SMC
I describe myself as a teacher, as an artist, as a documentarian, as a father, as a husband.
TJ
Interestingly, you did not say as a Black man from North Carolina.
SMC
Because I think that there is a very, very complex answer to that. And there’s so many little nuances within the community about things that you have to do in the community. That’s just not a simple answer. I don’t think it’d be bottled up into a simple statement.
TJ
Yes, race is certainly complicated, as is gender and geography. But the exhibit focuses on North Carolina art now, and so I’m really curious if you would be willing to speak to these issues about the ways in which being from North Carolina has influenced your art over time and to what extent has being a Black man influenced the work that you did.
SMC
So for a long time, I was happy in the practice of just making. I made because it made me happy. I draw a lot. Since I teach, I believe in practicing what I teach, so it was important for me to continue to work, to draw, to paint, to study portraiture, figurative work, that sort of thing. It wasn’t until say maybe 2010 that I made a concerted effort to start making work that was much more subject-oriented, that had a specific, general idea to it, or to focus on a certain theme.
TJ
And what led to that change in 2010?
SMC
Oddly enough, I spent years wanting to be a children’s book illustrator and I had a very good friend who mentored me through doing that and, in order to do what I had decided—to focus specifically on the story of John Henry—I bought a bunch of props and had friends to help me set up to shoot reference photos. And part of what I wanted was authenticity. So I started to study, because I heard that John Henry was a real person. And he was. However, there seems to be kind of a dark history behind John Henry. Apparently John Henry was a real person and there’s notations from a ledger from under the railroad companies back in I want to say the late 1800s of a John Henry who actually was a victim of the Black codes. He had committed a crime that would have been punishable by two years in prison; instead he served 10 years and during his tenure while he was serving there, he was kind of forcing the hard labor. Working for the railroad system, he and a bunch of other prisoners, and they died. It really kind of bothered me that was the real story, and then there’s this other kind of fabricated tall tale, if you will, and it kind of made me start thinking about talking about issues in our community.
TJ
And so that will take us to some of the pieces that are on display in the Nasher’s exhibit on Reckoning and Resilience right? And particularly the works that you have which focus on colorism. Would you tell the listeners what colorism is and how those pieces came to be?
SMC
So colorism is—think of it like a caste system, there’s acceptance in social circles based on how light or how dark a person is within the African-American community. Oddly enough, when I started making the work—I would say my earliest piece I made was around 2012—I didn’t know that colorism was a word. I knew that there was this concept where people within the community were comparing themselves to a bag or comparing themselves to each other and there was acceptance or rejection based on how light or how dark the person was. And as I started making work and doing research and exhibiting work, I got feedback from other artists, other African Americans in the community, and other scholars about the fact that this is a thing and doing that research. And so part of what I decided to do with the work was to interview people. A lot of the images, the reason that they are the way they are—where there’s an imageable person and then there’s a quote from that person—is because I actually set up a camera, interviewed them regarding the paper bag test. The paper bag test is where an individual will have a paper bag held against their skin and, depending on the circumstance, whether they were lighter and/or darker than the bag, then they will be accepted in a certain venue, certain social circles, that sort of thing. And so my questions during the interview were all based on the same premise of “Have you heard of the paper bag test?” And to my surprise, some African Americans said no. However, when I described the test, they knew the letter of it. They may not have known that specific name of “Oh there’s a paper bag test,” but they understood the idea, the notion of this caste system based on skin tone.
TJ
Yeah, so many people may not have heard of the word colorism, which is a term that is attributed to Alice Walker from the 1980s, right? So Alice Walker talked about differentiating among individuals, usually of the same race, based upon the relative lightness or darkness of their skin.
SMC
Yes, yes.
TJ
In one of her works in the 1980s, she referred to this as colorism. So even though people in communities of color may not be familiar with that particular word, they’re certainly familiar with the concept, because of practices like the brown paper bag test which go back to the 19th century at least. And that explains the significance of these works and the use of the brown paper bag in these four works on display in the Nasher Museum. You said that you interviewed these various individuals. One of the works is a comment that you made to your mother when you were four years old. Would you talk about that?
SMC
So it’s one of my earliest memories. I clearly remember it. I clearly remember talking with my mother and asking her at the time, what seemed to be an obvious question. My mother is very fair-skinned with freckles. My father is darker. And I remember asking her why she was white and why my dad was Black, and she thought it was hilarious and she just explained, “Well, African-Americans are in different shades and, you know, that’s how it is,” that she wasn’t actually white. So at the time, in my youth, I thought “Okay, that that makes sense,” and I was fortunate enough to where my parents raised me in such a way to deal with people based on the content of their character and not on their parents.
TJ
In the words of Martin Luther King from the “I have a dream” speech and other speeches. So that’s interesting, that as a child at 4 years of age, you were noticing differences in terms of color. Although perhaps you weren’t attributing meanings to those differences in terms of how you identified people under a capacity. So you talk about colorism, which is a very important subject of conversation, not only within communities of color but worldwide, right? And I think that it’s really important to point out that not only do people of color engage in colorism, but white individuals—people who are not deemed to be of color—also engage in this practice, which is why skin whitening products is such a multibillion dollar industry worldwide, right? And why there’s such attraction in trading in colorism, I want to go back to the works that are on display in the Nasher, because not only do you engage the topic of colorism, but the work is deeply intersectional in the sense of speaking to the fact that identities are not one-dimensional. People are not defined only by their race, because their race intersects with their gender, and their class, and their sexuality, among other things. And so there’s a panel in which there are actually two pieces in which the commentary engages the question of Black masculinity and how that’s treated in the United States today, and I’m wondering if you might speak to those two pieces.
SMC
So as I started doing these interviews, I noticed that there tended to be a recurring theme, and they were actually very specific to gender. I notice a lot of commentary from females regarding hair. There is such a thing called texturism. And then with men, I noticed that there was a commentary about the questioning of their masculinity based on how light they were—a lighter man being seen as not as masculine or weaker. And there was an attachment to that and then and so that ends up being its own conversation. It actually has spawned outshoots from that body of work about colorism. Two other things to address texturism. They actually have a series right now called “Pawn in the Game,” that addresses some of the issues with Black masculinity and Black bodies and how they’re used in America and how they proceed within their own culture.
TJ
There’s also a work in which you have portrayed Johncarlos Miller, in which he talks about expectations of Black men and how Black men are negatively stereotyped. It’s interesting that you have this in the past series which seems to focus on color, right? But color is also connected with these other concepts—would you speak to that?
SMC
Johncarlos Miller made that statement about how, you know, there’s all these, there seems to be all these myths and fallacies about African-American men, and about how they’re prevalent in the community. And there were other males who made those statements about if you actually tried to paint a picture of what a man is perceived, that he’s supposed to be within the community, it’s an unattainable goal on top more. So if you are just a guy who’s out there trying to, you know, do his day-to-day, take care of his family, that you end up fighting an uphill battle sometimes and within your own community because you’re perceived a certain way. It’s almost like you’re expected to do less, and that just shouldn’t be.
TJ
The last two years—I’m going to shift gears slightly—the last two years have been particularly difficult moments for this country and for the world. We’ve been reckoning with racial justice issues, environmental degradation, the disparate effects of COVID on Black and brown communities and so on and so forth, and the exhibit is designed to have viewers reflect on this moment in terms of how we’re situated in this social context and what we might do to further transformative change. How do you think your works fit within that larger aim or objective of the exhibit?
SMC
So the goal of the work is to have people within the African-American community talk to each other and understand their perspectives and hopefully to break down some of these myths and fallacies that we’ve accepted. So what I’m hoping is that people will see those works and start to have a conversation with each other to think about things that, they might say, that helps perpetuate a myth that’s just not true. I actually have a personal theory that part of what we suffer within the community is kind of like Stockholm Syndrome, where you’ve been in this place so long and you’ve been treated poorly, that you begin to accept some of those things as your reality. You know, if the myth is perpetuated long enough that African-American men are these threats and super-predators then you yourself start to try to take onus of that and it kind of permeates. You know so little even even the most subtle of things. So hopefully in bringing out these conversations and actually putting them front and center, I’m hoping that people within the community will say, “hey, you know, I heard that” or “man, I never thought of it from that male perspective” that, you know, that perception’s not not good or “I made this comment,” or one of the comments that seems to be a prevalent, one for example, with our women is, “oh, she’s pretty to be so dark.” Um, that’s ah, that’s a very someone’s like a slap in the face. It’s not really a—I may have meant it to be a compliment, but it’s not taking as one. Yes, yes, yes.
TJ
Are you pretty for a dark skin woman or a dark skin girl, right? And inherent in the statement is this limitation for a dark skin girl, right? As if a dark skin girl is not inherently pretty.
SMC
Absolutely. And that’s something that, if you talk to people in the community, it’s not that it’s an isolated incident. Everybody’s heard it. I know I heard that said about classmates in high school. Start to get people to just talk and think about what they say to each other and hopefully maybe from that, people will move forward and hopefully break some of these generational ills and perceptions that we sometimes hold about ourselves.
TJ
You speak about motivating conversations within communities of color. Do you think this work might provoke conversations among a wider array of individuals?
SMC
Actually, I’ve been fortunate enough to be witness to the fact that it does. I remember when I started doing the work, I had my first exhibition back in 2014 where I presented this as a large body of work and the idea was that I was gonna do this. I was gonna keep making work for a year, I was gonna present it, and be done in 2014, I would move on to something else. But then right after the first exhibition, I had people from different generations, from walks of life, African-Americans, actually seeking me out to say, “I just don’t sit and talk.” And some of those conversations got recorded and they ended up eventually being subjects and I realized that, for some people, this is very transformative and it gives them the opportunity to say what’s on their mind. And then a lot of people will tell me that they’ll read those statements by people and there’s a shared connection, because they’ve had the same experience but a similar experience. And so that’s what’s kept me making work, because it seems as if there’s something to be said and that something people need to say and hopefully if I’m blessed enough to be a medium for that, then I guess that’s my role.
TJ
One of the interesting aspects of the four pieces that are on display in the Nasher is that you talk about colorism and how it affects lighter tone people of color, lighter tone black individuals or African Americans. Because generally when we think about the color hierarchy, we think about the effects of colorism on darker toned individuals and sometimes ignore the fact that colorism can also adversely affect, depending upon context, persons with lighter skin tones as well. So it operates across the spectrum and I think that your pieces make that point quite clear. I mentioned earlier that not only do people of color engage in colorism—and this is what I meant when I said perhaps the work can encourage white individuals or people who do not identify as people of color to think about their views about skin color, because let’s think about casting calls like “Straight Out of Compton” or the most recent Lin-Manuel Miranda production “In the Heights,” where there was a lot of criticism among the casting companies, who included white individuals, for preferring lighter tone Black women in the case of “Straight Out of Compton” or lighter tone Latinx persons as lead actors in the case of “In the Heights,” and I also alluded to the worldwide sale of skin lightening products. So colorism not only exists in the United States, it exists in various parts of Asia and sub-saharan Africa, actually throughout the African continent. Oo we have multinational corporations who are selling skin lightening products, which include harmful chemicals and the people who are in charge of those corporations are not necessarily people of color. So I’m wondering to what extent you might try to be trying to engage those individuals as well—white individuals who actually see skin tone differences and may engage in colorism as well.
SMC
I want to say two things about that. First, I found it very interesting and very encouraging that some of the contacts that I’ve made over the years—there was a young lady in California who saw some of my work through social media and contacted me and she just wanted to talk and we talked for a couple hours and she was Latinx and I didn’t know that this was the Asian Pacific community. I actually locally met someone in my, I think there’s a store close by the school I teach at, and she’s from the Middle East, she’s from India, and she was explaining to me that there’s a caste system there too. And so it started to kind of hit me like, “wow, didn’t know that in regard to the second part.” Regarding to speaking to individuals who will not necessarily identify within the community, I try to make sure that I invite white Americans to come to the discussions I know that traditionally when you have exhibitions, you invite the artist to talk about the work and I have kind of taken the taking the task of turning it into a talk back. I want to have a conversation with the crowd and so I make sure that there’s a conversation that’s interactive. I want the crowd to talk to me. I want the people in the crowd to talk to each other. I’m hoping that they’ll be able to have a conversation and to come into that space. Hopefully it’s a good meeting of the minds, if you will. So in those spaces, my target audience is the African American community, but the door’s open and I would hope that people who are not in the community would still come in to listen in, because, like you said, you could possibly unwittingly be helping to perpetuate some of these things with casting calls, with comments or things that are said or done that you may not even be aware of.
TJ
Yeah, so when I asked you how you describe yourself to the world, you said you are a teacher and I believe that you’re teaching high school students at this moment in time and you’re teaching them about art. What is the message that you hope to convey to young people?
SMC
Several things. I would hope that I would show my students that every story is unique but there’s not gonna be anything that is going to be specific to you, so rather than worrying about what everybody else is doing, if you’ll focus within and talk about how you see things, how you perceive things, and let that be what guides you when you make your work. You don’t have to worry about whether it’s original. Don’t worry about anybody else around you. You do your craft—well you learn the rules of your craft and then you use your voice to talk about the things you see and how you perceive. No two people in the world perceive things the same way, they may perceive in a similar way, but not the same, and so that’s what’s gonna give the kids’ work this unique flavor.
TJ
Yesterday during our conversation, as we were looking at the various pieces in the exhibit, I said, “I could never accomplish any of this, I just don’t have that talent.” And you look to me with your teacher’s gaze and you said, “Everyone has talent. Everyone has possibility, right?” So for other people walking through the gallery who think that they may not be able to accomplish or approximate anything similar to what we see in this exhibit, what would you say to those individuals?
SMC
I will say that if you really have a passion for it, to find out how to get the information to begin to creative. I have this kind of belief that talent is kind of overrated, that there are people who have repeat a position for doing things. Well, however, there’s still rules and things that could be learned and practiced—I have to believe that; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be a teacher. So a person coming through saying I could never do that—yeah you could. You figure out a place to start, you figure out what the base rules are because the rules are simple. A good friend of mine—I always quote him to my students—said that complexity is simplicity repeated. So learning the simple tasks and rules of what you need to do as you build and repeat those things. That’s how you build. That’s how you build your work and build your skill set.
TJ
Thank you for that encouraging note, because great art often inspires, and we hope that that’s what will happen as people look at the exhibits. Not only in terms of inspiring reflection on this moment and how we move beyond this moment, but reflection about what we may individually accomplish and perhaps beyond what we might imagine ourselves accomplishing in perhaps an artistic domain as well. So my final question goes back to the point of the exhibit. “Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now”—this includes over a hundred works from 30 emerging and established artists in North Carolina. And as we walked through the exhibit, you talked about some of the other artists and the fact that you know them. How do you see your work in this exhibit in conversation with the work of some of the other artists?
SMC
I am humbled to be included in the number. There are several artists in that exhibition that I actually have taught about in high school, and I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would have the opportunity to exhibit with them. I’ve taught my students about Beverly McIver, I’ve taught my students about Charles Williams, I’ve taught my students about Stephen Hayes. I’m just shocked and humbled.
TJ
What have you taught your students about these artists?
SMC
Just the idea, the notion of them telling their story. For example, Ms. McIver has a very, very powerful story, and watching her work is kind of like listening to her conversations when I look at it. Stephen Hayes has a powerful story and is a great maker of things. It’s very encouraging to see him make his work, to know him, to go through his process and to show his work to the students. And when the students see these different people who seem very tangible—I teach in Greensboro, Ms. McIver grew up in Greensboro, Stephen Hayes grew up in Durham. And what he makes is where he sees. He has the ability to see something, to see pieces of things made to pull them together to make powerful pieces. And I think students need to see that, because sometimes we have this fixed notion in our head of what an artist is or isn’t, and what they can or cannot do, like they’re trapped in this box and they’re really not. And to see these powerful creatives do what they do, no two artists in exhibition are alike, and I think that’s a beautiful thing. And there’s such a beautiful thing that there’s such a variety of work. There’s assemblage, there’s more traditional painting, there’s sculpture, there’s fabric, there’s photography—just so many different things and all done so well.
TJ
Can we talk about the significance of North Carolina with regard to this exhibit from your perspective? So you talked about teaching in Greensboro, which was an important site for civil rights activities in the 1960s and 1950s, 1970s as well. And Durham, which has a history of Black wealth, Black Wall Street. Could you talk about the significance of North Carolina historically and in the present moment as being a site for activism as well as reflection about racial injustice?
SMC
I always have thought that North Carolina was almost like a hidden gem. There is so much rich culture here, and if you look, there’s a lot of creatives that have roots here. Like Nina Simone was born in North Carolina, John Coltrane was in High Point, Romare Bearden was in Charlotte, and if I’m not mistaken, Beverly McIver is living among us right here and grew up in Greensboro and is now in Durham. There somehow that sometimes I feel like that gets missed. There’s this mystique about these other larger places and North Carolina is almost like n untapped reservoir of just the most creative, incredible people. I remember I was fortunate enough to get hired to teach for county schools before I graduated, right before I graduated college, a couple months before. And so my first instinct was, well, I’m moving away and I’m gonna be in the middle of Greensboro, and I didn’t realize that being in Greensboro was probably the biggest blessing ever. I was around the corner from the cultural center, where Greenhill is, is and then a couple blocks away is UNCG, with the Ashmore Art Museum. You go a few miles up the road and you’re at the Gantt, you go a few miles to Winston Salem and you’re at SECCA. Being here is being right in the middle of things, and there are so many beautiful things here, and I think it’s just now becoming—the secret’s beginning to get out, if you will.
TJ
I talked about some of the challenges of the last two years. Are there opportunities in this moment? Are there opportunities for artists?
SMC
I think there are, but I also think you have to be very careful. I think there are opportunities to speak up, I think people are being more aware. My wife likes to say, “Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.” And so people are becoming more and more aware of—even if they weren’t out to try to punish minorities or people of color or women or anybody in the LGBTQ community—that they’re now trying to be more aware and constant of their actions and be more forthright with opportunities. And that sort of thing, there’s—in my opinion—here’s also this kind of window, there’s this gray area where some people might try to be more exploitive and use this as an opportunity to do a quick snach and grab. do it be. It have a like ah get rich quick kind of scheme going. So just think, we have to just go to things with our eyes open. And what I’m hoping is that the former will take hold about this being a great opportunity, that people are opening the doors and that once the doors open, they won’t close, and that there’ll be more of these conversations. What people want to hear about and work with all these groups.
TJ
Well I think your works in the Nasher’s exhibit will certainly invite conversation among various groups of people and invite the reflection that the curators of the exhibit we’re hoping to provoke. If viewers would like to see more of your work, where should they go?
SMC
I try to keep a running record of exhibits through my website http://www.stephenmcozart.com. I am right now not only at the Nasher, I have some work at Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston Salem. I actually have a feature piece at the Sigal up in Pennsylvania and am hoping to have more venues very soon.
TJ
Before we end, is there anything else you’d like to say about the exhibit, “Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now.”
SMC
Just again to express how just thankful that I am to even be in it, if we have time. Back in 2009, I had a good friend who’s a teacher in Syracuse who asked me to come to meet him in Durham. He was here doing a presentation, asked me to come up the road and bring some students with me because he wanted to talk to him about recruiting. He’s been a friend of mine for years, and back then, I didn’t know the Nasher existed. He did and wanted to go while we were together, so we took the kids, and we’re standing there looking at the exhibits, and I’m standing there just “wow.” I think the Nasher back then had only been around for a few years. And I’m like, “wow, I didn’t know this was here. This is great,” And he looked at me and said, “You know, one day we’ll be standing here, and Steven Kozart will be in this exhibit,” and I kind of roll my eyes. I’m like , “Yeah man, whatever.” And so it’s funny that he doesn’t remember that conversation and I remember it like it was yesterday and it’s just such a wonderful thing.
TJ
2022 and you’re in this exhibit. What does that say about possibilities?
SMC
Yes, ma’am. That if you stay focused and practice your craft, eventually anything’s possible.
TJ
Thank you so much.
SMC
Thank you.
