, take me to whatever I needed to do. Like I was one of the superintendent advisor counsel. He would come pick me up from school, take me to that, sleep in the car until I finished, and then bring me home. So even though he had a busy life, he was dedicated to helping you out. Yeah. And then he ended up, when he married mom, she had two kids. So he raised her two kids as his own. They had kids after that. He raised them. He helped her sister with everything that she needed to help raise her sister's son. So, you know, but those are the things that happen. Those are the stories that never get told. And that you wanted to bring out. And that I wanted to bring out. Bring out. All right, well the exhibit's called The Invisible Man, Reclaiming the Image of the Black Father, correct? Yes. The artist is Karim Daniels. And it'll be at the Brick House Art Gallery in Sacramento starting May 31st. And he said it runs to? June 29th. June 29th. So, and you'll be able to meet Karim, correct? You'll be able to meet me at the reception? At the reception. June 20th, I'm doing a panel discussion with Black Fathers. And Terry Moore, who runs Fathers and Families in Sacramento, which is a group that helps fathers with parenting classes and helps them through the court process. He'll be on the panel. Steph Sanders, who the comedian I spoke of. He'll be on it. And that'll be at the Brick House as well. June 20th at 7, 8 p.m. OK. Well, thank you very much, Karim. It was a pleasure. And check out the exhibit, because I think you'll find something for everyone there.