Nasher Museum Podcast: Artist Jessica Clark and Scholar Nancy Strickland Fields

NF
And we are here to share both our shared story and learn more about Jessica’s art, but I wanted to start with a paragraph from your website

You write: I document and preserve the everyday life of Southeastern native peoples using personal snapshots and photographs as a source. My work consists of paintings, drawings, lithographs and photographs and, as a Lumbee native, are from my perspective. We, the Lumbee, are a version of the Postmodern Native, a combination of European, African and Indigenous ancestry. We intermixed with other tribes and settlers, retained our cultural identity and assimilated into European culture to survive, not succumbing to the meta-narrative of the Native American. Our daily lives bear witness to these tactics and are subjects for my work: we have various physical features, host powwows, attend Christian churches, have lived in the same area for the last 10,000 years (not a reservation), speak with a distinct Southern drawl and identify as Native American. The act of creating allows meditation on the narrative and process, escaping the moment the photograph was shot, becoming overcome by the emotions, sounds, and stories associated with each subject. The large format and vibrant colors of the paintings reflect the vitality of contemporary Native culture and identity, creating monuments to a people who have persevered in the face of oppression and the appeal of assimilation.

So that is wonderful and it takes me back to a moment about over ten years ago where we were both at the Hezekiah Alexander house in Charlotte, North Carolina, and you were a vendor there and you had a booth set up and were selling your art and I stopped in my tracks. In fact, I probably left like a little skid mark in the grass. I was just so like “oh my gosh” and I saw all of those things that I just read about. But I think the thing that I saw was a reflection of my people, of my Lumbee people, of myself and my family. Your work was just one of the most—and still is to this day—one of the most powerful expressions of Lumbee identity I’ve ever seen. I know how I felt in my emotions and my reaction. Can you share with us your inspiration and how you pull together these—and some of your work is really exceptionally large—beautiful narratives of Lumbee culture and identity?

JC
Growing up in Robinson County, you tend to not live anywhere else, not travel too far. So when I went to grad school at SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design, in Savannah, it was a huge culture shock even though it was only three hours from Pembroke. It was a completely different world, and it was the first time I had to defend my identity. I had people stopping me on the street and asking me what color I was; people would make comments about my accent, the food I was cooking, my hair, wanting to touch my hair. And when I told them I was Native, they were like, “well you don’t look Native.” So it became this thing of what are native people supposed to look like?

I thought I was in a very diverse place, being in Savannah and being in this huge arts community, but I quickly realized that people still associate Native people with these stereotypes. And I had a whole wall of photographs in my studio and every time people would come to my studio, that was the first thing they would go to. And it was photographs of landscapes, it was my family, not posed photographs, very catching people off guard, just being natural. And people would just gravitate towards that. And I had a professor, Roger Walton. I took a portrait painting class and he was like, “why don’t you paint these people and why don’t you show you know who these people are, try to dispel those stereotypes and get away from that?” We’re supposed to live on a reservation, we’re supposed to have straight black hair and high cheekbones and this dark complexion. So that’s where the portrait came from. It was the first time I’d ever painted portraits. I painted the first one in 2009 and I fell in love with it. And it became this thing of they had to be large and they had to be colorful. They had to be large so that when you walked in a gallery or museum, you just couldn’t ignore it. Native people get ignored with so many issues. These paintings are five feet, six feet tall. There’s no way you can walk into a space and not see that. And the colors—I felt like the colors needed to reflect the life and vitality. If you meet native people, we are not stoic people. We are not that stereotype. We are just full, alive, laughing, crazy at times. So I felt like that needed to be reflected in the colors—that we are still thriving, we’re still here, we’re not going anywhere and you’re not going to ignore us.

NF
And I think that was one of the big things that felt so genuine and authentic about your work at that moment. And then immediately I started following you and we did a magazine article together at First American Art Magazine after that, but it felt so real. And in your portraiture, you didn’t lean towards those stereotypes to where you felt perhaps, or a lot of artists feel, that to represent Native identity, it should look like this. And it also didn’t feel commercial in any kind of way. I felt like you were really painting both for yourself and for our community. I really liked the painting of your grandmother, that you add these really cool exaggerated elements like her hands, for instance. Nobody, nobody can capture the act of cutting corn and the action and the movement, it’s almost like a moving picture and not like a painting, right? I mean, it’s just flinging off the canvas. Why are those elements important to be represented in your paintings as well?

JC
It kind of became a subconscious thing. I didn’t notice it until people started pointing out that hands are so prominent in the paintings. I teach finger drawing with my students and I’m like, you can tell a lot by somebody’s hands, you can tell whether they work in the yard, or they tend to do washing dishes, or you can tell somebody’s hands by their manual labor and you can tell what kind of person they are, I feel like. I really like looking at people’s hands and I think it started to come across in the paintings without me realizing it.

Those paintings of corn, I don’t know, there’s just something about showing that whole action. And I think it’s a lived experience and it’s a living experience and I hope that comes across in those paintings. Maybe my son could walk out of that painting, pull in that wagon, and nobody would think anything of it. And it’s also about being a living people, a living culture that’s still here.

NF
Your paintings ache of nostalgia. I think you’re the Norman Rockwell of Lumbee art; it really does speak to these lifeways and I think that’s the thing that we gravitate towards, these representations of that lived experience. But in our lifetimes we’ve also seen a tremendous amount of transformation of our landscape that has also informed our lived experience. So the tobacco barns you paint so masterfully, they’re just like you’re looking on the scene itself, on the landscape in person. We don’t do that anymore. The family dynamics are transitioning a little bit in terms of those gatherings, where we are putting corn and doing those types of things. And I think you’ve even said that you wanted to preserve memories for one of those days when those things wouldn’t happen and now we’re witnessing that [due to COVID]. What does that mean to you where you are actually experiencing where these moments that you’ve captured are now memories?

JC
So many of these are family and it’s things that I’ve lived through. I’ve worked in Tobacco Fields, I’ve picked corn and cut corn. It makes you want to pass those traditions along more. I’ve done those things with my son. He’s in the military now, he’s twenty years old. I don’t know if he’s going to continue to do those things. It makes me want to do it more. Having a garden here in the mountains, I feel like that’s important. And carrying on those traditions even if I don’t plan on having any more children and carrying on that to another child. But through my paintings, I feel like I’m carrying on that tradition. And we’ve talked about how a lot has changed in the past few years and I think my generation is starting to realize that. I’m almost forty and I feel like people kind of get nostalgic when they’re getting close to 40. It’s kind of like this milestone of “what am I doing with my life?” I feel like I’m there now and I see people that I know who are starting to bring those things back and they’re starting to realize that’s important.  Even if I can’t do it physically, I think it’s really important that I create this work and carry on the traditions in the artwork. And hopefully it’ll inspire somebody to have a family gathering and cook corn and have those conversations. Because my aunt, who’s featured in a lot of the paintings, and my grandmother are passed on, I’m hoping that when somebody looks at that, it creates this feeling of nostalgia and maybe they want to bring it back. And I think that’s—I wrote that artist statement when I was in grad school—it hasn’t changed a lot. ­­

NF
I couldn’t help notice that watching people and how they interacted with the three paintings that you have in the exhibition, spent a lot of time with them. In fact, a couple of times we had to move out of the way so that visitors could engage with the paintings. And I would notice that some people, as they came around the corner, would glance and they would stop and they would come back and look again. So all of the things that you’re talking about—these lifeways, these things of family and community coming together—these aren’t just Lumbee things, these are human behaviors. Do you think those are the qualities that resonate with audiences beyond just Lumbee?

JC
I think so. The painting of my grandmother in the recliner I created in grad school, I had people say “that was my grandma, she had a recliner and she would fall asleep in it.” So that’s part of the work. Even if you’re not Lumbee, you can relate to it. I love to hear people tell me that, because it creates a connection, it creates an experience. I remember before grad school, I created a painting of a cotton field. And somebody is like, “oh that painting makes my back hurt.” They had grown up picking cotton. And painting tobacco fields, I used to work in tobacco fields when I was young and I would get so sick from what I found out was nicotine poison. But I still will go out and walk in a tobacco field and it brings back those memories of being young and carefree. So for me, it’s really important that it is not just connected to Lumbee people. But anybody who views it, I hope that they can see something in there that they can relate to or that reminds them of maybe their childhood or a family member. And that’s what art is supposed to do. I think it’s supposed to build connections. Even if you’re not a Southeastern Native, you can still relate to this work and enjoy it as a viewer.

NF
Okay, you brought up a good point, you talked about walking in the tobacco fields and being here and just connecting to place. Somewhat recently, you left Robinson County and you are now in Waynesville. How has that informed or influenced your work or how has that made you look at home differently? We have an expression here, as you well know: no matter where you live, Robinson County is always home. How does that make you look at home differently?

JC
I think it makes me appreciate it more, not being in it all the time. During the pandemic I didn’t go home for a long time and then when I went to Robinson County and it was the smell of the air, the landscape, the humidity. It was like, oh yeah, I’m home. So I think it definitely makes me appreciate it more. I tell people I call Robinson County home. Like, “yeah, I’m going home to see my parents this weekend” or something like that. And I think it’s a thing only people who grow up in Robinson County can kind of relate to, is that it’s always referred to as home. I can live in Waynesville for 20 years but Robinson County will still be home.

And when I go back, so much is so different from living in the mountains. I can appreciate the landscape so much more, I can appreciate the people so much more. I always go to the river somewhere when I go home and I’m still taking like hundreds of photos and I’m like, “You know what? I’m gonna go back,” and I would do some river paintings. I have these vast mountain views and I can go riding on the parkway, but I still find myself wanting to do paintings of the Lumber River and the swamps. I do kind of get homesick a little bit and think about “could I go back?” And then I’m like, “yeah, I’ll l go visit every now and then,” but it’ll always be home. So it definitely makes me appreciate it more, not being there all the time.

NF
There is a magnetism about here, that’s just undeniable. And I think that there’s a certain beauty that our people recognize and connect with. So many people travel I-95, or go to the beach on 74, and just pass by here and I often wonder. You have no idea the part of Indian country that you’re passing by in this beautiful community and the beauty that’s here both in the history and the culture. We try to bring them to our museum, the Museum of the Southeastern American Indian, where we also exhibit Jessica’s work and tell the story of southeastern native people. I do a lot of writing and for me that same process that you do of connecting to place and going to the water, going to the river—I think people now call it grounding, I’ve always just called it put my feet in the dirt, just kind of connecting—is a part of the process. I’m really interested in artists; process, and it sounds like that connecting to place is part of it. But as an artist, can you share with us about your process, about as you’re starting a painting and through that work, and also what is your preferred medium or media that you like to work with, because I know you’re much broader than just portraiture and landscapes.

JC
It usually starts with the photograph. When I was in high school, when I first started painting actually, I was about 15. I started just taking photos, hundreds and hundreds of photos. And for a long time I felt like I had to paint exactly what was in the photograph. But I think with experience, I found that I still like being able to hold a photograph in my hand. With some of the last paintings I’ve worked on, I’ve had a print out or a photograph and I think it’s just that tactile thing. I like being able to hold a photo instead of looking at it on the computer screen. But I usually start with photographs, I take hundreds and then narrow it down and just find something interesting in there that I like. I would like to say it’s the rule of thirds and give you all these composition terms and all of this, but a lot of it is intuition. I just find a photo that I really love and that I want to translate into painting and that’s how it starts. I feel like I’m coming full circle because when I first started painting, I was painting landscapes. And I did that for a really long time until I went to grad school and really started painting portraits. And I’m coming back around to landscapes. I went to an artists residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Vermont in 2018 during the summer. And you’re just surrounded by so much green. It’s like you can’t help but be influenced by the landscape and all the green. So I started plein air painting a little bit and playing around with cold wax medium and oil paint and painting on paper and just realized that I love landscape painting, even though the greens drive me crazy. Trying to mix the perfect green, I can never get it quite right? But I get it close enough. That has been really fun, coming back full circle to the landscapes. My preferred medium is still oil. As an art teacher, I teach high school. I’ve learned to do a little bit of everything. I’ve been teaching for 10 years. I had to learn how to watercolor paint in order to teach my students. I play around with clay. When they’re in the classroom creating, I try to create along with them. So I’ve gotten to really, in the last ten years, to explore and play with all kinds of mediums. Pastels, chalk pastels, jewelry making. But I still love painting. At the end of the day, painting is what keeps me sane. I was reading a quote by Frida Carlo today and it says, “The only thing I know is that I paint, because I need to.” So I draw, but I still come back to painting. I just love it.

NF
I love it too and I want you to keep doing it. So I remember a while back that you were part of some social justice initiatives in our community and you were giving voice to that through your work. Is that something that you are still interested in doing? I know the pandemic has kind of impeded things. But then society has kind of just been all over the place. Do you still find a voice through your work?

JC
I’m still a member of Alternate Roots which is a nonprofit organization based in the South, and a lot of their work deals with social justice issues and racial equity. And I never thought of my work as a social justice work until I joined that group, and then I started to realize that it is a form of advocacy for native people, because I don’t want to play into the stereotypes. And like you said earlier, I do make the work for myself. I’ve had people who would be like, “well maybe you should do this and become more commercial,” and that’s just not authentic work for me. I feel like what I’ve been doing the past couple of years, that’s authentic. That’s who we are and that’s the work I should be making. I’m not playing into the politics and the stereotypes of it all. So being part of Alternate Roots, I did start to think about, well, this is advocacy work and it is important. And I’m working on this project with UNCW honoring indigenous peoples and I’ve gone back and forth with coming up with compositions, because I feel like honoring indigenous peoples, you need to be authentic. If you’re going to tell this story, you tell the real struggles, you show who the real people are, and not who society thinks they are and what they should look like and what they should be doing and how they should be dressed. So I go back and forth—is this work important, is this what I should be doing? And then a show like Reckoning and Resilience happens and I’m like, “oh, ok, maybe I am doing something right. I will keep doing this and we’ll see what happens.”

NF
Does that in any way inform what you’re doing now aside from this bigger project or any future work that you aspire to do? Is there anything that you really want to dig into that you haven’t had an opportunity to do yet, but you would really love to do?

JC
I’ve really thought lately about the landscapes and what could be said with the landscapes. Land and water rights are important and being brought to the forefront in the news right now, with Indigenous peoples having a say in what’s done with the land and the water. And I’ve been thinking about how I can incorporate landscapes into that and say things about that using my artwork. Plein air painting has been around for one hundred, two hundred years, and it’s all about going into the landscape and immersing yourself into the landscape and making commentary on that. So I have thought about doing more plein air paintings, more landscapes, and trying to make comments on the Land Back movement and Indigenous rights, who gets to say what happens to the land. So those are things I’m playing around with. I always have ten different paintings on at one time and all of this stuff going on in my head. So the next six months are going to be really interesting. I’ve decided to leave public education. As a high school art teacher, I don’t really know what’s gonna happen. But I’m hoping that whatever happens I’ll get more time to think about these ideas and what direction I want my work to go. And I’ll have more opportunities to play around with these ideas.

NF
As a museum educator, I have to ask this question, because I’m kind of like you, we find these ways as folks working in the humanities or artists or creative types to pay bills. Education seems like a natural place for us to land. And I think about working with students, you always think you want to inspire them. But in general, how do you want to inspire people with your work? You’ve talked about your activism in a few things, but if you had to kind of button up a sentence or two of what you hope people take away from your work, what would that be?

JC
I hope people would realize that there’s so much more to Indigenous people than has ever been portrayed by the media. With my work, I’ve always tried to stay authentic and show who people are in their everyday lives. And I hope that when somebody sees a painting about a Lumbee, that they’ll go Google or look up Southeastern natives and the history, and then it inspires them to, when they meet a native person, not just make these assumptions, to be genuinely interested in who we are and where we come from, our history. And not just this stereotyped image of, “Well, you all live on reservations. Do you live in a teepee? Do you get money from the government” That’s what I encountered a lot when I was in grad school and that’s why I started the paintings. I wanted people to ask, “Who are these people and why is she painting them?” They have to be important if it’s a huge five foot painting—what makes that person important?

NF
Yeah, that’s one of the biggest struggles that we face here in the museum and in my personal work is situating native peoples as Southerners. And also a step further in that is that we’re part of the community and we’re part of society and we’ve been here for a very long time and we’ve had close connections and even intermarried with our neighboring communities or folks that we’ve helped. And it’s still a challenge to situate Native peoples in the South. And one could argue that we are the original Southerners, even. So, I think that’s a very interesting dynamic and I really applaud your work for doing that, because it’s not only inspiring people, but also it’s an education. And I think that’s one of the beautiful things about art: its ability to broker these tough conversations or even these concepts that are difficult to wrap your head around for a lot of folks. A lot of people say, Native communities are invisible in plain sight. We’re just people looking for something different than what they’re seeing. So thank you so much for giving us a visual representation of what Southern or Southeastern Native peoples look like, what our culture looks like, what we’re doing, what’s important to us, our families, our community. It’s absolutely amazing.