Psychology Today post on exhibition

Arthur Dobrin, a professor at Hofstra University who teaches applied ethics, had a chance to see the 'Plantation (pla-ta-shun)' exhibition at Redux and wrote a post on his reaction to it:

Helping us to remember correctly: The Art of Colin Quashie

Charleston is a beautiful city and a lively destination site filled with hot restaurants and nightlife. Charleston is also said to have the port of entry from more than half of the slaves brought to the United States. There is one museum dedicated to slavery in the city. While nicely done, it fails to convey the horrors of slavery. Whips and shackles seem more like art objects rather torture devices.

Although there is mention that in the South up to 50,000 slaves escaped each year up until the Civil War, you learn nothing about the Stono Rebellion, the largest slave uprising on the British mainland prior to the American Revolution, or the Denmark Vesey Conspiracy, in 1822, which precipitated a vicious backlash by whites and led to 35 hangings.

What art that is available in the City Market reflects the stylized view of the South. Billowing skirts against black skin and blue sky that idealize the Gullah culture of the South Carolina Lowcountry are the main motifs. Charleston is surrounded by the nostalgia of Gone With the Wind. Many housing sub-divisions are called Plantation something or other, a nomenclature that strikes my Northern ears as chilling.

The shock of slavery and racism was best conveyed to me by the work of Colin Quashie, a contemporary artist living in Charleston. http://www.quashie.com/html/ “Plantation,” the exhibit of his work at the Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, struck me in the gut. His work is described as Op-Ed Art. In it Quashie brings together the past and the present through creations such as Plantation Monopoly and a riff on the J. Crew catalogue that features items such as a chic black tie that is a hangman’s noose.

Quashie’s work doesn’t go down well with a chamber of commerce and it hard to imagine the tourist office directing traffic to his studio. Psychic pain and historic truths aren’t good for business. But artists aren’t meant to make us comfortable but to break through the frozen seas of self-satisfaction. Quashie is very good at bringing an ax to the collective unremembering

I was granted permission to take photos of the exhibit, so I assume that it is OK to include two that I took.

Original Blog post can be read by clicking here: Psychology Today

Carolina Arts Blog

Tom Starland made the trip to see the exhibition before it closed - glad that he could meke it and see the work in person that he decided to put on the cover. Wrote some nice comments -  Once again, thanks Tom, for everything. Hope our paths cross again real soon.


You can read his blog post here: Carolina Arts Blog

Halsey on Spoleto

Motoi Yamamoto
Return to the Sea: Saltworks

May 25 – July 7, 2012

The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art has organized a major traveling exhibition of new work by contemporary Japanese artist Motoi Yamamoto. The exhibition will premiere in Charleston May 24-July 7, 2012, as a featured presentation of the Spoleto Festival USA. Return to the Sea: Saltworks by Motoi Yamamoto will travel nationally after its inaugural presentation, including stops in Los Angeles, CA, Charlotte, NC, and Monterey, CA. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be a site-specific installation created entirely out of salt by the artist during his two-week residency at the Halsey Institute.

Curated by Mark Sloan, director and senior curator of the Halsey Institute, the exhibition will also feature a series of recent drawings, photography, sketchbooks, a video about the artist, and a 170-page color catalogue documenting fourteen years of the artist’s saltworks around the world. The catalogue includes essays by Sloan and Mark Kurlansky, author of the New York Times best seller, Salt: A World History. The video, produced by Sloan and Emmy award-winning videographer John Reynolds, will include interviews with Yamamoto at his studio in Kanazawa, Japan, insight into his creative process, still images and time-lapse videos of many of his previous installations, and an overview of the fascinating history of salt in Japanese culture.

Yamamoto and the Halsey Institute are collaborating with the Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston’s (CAC.C) Studio V Design and Build class to create two viewing platforms for the installation. This will be the fifth collaboration between the Halsey Institute and CAC.C’s Studio V class. The students, led by Ray Huff and David Pastre, will design and build a large platform in the Halsey’s main gallery to provide visitors with multiple vantage points of the large saltwork. The students will also build an outdoor viewing platform for the gallery window fronting Calhoun Street, providing curious passers-by with a glimpse of the installation 24 hours per day.  These platforms will be in use during the run of the exhibition and also for Yamamoto’s residency, May 17- 24.

Final Numbers Are In!

112,795 downloads for the April issue of Carolina Arts with my art on the cover! That's 29, 955 more than the March issue. They usually average around 80,000 downloads a month so we'll see if I've set a record or this is a natural upswing of the online mag's popularity (I hope so). Time will tell. You can still download by clicking on the cover. Thanks everyone!

 

New Storefront

Finally got around to redesigning the storefront on my site. Who knows how long this will last, it may change next month. I decided I needed a change to allow those who haven't bought anything from me to have something new to look at when deciding not to buy anything again. I'm debating whether or not to put original art prices online - don't think I will. Probably just put up some works that I would consider selling.

Click on picture to enter store - open 24 hours a day.

Duhhhh!

New Data Reveals Artists Aren’t Gettin’ Paid

Alexis Clements on April 20, 2012

Tonight, the group W.A.G.E. (Working Artists and the Greater Economy), will release the results of the artists survey they conducted with Artists Space, a gallery in Soho. The survey found that 58% of the nearly 1,000 artists interviewed (including visual and performing artists) received no compensation at all for exhibiting or presenting their work at nonprofits in New York. In the weeks prior to these survey results being released I had been conducting my own, informal survey of the artists participating in this year’s Whitney Biennial, and found that none of those exhibited in the galleries that I exchanged emails with were paid to include their work — arguably one of the most important exhibitions of young and contemporary artists in the city. At most they had some of the costs of bringing the work to the museum covered, such as transporting or installing the work. But according to the W.A.G.E. survey, 58% of the artists they surveyed didn’t even have their expenses reimbursed. What W.A.G.E.’s survey finally makes transparent, is a reality that most artists have known for many years — by and large, most cultural institutions in the United States do not pay artists when exhibiting or presenting their work.

Many of the people I tell this to have no idea that artists aren’t paid for exhibiting. Others shrug their shoulders. They assume that artists make lots of money through gallery sales or big grants and prizes, so it doesn’t matter that they don’t get paid to exhibit. In fact, that’s the rationale of most museums. They argue that the exposure artists receive through exhibitions will set them on the path to financial reward. But the realities of life as an artist are quite different from these assumptions. Research by the NEA shows that artists across all fields earn much less than other professionals, with dancers earning a median income, including non-arts earnings, of only $15,000 in 2005 (museums, including the Whitney, are now regularly including dance and performance works in many of their major exhibitions). And women artists earn only 65% of male artists. Further, research by the sociologist Pierre-Michel Menger confirms that the arts in Europe and the US are a winner-take-all market, in which a select few artists are given the majority of the money.

When it comes to questions of artists and money, you’ll often hear the name Damien Hirst. He’s a favorite example for many of the potential wealth an artist can achieve (as well as the corrupt intentions of contemporary visual artists), given his record-breaking sales such as the 2008 auction of his works that raked in over $200 million. Even the prominent art philosopher Denis Dutton evoked Hirst for those very purposes in an OpEd for The New York Times. But nobody ever mentions the name Charles Saatchi — the art collector and dealer who is among the primary reasons that so many people know Hirst’s name and work.

A significant player in global advertising since the Mad Men days, Saatchi bought up large amounts of work by a set of young artists working in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when their work could be bought cheaply. Then in 1997 he launched the infamous exhibition, Sensations, filled with work hand-selected (and owned) by this man who spent his career learning precisely how to press people’s buttons through advertising. As was reported in the Times, Saatchi himself donated funds to make sure the exhibition would go forward, while also actively stirring the pot of controversy building in the media (i.e. free advertising) around some of the works on display, which included a portrait of the Madonna by Chris Ofili that was made up of, among other things, pornographic imagery and elephant dung, as well as another portrait by Marcus Harvey of the convicted murderer Myra Hindley created using the handprints of children. Not long after that, Saatchi went on to sell a number of the works at auction for record prices—money that went back to Saatchi in that instance, not the artists. In a climate when we’re looking more closely at all the ways that people of great wealth are able to manipulate certain markets to their own benefit, it’s worth noting that this kind of thing goes on regularly in some segments of the art world.

And if Damien Hirst is so many people’s poster boy for the visual arts world, it’s hard not to notice that he’s white, British and male. As indicated above, the arts are often far worse than most fields when it comes to achieving parity for women, as well as minorities.

Another response to artists not being paid is that artists chose to live a life of poverty, so they can’t expect to be paid for their work. Or an extension of that thinking — that artists are elitist and privileged and make obscure work that nobody cares about, so they shouldn’t be paid. Or the Neoconservative version of these same assertions — that it’s a free-market economy and if they don’t get paid it’s because nobody wants to pay.

But, in the case of the Whitney Biennial, for instance, we’re talking about artists being shown in a prominent cultural institution. According to the Art Newspaper, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and the Guggenheim together attracted close to 10 million visitors in 2010 — more than the entire population of the five boroughs. And all of New York’s top art museums either request or require that visitors pay to view the works on display. These are artists who have been recognized in their field and are having their work viewed by large numbers of people, who, by and large, are paying to view it. The artists who generate the work are the reason we all show up and that museums are able to find funding, yet they often go unpaid.

The fact is that the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) devotes less than 2% of its meager budget to direct grants to individual artists. State arts agencies spend only 3% of their grant dollars on individual artists. The bulk of philanthropy in the arts goes to only 2% of the nation’s arts institutions, who are among those with the largest budgets. And we know that many of those institutions don’t pay the artists whose work they show. Everybody keeps shifting the responsibility of sustaining artists (the real lifeblood of the arts) to some other group; meanwhile, the money keeps finding its way into the coffers of the few who hold the most power and the purse strings.

As the NEA said in its own 2008 report, Artists in the Workforce: “The time has come to insist on an obvious but overlooked fact—artists are workers.” 

W.A.G.E.: 2010 Artists Survey Results Presentation and Open Forum takes place tonight, Friday, April 20 at 7pm at Artists Space (55 Walker Street, Soho, Manhattan)

Ava Duvernay fades to black

I absolutely loved Ava's first film titled 'I Will Follow'. Check it out if the Tyler Perry offerings aren't your cup of tea (definitely not mine!). This snippet of an interview brings out some great points for artists in general:

The great Saul Williams

Interview with Saul Williams

Saul performs 'Black Stacey'

Dr. Myrtle Glascoe - My Beginning

Awhile back I wrote a tribute to one of my art mentors, Dr. Leo Twiggs. In that post I wrote about our first meeting in my apartment when he curated my first real exhibition at the Halsey Gallery on the College of Charleston's campus. I briefly mentioned that the exhibit was a part of the opening celebration of the Avery Research Center, which at that time was under the leadership and guidance of Dr. Myrtle Glascoe. It has often become cliche to state that 'this thing, event or person' changed one's life, but in this case, cliche is fact. That cliche was Dr. Myrtle Glascoe.

 

Dr. Myrtle Glascoe

In 1990, I worked at an art gallery one block from the College of Charleston and was in the earliest phase of pursuing an art career. I had little to no direction and was doing what every early artist does, trying different styles and pursuing sales in any medium you thought the public would glom onto. I was exhibiting some art at the gallery where I worked, but was growing dissatisfied with the resultant work and was desperately trying to find a voice to call my own. There were a few pieces that I was playing around with that would eventually morph into my current visual state, but I couldn't see it at the time.

Fate would show up in the form of Beki Crowell, another local artist that had a vision for the disenfranchised mass of artists seeking to show their work and legitimize themselves in the Charleston art market. Beki envisioned an exhibition called 'Freedom Space' and enlisted my help in putting that together. The idea was to rent a space and invite any and all artists to display their work. No one would be turned down and guaranteed at least 2 works would be exhibited (dependent on size constraints). I had two works of art in that exhibition.

Dr. Glascoe was organizing an exhibit, curated by Dr. Twiggs, as part of the opening festivities of Avery. There were to be 5 artists exhibiting and 4 of international renown had already been selected. She was on the lookout for a local artist to join the fray and stumbled upon 'Freedom Space' and chose my work to be a part of the exhibition. I received a phone call from her in which she outlined the exhibit and asked to meet with me in her office a few days later.

On occasion, I had seen Dr. Glascoe on the campus and at a few events, but had never met her and couldn't place the name with the face. From those earlier sightings I had quickly surmised in a single glance that she was a woman of deep substance. She carried that 'no nonsense' aura one associates with people of great intellect and purpose - the kind you didn't approach lest you waste their time with your foolish prattling - and if introduced, you immediately know that it was best that you to kept your mouth shut and offer only the most fleeting of responses to any questions tossed your way. I imagine I would react the same way today upon meeting Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou. In a word, the woman scared the hell out of me.

I knocked on Dr. Glascoe's door with the bravado and arrogance of youth. After all, hadn't she been so impressed with my art that she had chosen me to display with this so-called international cast of characters? The moment I entered and saw her seated behind the desk, the wind left my sails. She glanced up at me over her reading glasses and motioned for me to sit in a chair opposite her desk, then continued to read and pen notes on a document that was clearly more important than my visit. This simple act reinforced my fear of the woman and I sat straight backed like a fourth grader in the Principal's office and tried not to fidget while she worked. I sat there for what seemed like a lifetime until she afforded me her attention. She told me about the exhibition and the history of Avery Normal, then informed me that Dr. Leo Twiggs, the curator, would call and stop by my 'studio' (I was too embarrassed to tell her that I didn't have a studio and worked in my livingroom) to select works for the exhibition. I was so green at the time I had no idea that 'curators' were in charge of exhibits and selected or commissioned works for display. 

I wrote about that painful visit with Dr. Twiggs earlier. It can be read by clicking here.

The day after Dr. Twiggs left, I met Dr. Glascoe outside the entrance to the Halsey Gallery to deliver my art. While she was unlocking the door, I looked through the glass entrance and was humbled and floored by one vision - an immense work of art by Tarleton Blackwell titled  'Green Dragon 1'. The massive triptych looked like it was moving before my very eyes. I had never seen anything that intense in my life and knew at once that I was in above my head. His work dominated the first floor of the gallery. My work was to be hung on the second floor and upon arrival, what little dignity I had left was mocked into submission by the sculptural work of Winston Wingo, hand dyed and woven silk garments by Carol Anderson and the multi-color woodcuts of Bahamian, Maxwell Taylor. I literally felt weak and sick and wanted to cry. My art was a sad joke compared to these artists and I wanted to run and hide. If I could have pulled out of the exhibit I would have. What a fool I had been to believe that I had the goods or ability to display in the same space as these artists! Dr. Glascoe glanced at me and saw my distress. She edged closer, hugged me around the waist and patted my back. I remember telling her that I didn't belong here and asking her why? She told me words that I have never forgotten to this day: 

"I see something in you, young man. You have the potential to become a great artist one day, but you must start taking your art more seriously. Maybe this will give you the incentive to study harder and apply yourself."

The rest of that afternoon was a blur. I remember going home (what a long drive that was), crawling in bed and putting the pillow over my head, wondering if I should even bother to show up at the opening. I did. I found a corner and remained there, trying not be noticed while watching Tarleton Blackwell hold court with his many admirers. I wanted to say something to him but was too afraid to approach him lest he find out that I was the artist who ruined the exhibit by putting my crap on the walls. I revered the man and it would take 5 years before I had the courage to speak to him during a group exhibition at SC State College.

Dr. Glascoe's call to arms did not go unheeded. In the following months I destroyed nearly all of the decorative work I had previously created and embarked upon the path of discovery outlined by her and Dr. Twiggs. Since I never went to art school, I picked up every book I could find and read the biographies of many artists - my favorites being Aaron Douglas, William Johnson, Warhol, Matisse and Modigliani. I was not concerned with the how of their art, but by the why. Why did they do what they did? What were they trying to convey in their work and how had their lives and experiences influenced and informed their art? I turned my back on the commercial art market and took the road less traveled which has brought me to where I am today. It has not been a financially successful journey, but creatively, it has yielded riches and I wouldn't trade the journey for anything. This is where I belong and if I remain true to the art it will all work out. I believe that.

I lost track of Dr. Glascoe sometime in the mid 90's when she moved to the Midwest and I to Los Angeles to write for television. We reconnected last year at the funeral of Charleston's legendary jazz enthusiast, Jack McCray. She's moving a bit slower these days but the intensity and intellect remains, now equaled by the respect and depth of gratitude I owe this woman who singularly pulled me from obscurity and set my feet on the path. My heart rose and skipped a beat when I saw her at the panel discussion for my current exhibit. I will cherish the photo above and have it framed - not for the sake of reminiscence - but as a reminder that within each of us resides an opportunity to encourage and challenge the potential we see in others, and in doing so, perhaps change the course of a misdirected life for the better. Thank you, Dr. Myrtle Glascoe. 

Congrats to Carolina Arts!

Tom Starland's Carolina Arts on-line publication usually averages about 80,000 downloads a month. The April issue has exceeded 100,000 downloads in the first 13 days of April - setting a record....so far. Can't wait to see what the final months tally will be. I'd love to believe that my art on the cover along with 2 full pages on the interior had something to do with this - but I'm not that narcissistic. Tom has done a marvelous job with the pub and I hope that this is not an anomaly.  You can download the issue here: Carolina Arts

Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd recently responded to a media story about her looking 'puffy' in the face. I thought a portion of her missive fit nicely with my attitude towards the distracting influences I run across in the art world.

"I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. I thus abstain from all media about myself. The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. Of course, it’s wonderful to be held in esteem and fond regard by family, friends, and community, but a central part of my spiritual practice is letting go of otheration. And casting one’s lot with the public is dangerous and self-destructive, and I value myself too much to do that." 

- Ashley Judd

Plantation - (plan-ta-shun) Exhibit Installation

Here are some images from the recently opened exhibition at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC. I have some pics from the opening reception as well as the gallery talk and panel discussion (both were standing room only!).

 

 

Carolina Arts downloads

Tom Starland and the fine folks over at Carolina Arts graciously placed my art on the cover of their April issue. The magazine used to be a hard copy about a year ago but transitioned into digital 'print' and now can only be downloaded. It seems that the recent issue has seen the most downloads to date. Tom speculates on the reasons on his latest blog post: 

Posts Tagged ‘Colin Quashie’

Tracking the Download Numbers for the April 2012 Issue of Carolina Arts
Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

At the first of the year I stated that I was finished with giving monthly reports on how the paper was doing as far as downloads go – once as a first ten day report and than again at the end of the month. And it’s been great reporting in my commentary in the paper that ever since the Dec. 2011 issue we have been seeing over 80,000 downloads a month.

But now, we reached a new level that I think deserves reporting – mostly because so many people are responsible in helping distribute this paper by forwarding on my monthly notice that the paper is ready to be downloaded to their friends and contacts by e-mail. I’ve described this process compared to me throwing a stone into a body of water and as that wave from that stone reaches others around the Carolina visual art community they throw a stone which reaches others who repeat the process. It’s a process where many waves are heading in all directions. Those waves are most active in the first ten days of the month. Sometimes a few stones are thrown later in the month and a few might get tossed near the end of the month. But, the bulk of the downloads each month come in the first ten days of the month.

I want to thank all those folks who are part of that process and hope they keep it up each month. Because of you I can report that in the first nine days of April there have been 90,126 downloads of the April 2012 issue of Carolina Arts – amazing!!! I couldn’t wait for the results of day ten to tell you this news.

Up to this point our largest number of downloads for an issue came is Jan. 2012 with 84,244 downloads. I was thinking that with that number coming in January we could slowly climb higher and higher by May and June, but February and March saw a slight dip – still over 80,000, but not climbing.

Out of the blue, our April issue became our largest issue to date with 79 pages and we made the decision to go back and rerun an article about an exhibit by Colin Quashie that we included in our March issue, but this time feature his works on our cover and a few pages inside the paper – at a larger size than usual. We can’t tell if it was the bigger issue or Quashie’s images that drew so much more attention to the paper, but we’re very glad to see these numbers. But, it’s my guess that the images had a lot to do with it.

Plantation Monopoly (Entire Game) by Colin Quashie, 20” x 20”, Print on Masonite Board. Photo by Rick Rhodes.

 

There’s no telling what the end of the month will bring. The downloads could drop like a lead brick or go somewhere we have only dreamed of seeing. But we thought you might like to know this info and frankly I was dying to tell you.

If for some reason you haven’t downloaded this issue the link is (http://www.carolinaarts.com/412/412carolinaarts.pdf). And if you would like to throw some stones of your own in the water – use that same link. You could be part of something historic.

Redux Mural almost done

Still have some finishing touches to put on it but we're getting there. Thanks to all the Redux interns from the College of Charleston who have lent a helping hand and much priase to my adopted sister Dana Campbell for all her hard work! Love ya, my dear!. I seriously doubt that i will have it completely finished before the opening but viewers will get the point. Besides, it's going to be up until September.

Carolina Arts love

Tom Starland's Carolina Arts monthly arts newspaper is chocked full of news and articles about gallery and museum opening across the Carolina's. He decided to put me on the cover and also add a couple pages in the middle showcasing some of the works in the exhibition. Thank you, sir! 

Publicly Censored

Well, this is a first. Though my art has been censored 6 times in the past, this is the first time that it has been done so in such a blatant fashion. In a move that some may see as folly, I see brilliance. Not only has the deft move diffused a potentially tenuous position for the publisher of the City Paper, it is so audacious and blatant that it reeks of stunt and reduces the impact of the image to the level of gimmickry while at the same time driving traffic to their website. Not only is there an elephant in the room, it's serving hors d'oeuvres, taking drink orders and telling jokes. Well done. I'll have further comments on this issue later on, but for now - here is the full article. 

COVER:

 

Is this work of art by Colin Quashie inflammatory or does it only tell the truth?
Censored
by Chris Haire

According to Janie Askew, the executive director of Redux Contemporary Art Center, there are three feelings that viewers might experience when they're confronted with one of Colin Quashie's works: First is mirth, then guilt, and finally sadness. We agree with Askew. After all, we here at the City Paper experienced these exact same emotions when we first saw Quashie's biting, satirical pieces.

From "Rainbro Row" to "Black People Love Pork Because Africa is Shaped Like a Pork Chop," the local contemporary artist has plenty to say about race, America's shameful past, and our future. And time and time again, he does so in the cleverest — and most uncomfortable — ways. Which is why we chose to run Quashie's "Slaveship Sardines" on the cover of this week's issue.

However, after much debate in the City Paper offices over a single word on this image, the decision was made to cover it up. Were we right or were we just being overly sensitive? Is it time to finally discuss America's past in its entirety or should we just try to forget it? Scroll down and judge for yourself.

ARTICLE:

Colin Quashie's pointed response to the world around him
Op-Ed Art
by Susan Cohen

 

Plantation Monopoly is a board game that viewers will be encouraged to play during the exhibit's run

It may be difficult to spot Colin Quashie's second-story studio if you aren't explicitly looking for it. An indistinct C and Q pasted to a glass door are the only clues that something else goes on in this standalone brick-and-concrete building on Upper King Street besides the haircuts that take place in the first-floor barber shop. It doesn't help that the logo gives a better impression of a cloud than a formal set of initials, the puffy and bulbous letters joined together in a cartoonish fashion. So instead, a better sign of what happens on the second story may be in the downstairs shop, where one of Quashie's works hangs on a wall near the wide windows. 

Upstairs, you may hear quick and cool jazz, with the occasional overpowering spurt of gospel coming in from below. When the artist acquired his space a little more than two years ago, the hair cuttery was an accountant's office. 

Inside, the studio is a wide, tidy room, anchored by a coffee table surrounded by a handful of wicker chairs. Venture too far from this oasis, and you might bump into a more than six-foot-tall accordion-like birch panel advertising an alternate universe's housing development or brush against a framed poster leaning on a partition. Quashie has no gallery representation, so this space offers an unofficial retrospective of his decades-long career. During the 20 or 30 hours a week the artist typically spends here, the studio has played host to MFA classes and arbitrary visitors, sometimes more than a dozen at a time. Someone familiar with his body of work can delight in spotting Quashie's signature characters on his walls, like his appropriation of Charles Schultz's Franklin, the token black character of Peanuts. 

When a show of his closes, no matter how notable, Quashie usually takes his work home with him. He doesn't sell many — or really any — of his compositions. His art is not something you can inexplicably hang in your living room; Oprah's grinning face on a ruby-red box of Auntie Jemima pancake and waffle mix probably wouldn't match many sofas, and his tourist-poster spoof "Rainbro Row," with its vividly painted slave cabins, would make little sense in a sunny, white-washed vacation home. Other work is less tangible, like the "blackbored," a chalkboard he often installs in show spaces; he'll have it set up in the foyer at Redux Contemporary Art Center, where his show The Plantation (Plan-ta-shun) officially begins a run on March 30. Or the exhibit's signature board game, Plantation Monopoly, complete with deeds, paper money, and slaves and mules up for sale.

Like many of his peers, Quashie has taken the time to craft an artist's statement, but this type of work doesn't require an esoteric explanation of its greater purpose. It is about race. It is political. It is emotional. Even in its best moments, it can be garish and aggressive, impeccable in its delivery but uneasy in its message. It is meant to start a conversation, and, for better or worse, it does.

And that message surges from an unassuming man in glasses, who on our visit is wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and a baseball cap marked with the "F" and alligator of the University of Florida, the college he attended for a few semesters. Quashie is a former Navy man, comedy writer, and Emmy Award-winner. He lives on Carolina Street with his wife of 11 years, Cathy. He has two stepdaughters and two grandkids. He wakes up at six every morning and drives Cathy to work, then spends a few hours planning, catching up on paperwork, and writing — he has a short film that's currently being shot in Atlanta — before doing what helps pay his bills: maintenance work, like installing ceiling fans. It gives him flexible hours. Then he'll spend his afternoons in this studio, sometimes working well into the night if he's deep into a specific piece. 

Most remarkably, Quashie is a Charleston artist who hasn't exhibited a solo show in the city since 2005. "He is among the best artists working anywhere today, but most people in Charleston have no idea what he does," says Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art Executive Director Mark Sloan, who has known and worked with Quashie since the early '90s, and who has dealt with the controversies that come as a result of an inflammatory Quashie show.

"I call it anger, not that I'm angry," the artist says of his motivation. "I always hate using the word anger because people never seem to understand it. They always think, you know, you're the angry black man. No, no, no. It's not that at all." Instead, he likens his aesthetic to Bob Dylan writing an anti-war song. "This is my op-ed. This is basically what it is. Art is my op-ed. It is how I respond to things, and that's what I'm passionate about — responding to things around me that make an impression on me."

Quashie wants to add to the dialogue, to have a conversation, and to ask questions. It just so happens that he does so by producing a mixed-media sculpture of Africa-shaped pork chops encased beneath the Piggly Wiggly mascot, a provocative version of the kind you'd buy at the grocery store for $3.55.

When the City Paper met with Quashie a few weeks ago, many of the works that will be featured in Plantation still littered his studio. As he flits around the space, brainstorming new ideas about whether to hang pages from a notebook or where he may be able to find miniature atomizers for cologne samples, you get the sense that parts of the show may still be a work in progress.

"This is the first time in my art career that I've ever put together a cohesive show," he explains. "I usually do one to two or three or four pieces, and then I move on to something else, because I guess I'm more of a journalistic or social commentator of sorts. So whatever kind of strikes me at the moment is what I work on. All of this could possibly change within another two months and I could be on to something totally different. It's just that I noticed that recently a lot of the pieces I've been working on seem to have a throughline, and the throughline seemed to be the plantation."

Redux's then-executive director Karen Ann Myers initially contacted Quashie last spring about hosting the show. "I sat with Colin on the panel for the Under the Radar exhibition [a collaborative show between the City Gallery and the Halsey], and it reminded me how powerful his artwork is and how important his voice is for the city and the region," she says. "The city of Charleston is famous for celebrating its history, for good reason, but in fairness, the story is complex, and it should go without saying that that complexity deserves our attention and recognition."

Plantation is not about slavery. As Quashie says, no one, black or white, wants to talk about slavery. Instead, the show deals with different aspects of plantation life, the pros and the cons. Ultimately, it is about the past and the present.

"Charleston is so much about the past," Quashie says. "The South basically glorifies the past. As far as they're concerned, the past isn't the past. It's still the present. So that's what we market, that's what we sell, but we do it in a lot of different ways, and plantations are a mirror of that. Plantations are in the present, but they reflect the past, and depending on your sensibilities and the way you look at the plantation system tells a lot about what your sensibilities are." Quashie's vision is nothing like the modern money shots of hanging moss and white weddings you'll see on decadent blogs or in a luxury magazine — his is harsher and truer to their dark history.

For each new piece produced for the show, Quashie took a part of that past and connected it to something the audience will know from the present. The gallery's outer wall has already been painted to ape the Parker Brothers' game, with the massive outdoor artwork reflecting the smaller version he has produced for the exhibit. Redux's mural has been labeled with the familiar blue and green rectangles that signify the game's most expensive properties, but Boardwalk and Park Place have been replaced with Magnolia Plantation and Boone Hall. The playable Plantation Monopoly will be set up inside, and Quashie sincerely hopes he'll come in some time during the show's more than month-long run to find patrons actually playing it. 

"It's the exact same game, except that everything has just been reconfigured," he says, but certain adjustments have been made to reflect familiar Charleston landmarks and historical concepts. "I even rewrote all of the rules and everything like that. And of course, instead of hotels, once you get four slaves, you can buy yourself a mule to work on your plantation." There's "Change" instead of "Chance," and a Confederate Chest. Mr. Moneybags is still a central character, rewarding players with $100 if their slave mistress gives birth to mulatto twins. Instead of going directly to jail, you must pray for abolition in a Quaker church, and the railroad system is of the underground variety.

It might be a bold move for the gallery to give Quashie such a public canvas, considering that The Black American Dream, his show for the 1996 MOJA Festival, was brusquely relocated at the last minute, with a security guard installed outside to protect the prying eyes of youth from Quashie's expression about a black person's feelings of mediocrity compared to the white man ("Black is ignorant. Black is lazy."). Luckily, Redux has given the artist free rein. "Because we are a nonprofit, we are not limited by the saleability of work, therefore our artists are allowed to experiment and push boundaries," says Janie Askew, Redux's current executive director. "Colin thrives in this type of environment. He is certainly not one to be limited."

When guests of the show first walk into Redux, they will be welcomed into a mini-classroom, complete with a wooden desk-chair and the installed blackbored. In previous shows, Quashie has posed questions like "George Washington is often referred to as the 'father of our country.' So ... why are there no white people with the last name, Washington?" This time around, he ponders, "If slavery ended so long ago, it has no impact on the present. But there are people yet living who knew someone who was either a slave or a slave owner, then ..." (The City Paper has taken some liberties with punctuation, as the quote was spoken to us and not read directly off the blackbored.)

Visitors will be encouraged to write their responses to the query in a spiral-bound notebook, which Quashie keeps for himself at the end of the show. Today, the artist flips through pages from a previous blackbored, one inspired by Dr. Laura Schlessinger's racist blowup in August 2010, and the N-word litters the replies in all sorts of bubbly, slanty, and sloppy handwriting. Quashie goes through these answers and decides on the one that is most correct, though no one is truly ever correct. The closest gets a free print.

As they continue into Redux, visitors will see screenprints, acrylic paintings, mixed-media, and more. Quashie is a rare artist who balances quality and quantity, and as impressive as his ideas are the many ways he chooses to express them. "I have no mediums. I refuse to restrict myself," he says. "I refuse to allow myself to be static when it comes to any one particular medium. I don't understand why artists do that. It just makes no sense to me whatsoever. One of my favorite quotes is an old Abraham Maslow. It says: 'If your only tool is a hammer, you tend to look at every problem as a nail.'" He doesn't think you can address every particular subject in the same exact way — different topics require different tools. "Sometimes I have to do it as a coloring book. Sometimes I have to do it as just words or maybe an oil painting or something."

But whether he wants to hit the viewer over the head with an idea or use a bit more finesse, he almost always utilizes advertising and other forms of modern iconography. "Then your battle is already half done. Why reinvent the wheel?" he asks. "All I have to do now is just tweak it, and not comedically or anything like that — real life."

In Plantation, a timecard stands tall, marking the long hours a slave would work each day, including weekends. The brochure for Plantation Properties takes descriptions from a modern housing development to detail the amenities of slave cabins. Plantation palettes offer color samples, like Whip-or-Will and Bar-B-Crew, for your mansion.

Another piece uses text straight from old fugitive slave posters, only the word "Reward" has been changed to "Resumé." And a plantation magazine, complete with an editor's note, offers a sample of Mandingo cologne and advertisements for Fledex and J. Crow clothing. (Quashie once envisioned a show conceptualized around a department store, with real clothing produced for his J. Crow brand. He promises that any connection to the well-known J. Crew is purely accidental; it took a friend to point out the connection between the fictional brand and the nonfictional one for Quashie to even realize it). 

And there is a different part of Plantation, once you pass through the images of scarred backs and burning bodies, to another section of the gallery. It is a softer side, both in meaning and in presentation, with pieces in gentle colors, paintings that will temper the volume of Quashie's louder works.

"I realized I was kind of getting out there a little bit as far as the cynicism was concerned, and so I wanted to pull it back in, because the bottom line is I also wanted to talk about who were the real people who lived on these plantations," he says. Quashie found photographs of former slaves, now left to their own devices in an unfriendly world, on the Library of Congress' website, and he wanted to make them larger in life. In one painting, a man poses in a slightly crumpled blue suit, a white beard decorating his tired face, his wife and home in black-and-white behind him.

The plain background is meant to represent the past. The colorful subject is the future.

There was a time when Colin Quashie was a commercial artist.

When he started in the 1990s, his work was available in galleries, and people bought it. He did fairly well, but it wasn't his style. He was doing derivative stuff that he knew would sell, and at one point he even got a commission for some wildlife work. "You already saw the path that you were on," he says. "It's either you are going to stay on this path, or get off now. Hurry up and get off right now. So I jumped off.

He was also working at a gallery at the time, and he bore witness to the power play between dealers and the dealt. Like, "This sold. Can we get two more like it? Someone's asking you to do this." 

His peers would do as they were told. "And I'm like, wow. That's a job. It's like the passion has been sucked out of you and now you're just servicing the market," he says. "I can't allow my art to go in that direction. I won't allow it to. That's never, ever, ever, ever going to happen."

Still, he needed to find something that he was passionate about. And when he created his "EBONY Magazine (Issues Ir-relevant to Black America)" piece, a cartoon mock-up that stands out in bright yellow on a wall in his studio, he says that's when the clouds parted.

As a result of his epiphany, Quashie rarely sells his work. He is not a commercial artist and has no intentions of ever becoming one. "People don't want this crap on their walls," he laughs. He does sell a piece every now and then, and he's starting to get more inquiries. He's also searching for a new art agent. "I just don't want to be Mr. Poster. It's just too personal to me, and I don't want to have to service the machine.

But that's not to say that he's never gotten a lucrative commission — last year, he was recruited by actor Laurence Fishburne to create a portrait of his wife, actress Gina Torres. (You can see it on Quashie's blog, quashieart.blogspot.com). Nevertheless, Quashie has turned down other offers, because he's not going to paint your dog. "I don't want my art to become my job. It's my passion, and if I can sell my passion, then that's fine, but if I can't, then I'll just continue doing what I'm doing. I work as a maintenance man now to pay my bills. And if I never sell a piece of artwork again, then so be it," he says.

In the meantime, he has his daily job, plus freelance design work, and he teaches at Charlotte's Innovation Institute four or five times a year. He may have to work outside of art to pay his bills, but it gives him time to mentally construct, analyze, and plan for upcoming exhibitions, including four more this year. "Eventually, I do want my passion to become my job as something I can earn a living from, just not a job as in a chore."

Quashie doesn't criticize the gallery system, because galleries are businesses. Personally, he's afraid of becoming a commodity. "Once you fall into the gallery system, you're kind of at the hands of what people are willing to purchase." That's why he's gone through a number of art agents: They were trying to sell the art, not the artist. "Once you start following that ship, you get off track of what it is you're ultimately trying to accomplish. Sometimes there's no going back. Once you get known for painting red, it's hard to shift over and tell people 'I really, really like painting blue.'" Quashie doesn't ever want to be expected. He wants to be anticipated.

And Plantation surely accomplishes that. Both the artist and Redux have received nothing but positive response to the show, which could be due to the scarcity of such an opportunity. If Mark Sloan had his way, Quashie would have a show at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City. "His work is that caliber, but there are many intermediate steps that need to take place in order for that to happen, but I predict it will, and soon," he says. "Quashie is a nationally significant artist that happens to live in Charleston. I think his work offers a scathing critique of America. His voice is strong, his ideas provocative, and his message is essential."

And yet you're never going to be able to stroll through the French Quarter and stumble upon one of his pieces. When Plantation closes, it might be a long time before we see such a breadth of material from Quashie in Charleston again.

Regardless, considering Quashie isn't a frequent celebrity on the local First Friday circuit, the city's art scene is certainly one that he's proud of. "I brag on the Charleston contemporary art community," he says, crediting figures like Sloan and spaces like Redux and the Halsey, as well as Rebekah Jacob Gallery and Robert Lange Studios. "Ten, 15 years ago, that wasn't the case," he says. "My god, it was dead. This place was horrible. It was run by the watercolor society, it seems like it, the watercolor and the poster artists. This was the place where contemporary art went to die."

Sadly, he can't boast about a community of contemporary black artists in the same way. He's not saying they don't exist, but he's not personally aware of them.

There may be three stages of reaction to a Colin Quashie piece, as Janie Askew describes. First is mirth, in the form of laughter. That is followed by guilt, which in turn is followed by sadness.

"I stand by the fact that contemporary art is not always easily digestible for the masses," she says. "The best art invokes emotions and thought. Colin's work just so happens to be provocative, and I am proud to be affiliated with an art organization that supports that.

Unfortunately, it can be a quick jump from provocative to offensive, depending on the eyes of the beholder. Quashie's work used to upset people. "That was my fault," he admits. "I used to make a lot of statements in my artwork. I used to use my artwork as a sounding board by which to make statements, and I realized that that was wrong. You can't do that. You can if you want to, but you're more effective by asking someone a question rather than telling them a statement." Quashie had to learn how to take himself out of the equation. That doesn't mean he's not present in his work, but he is more objective in the way he approaches it.

Most importantly, he started painting facts, not truth. "I got rid of truth. Truth will get you in trouble, because truth is subjective. Ten different people, that's 10 different truths. Ten different people, there's only one fact." It's a lesson he learned from the comedy writing he did in the '90s for MadTV and other shows. You can lay out the truth, and just tweak it a little bit. The way that he chooses to articulate that one fact is where things can get subjective, but you still can't argue with the facts. Every little detail on his Monopoly board is a fact. So if someone gets upset, there's no blow-back on Quashie. That's something the viewer is dealing with, something internal that they're pissed off about.

Still, criticism still comes in from all across the board, black and white, young and old. "People are so nonsensical sometimes in what their passions are," he says. "You can't call it. You really can't. And I've given up trying." He was once cursed out by a black woman who told him he needed to be more responsible to his community. Benedict College, a historically black school in Columbia, shut down a show over a massive painting of Jesus Christ on the cover of CQ magazine. Its teasers questioned conservative backlash to gay culture, advertising stories like "Nature, Nurture, or Nomenclature? 'Can a man be born (again) gay?'" The college thought he was promoting homosexuality.

Once, an elderly white woman in Orangeburg called him a racist to his face. "But the fact that she stood there and came to me ... you have to respect that," he says. "We actually had an incredible conversation."

He'll be able to hear direct responses to Plantation at a panel discussion at Redux on April 7 at 3 p.m., entitled "Idea and Meaning in the Art of Colin Quashie." It will be moderated by Frank Martin, a doctoral scholar in the African-American Professors program at the University of South Carolina who curated an exhibit with Quashie in 2005. The artist is not actively participating in the panel, but he'll be in the audience, bearing witness as people like Mark Sloan interpret his work.

"Miss Margaret" is a work in progress, a lovingly vivid portrait of a neighbor of Quashie's that stands incomplete in the front nook of his studio. At first, he wanted to compose her out of charcoal. "I like the look of charcoal, but I can't stand the tactile feel of charcoal. I hate it. I hate that dusty shit," he says. So instead, he painted the canvas in a solid tone to create a kind of colored paper, and he's in the process of painting over this base with oils to get the same kind of appearance as the powdery medium. Miss Margaret will be part of "Faces of Color," the new direction that Quashie is heading into.

"I'm starting to repeat myself, which is something I absolutely refuse to do, I hate doing. I can't stand it," he says. "I may paint something two or three times, then it's time to move on. I've done that. Let's keep going."

"Miss Margaret" is a sensible evolution of the portraits that will hang in the back of Redux, and a much gentler interpretation of Quashie's overall goal of addressing issues of race. While this painting and the one he has hanging in the barbershop below him may not be so blatantly argumentative, they still manage to address his issues with race. But, "Don't worry. There's more cynical stuff coming," Quashie tells us.

"I just want a dialogue. I just want people to gather information," he says of Plantation. "There's a lot of people in this city who may look at plantations from one perspective and one perspective only, and I want them to be able to come to this exhibition and to look at them and say, 'Oh, I didn't realize that.'" He hopes that a nudge from his work can lead to a greater discussion. "I guess they can have that conversation in the way that they choose to approach things, in the way that they think about things, to take other people's perspectives into question sometimes. That's something I do as an artist. Before I paint anything, you always have to weigh the pros and the cons ... And that goes a long way, when people do that in every facet of life."

Decisions, decisions

I think I am supposed to be on the cover of the Charleston City Paper tomorrow, but as of this posting, I'm not so sure. A little background: The City Paper showed me a lot of love when they heard that I would be exhibiting at Redux Studios and wrote a very nice blurb about the exhibition:

Redux never fails to keep us on our toes with their choice of exhibits — vampire furniture, anyone? — but they have one coming up that we’re truly excited for: Colin Quashie’s The Plantation (Plan-ta-shun).

Although arguably one of Charleston’s greatest artists, Quashie tends to fly under the radar with few official gallery shows.

 

Soon thereafter, they contacted me about doing a feature article on the exhibition and sent out Susan Cohen to interview me. Nice girl, I liked her. I was then informed by the editor, Chris Haire, that they intended to put me on the cover. Hurray! I had no intention of allowing a picture of myself to grace the cover, but having a nice piece of art to promote the exhibit would be nice. I had the Plantation Monopoly game photographed by the great Rick Rhodes and submitted that along with a few other images to support the inside story (which I hope will be a flattering portrayal and not have me coming off as narcissistic or worse yet, an idiot). I have a great deal of respect for print writers and try not to interfere with their stories by leading them in any particular direction. I just answer their questions as truthfully and completely as possible and let them do their thing. You get what you get - deal with it. They then sent out a photographer for a portrait shot which I begrudgingly yielded to - I hate taking photo's. 

Last week I was contacted by Scott Suchy, the Art Director, and told that they couldn't use the Plantation Monopoly piece on the cover because it was too busy - there's a lot of moving parts in the pic and they still had to run headlines for other stories - I understood. He suggested the image of the SlaveShip Sardines piece since it had a lot of gray area around it and would make a great editorial cover. I responded - "Bold Choice" - which it was considering that the piece contained the dreaded 'N-word' in the ingredients on the can label which states; Partially Dehydrated Niggers. Admittedly, it isn't the choice I would have made, but then again, I'm not in the print business and it's not as if the word is hidden. I silently applauded their courage and since the word wasn't gratuitous and was in context with the image and the overall exhibition, I didn't pursue and wished us all well - after all, this is Charleston, SC and I dare say that I doubt the word has ever graced their cover. 

This afternoon while driving to Charlotte for yet another session with the Innovation Institute, I received a call from Chris Haire. He stated that the Publisher refused to sign off on the printing (the issue hits the newsstand tomorrow). Chris and the staff involved wanted to go to press and was arguing their case. He wanted to know what I thought. I made it a point to state that first and foremost I would wholeheartedly support and stand behind any decision they eventually made. After all, I understand the economic issues that comes with needless controversy. They could possibly lose advertisers and sponsors with the fallout and no one wants that.

 

As an artist, I support publishing as is and urged that they do so with the caveat that they include a blurb on the inside cover stating their case for running the cover as is. The other possibility was moving a headline to cover the offending word - but I think that that would be the cheap and easy way out, which is something I am not for, but alas, would once again support their decision. Chris called back and stated that another angle would be to point out the elephant in the room by blatantly censoring the cover, explain why they did so and point them to the website where they could see the full cover and respond. Cool compromise but my thoughts ran to the fact that since many people consume their media online, what was the point in censoring the print version and not censoring the online content? Chris asked if I was willing to write an op-ed in next week's paper if they did decide to publish as is and I assured him that not only would I do so, but would also rally other opinions to chime in and support their decision.

 

After a few more miles and many more thoughts on the matter, I called Chris and asked that he point out to the Publisher that this was was not Charleston's main conservative newspaper (Post & Courier), nor was it the tourist aimed magazine (Charleston Magazine). This is the City paper, a slightly left leaning arts and entertainment paper that does a marvelous job of doing what the other publications fail to do. If not here, then where? Sure, they may catch some flack, but in my opinion they would gain greater respect and readership for taking what I felt was a correct stand. Where exactly is the line in the sand that controversy crosses? As long as the potentially offensive image or idea isn't gratuitous and is in proper context and has some degree of artistic merit (and I feel that SlaveShip Sardines meets this criteria), then run it and stand behind it. 

I have yet to hear what their decision was (I assume they went to press as of this post) but will wake tomorrow and find out when everyone else does. As I stated earlier, I will cast my lot and stand with the paper. It sucks being mature but its the right thing to do. 

 

To see a larger image, click on the image or click here to see the posting on my website and download a wallpaper if you want.