Title:
Vicki Meek Subtitle:
History of Contemporary Art in Dallas Oral History Collection Thumbnail:
Vicki Meek is an artist, independent curator, cultural critic, educator, and manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center.
Interviewee: Vicki Meek Interviewer: Leigh Arnold Date: March 21, 2012 Location: South Dallas Cultural Center, 3400 South Fitzhugh, Dallas TX 75210
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Leigh Arnold: It’s Wednesday, March 21, 2012. We are here at the South Dallas Cultural Center in Dallas, Texas, and the following interview is part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s History of Contemporary Art in Dallas research project funded in part by the Texas Fund for Curatorial Research. I’m Leigh Arnold, project researcher at the DMA, and I will be speaking here with Ms. Vicki Meek, artist, independent curator, cultural critic, educator, and manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center. I just read that it’s your 15th-year anniversary of working here.
Vicki Meek: Actually, I'm in my 16th year.
LA: Congratulations.
VM: You’re short by a year.
LA: I will make a note of that. Well, thank you, Vicki for agreeing to be interviewed and joining me to have this as part of our History of Contemporary Art in Dallas project. It’s very important to have you here, so thank you.
VM: You're welcome.
LA: Great. So let’s start at the beginning. You haven’t always been a Texan.
VM: No, I have not. And in fact, Texans will tell you I'm still not a Texan.
LA: Really?
VM: Well, you have to be born a Texan, so there you go. But I've been here for 30 years, actually going on 31, and I came here from Connecticut where I used to work for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, but I'm a native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
[00:02:04]
LA: Great. How did you first become interested in art?
VM: Wow! Well, my family always had us involved in arts activities as little people. All of us would go to the museum that is sort of like a Sunday event. The family would trek down to the Philadelphia Art Museum. And so, I was very young when I decided I wanted to be an artist. I started taking formal art lessons when I was seven, and that was at Fleisher Memorial Art School [Fleisher Art Memorial] in Philadelphia. Many of the artists who came through Philly went to that art school. It was run by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and it was free to any public school kid that wanted to do it, and I was very enthused. All of us went there but I actually decided I was going to be an artist when I was eight.
LA: Wow!
VM: Yeah, a sculptor at that, not just an artist but a sculptor because I always took sculpture. I was always interested in three-dimensional arts. So my involvement with visual arts has been longstanding, and then my parents were collectors, so I saw art in the house. And then my brother—I had an older brother who started out as an artist but ended up being a jazz musician because he did music and art both. I did dance and visual art. He did music and visual art. So I was always really thrilled by what he was doing because his work was really good. He could have been either one, so that’s how I got started.
LA: Do you remember a particular work of art in Philadelphia’s collection that kind of turned you on?
VM: Well, two things, there were two pieces in the collection, and I should say that wasn’t the only museum that I would go to. I would also go to the Rodin Museum regularly and they were—obviously, all of their dance work was very exciting to me as a little sculptor. But in the Philadelphia Museum, the Duchamp glass piece was—
[00:04:00]
LA: Right, it’s the full title that’s long.
VM: It’s a long title. No, no, it’s—oh God, what was the title of it?
LA: It was something—it’s like [inaudible] [name of object is The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915–1923, Marcel Duchamp]
VM: Right. That one, I was just intrigued by it because I hadn’t seen anything like that as a sculpture, so that was very influential, but mainly the Rodin Museum. I kind of lived in that museum.
LA: That’s great. Good. So you go on to study art.
VM: I do. I was never allowed to be an art major. My parents would not let me be an art major at school because they felt like that was a real weak program, which it was. And so, I got my art classes on Saturdays. But I was an academic, straight academic student up until I graduated, and I went to RISD. That was my first school, Rhode Island School of Design, but I was going to be a fashion designer. That lasted about two minutes.
LA: Was that a way of combining your parents’ kind of—
VM: No, it was—because I thought I was going to be a fashion designer. I studied French in school and I always designed my sister’s doll clothes. I wasn’t very much into dolls but she was, and so I had—her Barbie had like furs and all kinds of beautiful clothing that I designed. So I thought I was going to be a fashion designer, and RISD had the best fashion program at that time (this was like 1967) in the country, and so I went there and quickly figured out that I was not fashion world material.
LA: What? What about that? Well, how did you make that decision?
VM: I can’t be phony. I just don’t know how. Everybody is kissing each other—this was in college just before they're even out in the world. This doesn’t bode well.
LA: Yeah.
[00:05:57]
VM: And quite frankly at that time, there were no blacks in that world of any stature and there weren’t very many women. I mean most of it was dominated by gay white males. I'm realist, and so I looked around and went, “This probably isn't going to work out.” So I switched to sculpture, and they did not have a very strong sculpture program at RISD at that time. So I guess my sophomore—in the beginning of my sophomore year, I transferred to Tyler School of Fine Arts [Tyler School of Art, Temple University] that did have a very strong sculpture program. So I went there and then I went overseas to the school in Rome. Actually, I should say that it was highly motivating but it really was a whole lot of fun.
LA: Good.
VM: I didn’t do a whole lot of work. I didn’t know when I was going to get back to Europe, so I figured I have to see everything I could see. But it was fabulous in terms of being exposed to such wonderful history. That was living history because to them, it’s not history. They lived off the trading down the street and that type of thing. So that was a great experience from the standpoint of getting to see a lot of art that I had seen in books.
LA: Right. Great, and then you go on to do some graduate work.
VM: I went to graduate school at University of Wisconsin—Madison.
LA: For your MFA?
VM: MFA, yeah.
LA: Right. So at this point, you are allowed to be an art major?
VM: Oh, no, no. Once I went to college, they made—they just wanted to make sure that if I changed my mind that I wouldn’t be stuck. If I decided I didn’t want to be an artist, I'd have an academic background and could go into anything that I wanted. That’s all they were concerned about because they knew that the training that I’d get at Fleisher would be far stronger than anything that I would ever get in public school anywhere.
LA: As far as arts?
VM: Yeah, so I wouldn’t be at a deficit for the art, but I would have been in a deficit if was an art major in high school.
LA: I got you, okay. And after your MFA, you go on to Kentucky?
[00:08:02]
VM: Well, yes. It turns out that I graduated early because I went to college at 16.
LA: Oh, my God.
VM: I graduated at 20.
LA: Doogie Howser.
VM: Not quite. So when I graduated—I got a BFA. When I graduated with a BFA, I was only 20 years old and so, no one was hiring me. So I said, “Well, I’ll just go on and get an MFA.” And then when I came back with my MFA, I was 23. I got my first teaching job and I was like as old as the students. Anyway, that was at Kentucky State University, and I chose Kentucky State, because I really wanted to teach at an HBCU.
LA: Can you describe that?
VM: Historically black colleges and universities, that’s what HBCU stands for, because I felt like I came from a highly political family and we’re always doing activist stuff and I didn’t know how I was going to be able to meld that with my art at the time. And so I thought, well maybe I can contribute by teaching at a black college and raising up that next generation of artists and that could be my contribution.
Well, here’s how it went down. As my dad said, in HBCU, we’ll make you do one of two things. You would either grow up quickly or you will lose your mind, and I did a little of both. But it was a great experience from the standpoint of teaching because I love the students. I'm not good with administrations. I don’t follow rules real well. I don’t have respect for authority. There are all these things that just I don’t have.
LA: Plus you were very young.
VM: I was young, yes. I was young and I was hotheaded and did a lot of things that you shouldn’t do in the university if you want tenure.
LA: Right.
VM: But I figured early on that no one is giving me a tenure anyway, so I could say what I wanted to say, do what I wanted to do and move on.
[00:10:02]
LA: Do you have any students from that time that you still keep in touch with?
VM: Yes. As a matter of fact, I do.
LA: That’s great.
VM: One in Indianapolis, that’s how I happen to know about (00:10:11 Max?), I sure do, because of his work there.
LA: Great.
VM: But it was a great experience from the standpoint of I was able to come into a brand new department, so I literally developed the sculpture program for them. They had never had African-American art history, so I really developed that program for them. So, there were a lot of great things that I was able to initiate and like I said, I loved the students, so that part was wonderful. Kentucky, a little challenging.
LA: I’m sure.
VM: Yeah, especially Frankfort, Kentucky, which is where the school was, the capital.
LA: And this has been in the early 1970s?
VM: Yes.
LA: Just right after the very, very hard period?
VM: Yeah, it was—
LA: A hard period?
VM: Well, I don't know if Kentucky ever really had a seriously hard period. I think it’s kind of—they were not clear what they were. South, they didn’t know what they were.
LA: Right.
VM: But it was a small town, and it definitely was a challenge going from what I'm used to in terms of art resources. I mean I would take my students to Louisville, but at that time, Louisville really didn’t even have a whole lot. So we would take field trips to Cincinnati, which had good museums, and then on occasion to Chicago, which was a much longer trip, but we did.
LA: It’s worth it.
VM: Yeah, oh yeah, because they had to see art. My thing is that you can't learn about art from books. You have to see some art. So I would try to get them out as much as possible.
LA: Good. And from Kentucky, you go to Connecticut, back north?
VM: Yeah. What happened was I ran the gallery program at Kentucky State and as a result of that, I had to start looking for resources because the college really didn’t have any, and I got acquainted with the Kentucky Arts Commission and figured out, “Oh wow, these people do this.”
And then I had some friends who were working for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and told me they had some jobs that were opening up, so I applied for them when I decided I needed to get back east because my baby sister was going to college and having some issues. So the family decided I was the one who was going to be able to get her through school. Well, she married the guy and dropped out. Okay.
LA: Yeah.
VM: But it turned out that that job that I got, which was the artists-in-schools coordinator, allowed me to really get to know the state well. So then when it came time to change jobs within the agency, I kind of knew what I wanted to do, and I became a senior program administrator for the whole agency in Fairfield County because I wanted to be near New York. So I convinced the agency they needed to be decentralized.
LA: You must be very convincing.
VM: I was like, “You can’t possibly do this work in one place.” And so, we did. We decentralized the office and we had me in Fairfield County.
LA: Okay, right.
VM: And then somebody in western Connecticut and somebody in northern Connecticut, and that's how we ran it from there. And that's when I really kind of figured out the rest of my arts administrative life because I was able to do everything. I represented the agency, so I really had to get involved with corporations. I helped develop arts councils in that area. We did—I oversaw the artists-in-schools program that was working in that area, and so it was great.
LA: Yeah, so it’s the starting point really for your—
VM: For my serious arts administration background, and it’s how I figured out I could make a living in the arts and not have to really compromise my work.
[00:14:05]
LA: Okay. What brought you to Texas?
VM: Well, the thing that brings all women to places where they’d never be, a man. I had never even thought about Texas, but my now ex-husband was here and the choice was him moving up to New York—he was in public relations at the time—or me moving to Texas. And he had come here really on his way to California but liked Dallas and stopped and got a job. I think he was at the time the PR person for the American Heart Association for the national office. And so, when we were talking about where we would be, my father was listening to him and he was all excited about Dallas and the opportunities for a young, black man who was in business, and blah, blah, blah.
My father said, “You sound like you really like Dallas.” So he said, “Yeah, I do.” He said, “So, have you said anything to her about this?” He said, “Well, she wants me to move to New York, so I’m going to do what she wants me to do.” He said, “Really? I don't think you need to do that. I think you need to tell her where you want to be.” “She doesn’t really care where she is.” So, he has told me that. I was just like, “Okay, okay. I’ll test it out.” So, I came to Dallas in 1980.
LA: Did you have any—you mentioned that you’ve never even thought of Dallas. So you never had any kind of preconceived notions?
VM: Well, they shot Kennedy. That’s what my preconceived notion was. But of course I came from a political family, so I knew that had nothing to do with Dallas.
LA: Right, right.
VM: But no, I was actually intrigued by it. It was the notion of going to a place where there were—I was told a lot of things happened. Of course, I got here and was a whole different story. But I was willing—I mean it was an adventure. I like going to new places, so it really didn't bother me at all that I was going to some place that I have never been.
LA: Good, and how did you get involved in the arts here?
VM: Well, truthfully when I first came, I was really depressed because there was not a lot going on. It was really, to me, a dead kind of scene. And so, I was really depressed so I slept for about a year, and every now and then I’d get up. I needed to go to the store. I didn’t get involved with anybody. But then I realized that this was a place where I could probably make some things happen if I was just willing to get in there and do some work. So I started looking around to see what I could do, and what came up was Jean-Paul Baptiste, who I actually had known before, he was working for the City Arts Program and they actually wanted me to come and work for the program and I was like, “No, I’m going to do art. I came to Dallas to do some art.”
So they had a CETA program going on, and that CETA program had been going all over the country, and so I knew a lot about it. We had one in Connecticut. So, I became a CETA artist and I did residencies. I decided I wanted to do a residency in West Dallas. And so, I did residency at the West Dallas Girls’ Club. And then we decided that one of the things that this CETA program was going to do is not just have artists working in the community doing the usual kind of residency things, but that the artist could get to select something that they wanted to learn and use that as a part of their residency. So I decided I’m going to learn how to do graphic design because my ex-husband was starting his own PR company and I figured I’d do the graphics part of that company.
Well, it should have been perfect but it didn’t quite work out that way. So then I started working with a public relations marketing company here as an intern, kind of, but they gave me a studio in their offices so that I could do work for them. And that’s what got me really—this was back in the days of cut and paste because nowadays, it would be like—I don’t know what people are doing now. But this was the cut and paste days and I was real good at that. So I did that and I was doing graphics for my ex-husband for a minute and that’s how long it lasted before we clashed heads because my style of working is very different than his. And I’m kind of manic about perfection in things, and he’s not quite. He was not quite that interested in that. So I started my own graphics company and actually had quite a few clients, which allowed me to have the flexibility I wanted in terms of my time. And that lasted until I got pregnant with my first child.
LA: What year was that?
VM: Eighty-two.
LA: Oh, great.
VM: Yeah. So from there on, it was mommyhood.
LA: So you were a CETA artist, which is Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, federally funded.
VM: Right.
LA: And that was kind of your outlet or how you continued your own artistic practice while in Dallas?
VM: Yes, because that was a job that allowed you to have—I mean part of it was built in. You would have time to do your work. So, I started doing some exhibitions because I haven't—I came with a good exhibition record, but I didn’t have any outlets here. So I did an exhibition at the Bath House [Cultural Center], City Hall. They didn’t really have any galleries that were interested in my work at the time. But I did start showing here because these people didn’t know anything about what I did, so it was great for that.
LA: Good! And did it kind of promote any sense of community amongst the artists?
VM: Oh, yeah.
LA: For the senior artists?
VM: We were definitely a community of artists. I met some people that I’m still very good friends with today, (00:20:23Greg Metz and Lanie Garber?). There were a number of people who I met during that time period. I don't think we would have met if it hadn’t been for us being involved in CETA.
LA: So, you come to Dallas and it’s depressing. Did this program turn around anything or start anything in improving your—
VM: No, I don't think so. I think what turned it around for me was Dallas began to turn around. I got back into arts administration in 1983 because Jerry Allen moved here as the director of the then City Arts Program. I knew about his work in Seattle. I was very respectful of that work. He was like the guru of public art nationally. And so, he knew about my work in Connecticut. And so, when he found out I was here, he asked somebody to put some feelers out to see if she’s interested because I didn’t—it was definitive. I’m not doing any more arts administration, I’m done. Yeah, famous last words, but in any event. So when he asked me if I would interview for a position, I said, “Okay, sure.” The only reason I said “sure” was because of him and the fact that we wanted to buy a house and neither one of us had a real job and the bank said, “Somebody has got to have a job that you could try.”
LA: Right, yeah.
VM: So I said, “Okay. I’ll take the job.” And it was exciting because we were literally going to build this agency from the ground up. And he was going to allow me to really put together the Community Arts Development Program for the city, and that was exciting for me to get involved in, at least for a couple of years.
LA: Right. You already kind of talked about the art scene at that time in Dallas, so we’ll go on. Did you notice or was there any support for minority artists in Dallas at that time?
VM: None.
LA: And has that ever been developed, and do you recall if there was a turning point to notice that support?
VM: Well, I wouldn’t say that there really is a structured support system. I think that it wasn’t until the late ‘90s when you even began to see any of the artists of color having any kind of traction as far as their ability to get into galleries and to show and what have you in something other than an ethnic-specific environment. And still, now if you look around, it’s still a pretty segregated city as far as that goes. I’ve been an anomaly in many ways because when I came here, I already had an exhibition history. And so, my life didn’t have to be Dallas, Texas. In fact even now, it’s not. My art life in Texas is in Houston.
So, it’s still a city that’s very stratified in my opinion. But we have seen some major changes in terms of exhibitions in museums, galleries that have taken on some of the African-American and Latino artists. We’ve seen many public art projects that have involved artists of color, and that’s primarily because the art program was set up that way with the City Arts Program. So that change has occurred, and I think that there's a lot more participation in terms of dialogue with artists of color that certainly wasn’t happening back when I came here. So yeah, there have been changes, good changes.
LA: Yeah. Do you have any exhibitions you remember in your mind as being—one where—
VM: Yeah, Two Centuries of Black American Art when that came to the museum [Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, March 30–May 15, 1977]. First of all, I think it opened up a lot of people’s eyes, black, white, and others, of what’s out there because prior to that, I don't think that there was a lot of knowledge about what African-American artists were doing and the diversity of work that was being done by African-American artists. A lot of the work that I saw here when I got here was pretty much genre painting. And so, the kind of work that I was doing, which was very politically driven in terms of the subject matter, was not terribly well received until Two Centuries of African-American Art [Two Centuries of Black American Art] came, and then it was like, “Oh, these famous people are doing this.”
LA: Yeah.
VM: But I think also that is an exhibition that opened up the museum to a whole new audience of people. And so quite naturally when that happens, you begin to have a whole different dialogue happening within the institution. I think the other exhibition that was very important was the Jacob Lawrence exhibition, because Jake came and was able to have conversations with artists [Dallas Museum of Art, Jacob Lawrence, American Painter, June 28–September 6, 1987]. A lot of these artists didn’t know who Jake Lawrence was. So that opened up a lot of avenues of conversation that hadn’t happen before as well.
LA: Now, backing up a little bit in 1986, two key things happened in your career. You're named director of the D-Art Visual Arts Center and also the South Dallas Cultural Center, which of course becomes something later on. But can you tell us a little bit about the D-Art Visual Arts Center? What was its mission, and how did you situate yourself within that mission? How did you change it?
VM: The mission of D-Art when it started, it was designed to be a center that would serve local artists, and that was very broad in terms of the definition of what a local artist was. But it really was created to address the needs of the local artists because of course like every city, these local artists would complain that they didn’t have any kind of respect from the DMA, and most of the galleries weren’t representing them. And so, it was a repository for those artists to do workshops, exhibitions, seminars, anything related to the business of being a visual artist. Now, I didn’t open it, so it was already open when I came on board. When I came on board, I was recruited by Patricia Meadows to come and really serve as the person that’s going to take it into its next life, which was they really were interested in getting more visibility nationally for the center, as well as not being seen as just sort of a Sunday painter kind of place. So I saw it as a challenge to bring some new energy into the institution, as well as to bring some diversity because they didn’t have—I don't think they had any at that time. So that’s what I saw myself as being hired to do, is to really sort of open it up, bring some diversity to it, as well as raise the level of awareness about this institution nationally.
LA: And they were calling you at the moment for more exhibitions or (inaudible00:28:19) on?
VM: We did a lot. There was a lot that happened there. One of the major things that happened there that did not continue, unfortunately, but I was very interested in performance art. So I initiated a performance art series and people like (00:28:39Lanie Arbor?) who was premiere. She never really got it just doing this town but she’s a fantastic performance artist. She did work there. We had a collaboration going with UT Arlington because at that time, Circa—which is no longer Circa, it’s now UT Arlington Gallery—but Jeff Kelley was running it, and so we would do collaborative projects where he might bring in somebody like Rachel Rosenthal, a big-name artist. And then we would do joint things with the art. We had one of the best parties Philip Glass has ever witnessed, so that is one of the things we did.
LA: Philip Glass?
VM: Yeah. We did the after party for his performance at Dallas. That’s quite a party, if I have to say so myself. But performance art was one of the things that we did that was not done before. And then I initiated a series called Mosaics, which was to really show how diverse these artists are in our community who are really professional artists, and you don't have to compromise quality or anything like that, but who were doing things that had something to do with their ethnic background, and it wasn’t just African-American artists.
[00:30:00]
VM: We did Robert Barsamian, Hung Liu—I'm trying to think about—there was a woman whose name is escaping me right now, but she was from Lubbock. But it really was a wonderful series, and we did catalogues for that series, so it’s a way of documenting the work as well as having some writing done because I was big on people writing. And then we also did—I'm trying to think of something. Well, a lot of it was the collaborations that I did with UTA that gave us a lot of visibility beyond the local scene.
LA: And were you around when UTA brought in Al Caprow?
VM: Yes. The person who brought that in was Jeff. It was Jeff Taylor.
LA: So did you get the opportunity to talk to him about his performance art?
VM: Oh yeah, absolutely. Like I said, that whole program was wed to ours, so we would have this Dallas-Arlington connection with the performance arena.
LA: Great. So we’ve kind of touched on this but I'm going to ask more directly. How do you reconcile two sides of your career as an artist and an arts administrator?
VM: Well, I guess it kind of depends on what you call reconciling, because I don’t know that it ever really is reconciled. I always look at my arts administrative career as it takes a lot of time. But one of the reasons that I have chosen to stay in it is because I found that for me, and this is not necessarily true for everybody, but for me teaching milks the exact same energy that it takes to producemy art. But running it (00:31:57inaudible). So I could still be a practicing artist running a cultural center but I can’t do it when I'm teaching. So it’s been the best of all worlds for me. It’s the lesser of the evils if you have to work. At least I'm working in my field and I'm creating opportunities for other artists, because I don’t normally show my own work in here at all. But it’s an opportunity for me to bring art in here that I'm interested in seeing.
LA: Right, of course. And how do you see yourself fitting into the kind of contemporary art scene or just contemporary arts landscape of Dallas?
VM: I guess truthfully I'm not really a part of that world. I’ve never been represented by the gallery because I did installation for the most part. I have done installations at the DMA and I’ve done the (00:32:57inaudible) in terms of this community, and of course, at the University of Texas in Arlington. But the University of Houston and the whole Houston scene is really where I’ve done most of my work, and they only know me as an artist. They have no idea I'm an arts administrator, but it’s fine.
I don’t have that need to be living in the space where I’m also doing my art work like some people would. “Oh, my town doesn’t support me.” I don’t care. I’ve got great support to do everything else that I want to do, and it was a great place to raise my kids. So those were the kinds of things that were important to me. And maybe I won’t be feeling this way if it weren’t for the fact that I—like I came here already as an established artist. I didn’t have to try to establish my credibility as an artist here. So for me, the art scene so to speak at Dallas is not something that I am an active part of it as an artist. I'm an active part of it as an arts administrator.
LA: And how do you see yourself fitting in as an administrator?
[00:34:11]
VM: Well, I think I'm well respected in this town, and I usually am included in whatever serious dialogues that take place around the visual arts. And so, you can’t ask for much more than that. And if there are things that happen, like for instance, I was critical in setting up the D-Art art program and in structuring the public art program for the city. So those kinds of involvements are very satisfying to me.
LA: Good. And we’ve talked about this, around it really, but can you kind of describe how you came to have dual presences in Dallas and Houston?
VM: Well, that’s an interesting story. I don’t even know how Michelle got my name, but Michelle Barnes, who had a gallery for many years in Houston and is a very big mover and shaker in the community down there, somehow she got my name from somebody when she was looking to show work from somebody up here. She just wanted an artist from Dallas, so somebody gave her my name. I don’t even know who that was. And so, she got in touch with me and I sent her some images and she said she really liked the work and wanted to know if I wanted to have a show. So I was like, “Okay, I could do that, but why?” because nobody there knows me. I'm thinking like Dallas. If nobody knows you in Dallas, no one is coming to your show. That’s just the way it is. So she said, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. I like the work. People will come see it when they come out to the gallery.” I said, “All right then.” So I sent her the work and then she had this opening, and I was figuring it was going to be me and her at the opening and that was it, and the place was packed. I was just enthralled by it.
It was such a different experience. So I found out that in fact, Houston was a place where people literally supported visual arts whatever ethnicity they were. They went to all the different venues. And when they had gallery night, it was like everybody roamed around to all the different places and it was great. Well, from that exhibit, my name got to Rick Lowe and at that point, Rick was—this was before Project Row Houses. He was curating a show—it was him and Jo Havel who were curating the show.
LA: I know. I got a catalogue.
VM: Did you?
LA: Yeah.
VM: Oh, look at that!
LA: Yeah. I'm using some notes because it reminded me a lot of work by other artists. So it was this show.
VM: Yes. It was Fresh Visions.
LA: Fresh Visions at the Glassell School in Houston [Fresh Visions, New Voices: Emerging African American Artists in Texas, Glassell School of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, September 13–November 29, 1992].
VM: Right. So this show literally was what broke me into the bigger art scene in Houston because when Alison Greene, who is the curator for MFAH, the contemporary art curator, when she saw my installation, she bought it.
LA: Right, it’s now in the permanent collection. You just had that installation?
VM: Yeah. That was my first installation where I was doing work around the Middle Passage, and the piece was—I called it like a Memorial Room. It was a very contemplative piece. It was a combination of the research that I have done on the Middle Passage and melding that with my own personal interest in the Yoruba religion and the spirituality around Yoruba and Ife. So the room itself employed some visual elements, but it also had sound and it also had smell because all of that is important when you’re involved in rituals around Yoruba. She was just intrigued by that. And the next thing I know, it was like—I had never even thought about installations being permanent, so it was like, how do I make stuff with candles burning? How do I make that permanent? So she said, “Don’t worry about that. That’s what museums are for. They will help you make that,” so they did. She had gotten together with her production staff. Is that what they call them? Yeah? Whatever they call them in museums.
LA: Preparators?
VM: Preparators, the people who make things happen. And they came up with an electric candle that really looks like when it’s on, that it’s a flickering flame. But because you can’t have an open flame at the time in the museum, they had to change that. I did a template for everything else so that they can take it out, put it in whenever they need to, and that was that.
So then from there, once I did that show, Rick decided he really wanted me to be in the first round of artists for Project Row Houses, which I—I just love that project. That was the best public art project I’ve ever been involved in as far as I'm concerned. It’s just superb. So it was me, Jessie Lott and Annette Lawrence, Floyd Newsome, (00:39:43 inaudible?) Malone, who else was in there? Colette something, I don’t know. She’s got two names, and I think there was one other person, but these houses were really—it was really fresh, so there were no expectations of what would happen and you could do whatever you wanted. And so, I used it as an opportunity to actually research that community, which is what I do anyway. My thing is about memory and all that. And I got to know a bunch of people there and still today I'm in contact with those people and did a piece that really was about the house and the genesis of that house. We had a great time doing it. So when Ricky wanted me to come back for the 15th anniversary, that was like returning to paradise.
LA: And you went back as a curator?
VM: I was supposed to go back only as a curator but I couldn’t help myself. I ended up doing a house. I did a house, my son did a house, and what was really funny about that is my son and my daughter have always been my helpers against their will, but it’s something they just have to do. So my son was like—he said, “Mom, this is like déjàvu because when I was lying, you made me come down here to help you put this installation.” Then he said, “That old guy that taught me dominoes is still here and he’s still beating me in dominoes.” So his whole house was on dominoes because dominoes are a real important factor on that block. But it was great to include him and Ann Marceni(ph), who is one of my best friends but had done houses after I had done them. I’ve been involved in it and then a couple of other people that I worked with here in Dallas, and then Jesse Lott was the only original artist, one of the original houses that was in it. So it was great, it was a fabulous experience again.
[00:42:08]
LA: So when did you become interested in the idea of public art? Was it your first job as an administrator in Connecticut?
VM: I actually am not interested in public art.
LA: But you have collaborated on projects.
VM: I know. I do it for the money. What can I tell you?
LA: Honest answer. That’s all I need to hear.
VM: I really don’t—because the thing is my work doesn’t really lend itself to public art. I don’t want to engage people in my thought processes, so I’ve done public art projects and it is primarily for the money because you can get a design fee of $15 grand and you’ve designed something. If it ever gets built—like I'm not one of those artists that go, “They didn’t do my project!” I got my check, I’m on my way. If you do it, you do it. If you don’t, you don’t. That’s just an honest answer. The public art project that I have enjoyed doing is one of my D-Art stations; the other two, not so much.
LA: Which one is the—
VM: The one I love is the Hatcher Street Station because that’s the one you’ve engaged the kids and I really felt like it was a community kind of a project. And I also felt like because it’s connected to our center in the same neighborhood that I had a vested interest in those kids being involved in that project because it’s their neighborhood.
LA: Can you describe how you involved the kids in the project?
VM: They all—I worked with about 110 kids.
LA: Wow!
VM: Well, it’s what we do. But I went to the schools because I had—I knew all the art teachers in all the schools around here. I went to the schools and I would work with them after school every day and have them interview elders in the community about how South Dallas used to be, and then I had them talk about how they thought South Dallas was. And then they had to create images about back in the day and what they thought of, and those images became the centerpiece for the porcelain-enamel quilt piece that we have out there. I created the quilt patterns but then their pictures became the rest of the quilt.
LA: That’s so neat.
VM: Yeah, so the elders were thrilled because no one had ever asked them anything about their lives. So these kids—and the kids were thrilled because they were like, “These old people know something.” So it’s great. That’s how that project developed. And then I did the research and all for all the rest of it. I have markers that are indicative of what South Dallas used to be like in terms of the business community because it used to be the heart of the [black] business community. And almost all of those businesses are gone. So they’re like these markers now that you cross over when you cross the tracks that are ads from old newspapers of those businesses. And then the lake that used to be there is of course totally gone. They paved that over and built the projects, so the bottom parts of the columns are representative of the lake that used to be there. And then I have the plats of the original [black] neighborhoods are sandblasted on the columns, so it’s kind of like the history of South Dallas in the station.
LA: Wonderful. So in ’97, you became the manager of the South Dallas Cultural Center?
VM: I did.
LA: And what was the relationship to the local community when you started, and how has that changed?
VM: Well, the immediate neighborhood didn’t even know what this building was. Literally, they thought this was the parole office, because the parole office was down the street didn’t look like a parole office, you know, cinderblock building, nothing to really distinguish it. And more importantly, the community didn’t have any real engagement in this building as far as program. And when I got lowered back into government, because this is a government job, as fun as it is, it’s a government job, it was because I had opened the center in my other creation at the City of Dallas and I knew what it could be. I had high hopes for it.
So Margie Reece was at the time the Office of Cultural Affairs director came to me and said, “I really need that center to be functional.” I grabbed the chance because it was like, “Wow!” This is an opportunity for me to really make the programming happen that I know could happen there. And to get these kids that live in this immediate neighborhood engaged in this place, as well as their families. So it was like the dream job because I knew that we also had the opportunity for me to curate, which I love doing. I also would have had the opportunity to support a number of artists in the community because at that time, there was a lot more money than there is now. I was able to have contracts with a number of artists to do various events. And I also wanted to be able to—because I taught at Booker T. [Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts], I wanted to be able to provide some sort of resource so that so many of these artists who came out of Booker T. didn’t feel like they had to move out of Dallas in order to be able to do their craft. So it was all around a great opportunity for me. And I guess not too long after getting involved in the center, I also decided that like D-Art, this place needed to have a national profile, and I was the person that I thought could do that.
LA: Yeah. What kind of programs did you initiate that you might say you’re most proud of?
[00:48:03]
VM: Well, it’s no longer happening but we initiated the first Late Night Jam and that actually started at midnight and went until 3 a.m.
LA: Whoa!
VM: Yeah. That’s what I said.
LA: It is a jam.
VM: Well, if you’re dealing with musicians, they don’t get off their gigs until 1 o’clock, so you’ve got to have an opportunity for the “real” musicians, the ones who are really gigging to come in and be a part of it. And so, we’ve had major players come through. When Roy Hargrove would come to town and we were having a gig, he would always drop in. [inaudible] Fathead [David “Fathead” Newman] came through. We have a lot of good people come through as a result of the quality of what we were doing. That’s one program. The Gallery Program, the fact that I got a gallery built because what we started off with were these four little corner walls, like a dry wall here, a dry wall there. So I’m really proud of the Visual Arts Program.
I brought national artists to this town that they would never have seen otherwise, and of course supported a number of the up-and-coming young visual artists from this community. I also am very proud of our summer program because that, too, I was able to bring a lot of my friends from around the country. John Stock?, before he died, he did a metal case and a workshop for my kids. I mean, I couldn’t have paid for that. John did that as a favor to me.
LA: Yeah.
VM: Napoleon Henderson [Jones-Henderson?] came down and did the same thing with weaving.So those were the kinds of things that I don’t know that we could have done those if you hadn’t had somebody sitting in the seat actually at those kinds of national commissions. I mean, we’ve had Elizabeth Catlett here.
[00:50:08]
LA: Yeah. And what do you hope for, for the future at the South Dallas Cultural Center?
VM: Well, my last chore was to get us connected nationally and internationally to an entity that could keep us there, and that’s what my motivation for becoming a part of the National Performance Network was, which now has of course the Visual Artists Network also. That affiliation allows the center—and they’ll have it once I’m gone. The thing is it’s now a partner. And I don’t guess I’m talking out of school, but I think we just got the Dallas Contemporary in.
LA: Wow!
VM: I don’t know if I could tell you that. By the time this is—
LA: By the time this airs, it should be public knowledge.
VM: It would definitely be public because we’ve already voted them in.
LA: Yeah.
VM: And that would make us the only two in North Texas. So that’s the kind of stuff that will see the center through for years to come. I mean, as long as the network exists. And the network of course is supported by the people like the [Doris] Duke [Charitable] Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, there are all these major entities that support it, so they’re aware now of the South Dallas Cultural Center. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that I’m the chair. That’s the other thing.
So that’s my goal, is to make sure that the center has the credibility and the visibility on more than just the local scene because I think that that’s what’s needed for artists of color, but they can’t ever make one place the place that’s going to be their panacea—they have to think globally, at least that’s the way I feel about it.
LA: Yeah, absolutely. What have you found to be the greatest challenge to having a career in Dallas, whether as an artist or as an art administrator?
[00:52:06]
VM: More as an artist really because I can’t complain about my life as an arts administrator in this town. Literally, I’ve done any and everything I’ve ever wanted to do in Dallas. As an artist of course, if I did want this to be the place where I could have an art career, it would be a true challenge because there are still, as I said earlier, there are still very limited opportunities for artists of color to show. And there also are—and I shouldn’t even say artists of color. There are very limited opportunities for local artists period. But for the artists of color, it’s even magnified because you don’t have any professional galleries that exist that would be interested. And you also have very few real collectors.
So the idea of you selling your work, anything over $500, is a challenge. So, that’s all that I would see as being the reason why Dallas is a challenge. And I think, like I said, it’s a challenge for all of the local artists, white, black, brown, Asian, whatever. They all are challenged in that way.
LA: And in your opinion, are there any major turning points in Dallas’s contemporary art history, or are there any moments in Dallas there is a shifting in support? And kind of what brought that change on?
VM: I think there definitely is—well, I don’t know. It’s kind of hard when you talk about turning points. I think what happened in Dallas is the same thing that happened in a lot of cities in the South where you had a lot of migration from major corporations who brought people who were used to certain things and therefore they had to see that replicated here. So that kind of—I mean for instance, when Frito-Lay and JCPenney, [inaudible] when some of those corporations moved here, they started collecting. And some of them actually collected local artists, or at least Texas artists. And that was a major turning point for many of the artists, is that they all of a sudden had corporate curators who were interested in their work. So quite naturally, you were going to have more exposure for those artists nationally because these were national headquarters. That was a big turning point. That was in the ‘80s, late ‘80s. And then the other thing was the DMA, its focus changed when Rick Brettell got there and like that Two Centuries show opened up a new audience.
Rick Brettell opened up a lot of audiences to the DMA with his approach to partnering with institutions that weren’t mainstream, bringing in people who were not the typical mainstream visual arts personnel. And so that changed things. Then you have things like South Side on Lamar. I mean, that was a whole new concept for Dallas. We had artist co-ops because (Voice Overlap) to say, and that was a groundbreaking institution in its time. You know 500X started out as that.
But never had developers who came in with that vision that—it wasn’t like SoHo where they were going to have the artists redo a plan. And then nobody could afford to be there. Jack Matthews and Kristian Teleki are about supporting artists in all types of arts, not just visual arts but all types of arts. So that facility became a sort of game-changer. And then everybody now is saying that they don’t want to program—you know. It’s the way it works. So those were some of the things that changed. And then I think you also had a change with Booker T. Washington. That was well before I got here, but that school was turning out some of the most talented and serious artists, even more so than many of the universities. That school made a big difference in what Dallas needed to have in order to keep those kids here.
LA: Where do you go to look at art?
VM: I’m not that much of an art looker.
LA: Really?
VM: My motivation is not from art. My motivation has never been from seeing other visual art, except this baby when I was a little kid.
LA: Right.
VM: But I'm much more interested in music and dance and theater. Now, theater I would say—that’s the only thing that I'm still a chauvinist about the East Coast. I still have to go back to New York to see consistently good African-American theater. But music-wise, Dallas is full of really great musicians on the jazz band, so from black or white jazz musicians. There are some very good dance companies here. And I’m also obviously very motivated by history and those kinds of things, but visual arts, not so much.
LA: Where can I go to see your work, aside from this gallery, which I want you to kind of just talk about in a moment. But if I wanted to see your work, where do I go?
VM: You would be hard-pressed to see it because my work was never permanent, unless I’m doing an installation. I don’t know that from—I mean the African American Museum has work of mine in their collection but it’s very atypical because mainly it’s been done for a particular show where as opposed to the kind of work that I normally would do. In Dallas, you would be hard-pressed to find the work except in the African American Museum in private collections.
LA: Do you have photographs of installations? Do you keep—
VM: Yes, I have—yes, absolutely.
LA: For documenting.
VM: Mm-hmm, and a lot of catalogues. I’ve been in shows that have had catalogues as part of the show.
LA: And you’re working on something at the museum currently, aren’t you?
VM: Yes, I am. It’s actually not me per se. The South Dallas Cultural Center as a team was invited to be a part of the—what do they call it? [Center for Creative Connections Community Partner Response Installation] Public—I forget what the—they’ve got a name for it. What? You don’t know?
LA: I know. I’m just a little researcher.
VM: Okay. But it’s the interaction between the public and space and what have you. So we were invited to create a work for that space and we are working on it right now. It’s got a visual art component, a literary component, a digital media component, and a dance component. So all of that is going to be somehow synthesized into a visual experience and an interactive experience because the dancer is creating a dance pattern that will be on the floor, but there will be a screen which she’ll also be instructing on how to do this dance.
And then the music part of it, Malik is creating these stations where the people will respond to these images to create music, and then there will be these words that will be also taken from the poem that’s being created by our literary person that people will use to create music from.
And the whole thing—the premise of it is called free association and the whole thing is premised on the idea of space as a limitation as a metaphor for the African-American experience, but how we transcended those limitations and using things like music and the arts, etc., to do that, to transcend that experience. So that’s kind of what we are hoping will come out of it. We’ve created this silo that has these openings that are not terribly comfortable to get in, but we have these cameras where we’re going to see how people negotiate limitations. And then like I said, there will be these creation stations where they can create music that goes with these images.
LA: When will I go to see this?
VM: I think it’s opening in May. I think it’s in May is when it’s going to open, and it will be up for six months. We’re going to program it, too. We’re going to have some schedule of programming that will let people sort of engage in what is happening here, but also to get them to understand more about what that installation is about.
LA: Good. Last question before you tell us about your work.
VM: Okay.
LA: What is your greatest memory or favorite story in relation with contemporary—living in Dallas as an artist or an art administrator? It’s very broad but there is one that sticks out in your mind, and keep in mind, the focus of this is the history of arts in Dallas from ’63 to the present.
VM: That’s an interesting question because I'm wondering. Well, I guess for me, it’s been watching the way in which the museum community, and not just the Dallas Museum of Art, but SMU and the Meadows Museum, how they have drawn their perspectives based on understanding that the demographics have changed in this city.
And so, I think they’re very excited actually about the way in which states have changed in the museum scene. You probably know that Roz Walker and I have been friends for a long time. But hiring her was a very smart decision on the part of the Dallas Museum of Art not because she is—I mean, she’s an incredible scholar and knows her stuff. But Roz is also somebody who clearly understands engaging the public. When she was the director of African Museum[the Museum of African Art] at the Smithsonian, she was always reaching out and getting people in.
So that part of her job—I know it’s not her job but it is her job in a sense that she sees this as a mission. That is going to really benefit the museum greatly. And I think now with the new director also having a history of doing that kind of reaching out, I think that the DMA is going to be really on the cutting edge of serving a community in a way that many major museums are not, so that is exciting to me.
LA: Good. Well, we can close with you kind of telling us where we are, what we’re sitting in front of. . . .
VM: We’re in the Arthello Beck Gallery, and my work is in this gallery only because we’re doing Black Women’s Month and there were some issues around the image of the [black] women in the media that we really wanted to explore. And I have done this work for the African American Museum actually. It’s on display there. And (01:05:17 inaudible?) who’s the head of (01:05:18 inaudible?) said, “No, I really want that work up when we have this conversation with the films and all that,” because it’s exactly what we want to talk about.
And then my friend was wanting to have some work up that also she was talking about the same thing. So we thought it was a nice point-counterpoint kind of exhibition. So my work has been for the last, I would say probably seven or eight years been kind of consumed with this notion of the “hoochie mama,” which I’ve been very concerned about these young girls and not-so-young girls around mid-20s or whatever who have basically assumed the persona of the streetwalker, their clothing, their demeanor, their language, all of that was this “hoochie mama.”
So I'm looking at both their involvement in that imagery but more importantly about elder women and what are we doing to counter that. So that’s what these pieces are about. But before this was sort of putting the blinders on them and it’s like, “Wait a minute,” as my son said, “Did somebody raise those women?” And it’s your (01:06:33 inaudible?).
Every time I thought of bringing someone here, I'm like, oh, come on. You raised [inaudible] generation. Anyway, so this is what it’s about. It’s about really kind of taking a look at the imagery, the persona, and then what are we doing as women who should know better to guide each other. So that is a metaphor of the African mask, these are female masks to symbolize the ancestors.
I’m still using my same iconography that I use in all of my installations, the blue as a protection color. The blue line, I have used as a symbol of protection from various things. So you’ll see a continuous blue line around the proverbs but then the lyrics from these rap songs are inside. It will give you a sense of the language that was being employed. The girls get more and more blinged out as far as what’s bordering them as they get more and more nude. And the idea of the Yoruba white rooster is a symbol of the ancestors going from foundational positions at her feet. This one is still kind of a clothed to the metaphor of it being the ancestor, the chicken head, which is a derogatory term as used now for these girls, to having the total annihilation of the protection here of the ancestors, (01:08:15 inaudible?) because they just can’t do much of anything with this.
[01:08:20]
LA: The right (01:08:20 inaudible?) decrease in the size representing a loss.
VM: Loss of bad memory, but it’s on their heads because it needs to be in their heads. But it’s getting smaller and smaller inside. So that’s what these pieces are about.
LA: Good. Thank you. I do think I should ask you about—I will kill myself if I don’t—could you just tell me about your role as an educator at Booker T.?
VM: Well, I’ve taught two things. I taught drawing. I never taught sculpture. I actually developed their art history, their AP art history, and I did design. But I wasn’t there very long because it was that transition period when D-Art sort of collapsed financially and then I was trying to figure out what was next. Jo Jones brought me on to do those things, which she knew that I would be able to do those, at least before I started really getting back into my work and didn’t have time. They were getting subs for the part-time teachers. It’s like, that’s not right. We should get a teacher.
LA: Yeah.
VM: But I love it. I'm still on the advisory board and I go back and forth to do critiques. I just did an installation workshop with students, and then I’ll go back to see what they’ve created as a result of the workshop. So I keep my tentacles at Booker T.
LA: Good.
[Crosstalk 01:10:00 - 01:14:11]
LA: That was really great. I really appreciate it!
