This Portrait Artist Creates in a Shipping Container | Art Outside Podcast

my mom I feel at her heart she was a creative and because of other things she wasn't allowed to tap into that yeah and so at some point I was like I didn't want that to happen to where I didn't at least give myself a chance to tap into it and really figure out what I'm here for I am a painter um well I'm an artist um I do a little bit of everything but my main focus is uh painting and uh portraiture what does that mean that you have a studio at Cherry Street Pier Cherry Street here has an an artist and residence program it's um a year residency where like emerging artists um or local artists can come and have a space in a pretty high traffic like area um for people to like you know experience your work and your process and it's like a nice like stepping stone to like kind of get you out there um and and see how your work kind of works in the public the program itself uh goes I think I think I already said like it's it goes for a year but if you want to stay you have to like reapply so I've been there for four years now and I'm hopefully going into my fifth year because we just had um we had to reapply recently and you keep winning keep winning I can't I keep winning and Cherry Street is an old a former industrial Pier that's been turned into a public park public space of sorts where the artist studios are are in former or in shipping containers they brought in and turned into these sort of interior spaces and there's what 12 of them I think it's it's it's 14 um it's 14 artists and we all do a little something different um people do illustration abck painting um there's uh collage artists um just everything um and we do get an it's also an opportunity for us to collaborate with each other um so it's a once they kind of pick the selection of artists it does become a nice like community of like artists who are just kind of interested in what everyone's doing such an interesting way to be an artist too because I think like if you think of like the movie version of an artist they are like scrapped away in the back of a studio blah you know in quiet space and you are quite literally on display so all of these shipping containers have big windows and doors people will come up and come in you're on display yeah that's that's part of the program as well um they want you to kind of engage um with the public or like do like workshops or just kind of share your um I guess your process in some way um it could just be as simply as like people walking by and and looking through your studio and seeing you work for me I I think it was helpful because I I can be that artist who kind of tucks themselves away and just you know hoardes all their work and no one sees it or you know because it's such a personal thing for me so one of the the reasons why I went or applied to Cherry Street was so I can kind of get out of that shell a little bit and kind of learn how to talk about my art um to different people making these steps in your career is really important especially in retrospect that's a really important something really important about who you were and what you wanted that you recognized about yourself in your career do you remember making that decision like oh I'm to something so I need to go in this direction or I want this so I need to go in that direction I think I've always kind of felt like I was hiding myself a bit um um I think we spoke before and I told you that I did like graphic and web design in in these different places that I worked you know it was like a cubicle situation ation or you know it's it's it's these team things and it's like you have like certain um restrictions and and then you know sometimes they kind of want you to kind of play a certain part but you have more inside of you um and I think after a few years or many years of that I um I just I just felt like I had more to kind of like share um creatively and I wasn't being kind of allowed to to do that in the spaces that I was in um and so I was you know working in that space all day long and then coming home and doing that thing that I wanted to do um for you know pretty much that same amount of time and I think around 2018 I decided to um I just needed to make a change it just felt like I needed to make a move or I was just kind of going to be still in kind of like this Chell um so I appli to uh Cherry Street um for the their Artisan residence program and then I also applied to um Pennsylvania Academy of of uh Fine Arts um to get my masters um I don't know what the goal was but the goal was to kind of shift and to kind of like invest more in uh the things that I felt that I I did best your current self must be so grateful to the the you of 5 years ago to make those decisions yeah like it I definitely hit a point at two was it 2019 where I was like I can no longer just kind of play in the background anymore and I have to speak up for myself and and put myself in a place where I want to be and not do do the thing that I think I should be doing you know I'm going to cry so it's like I just knew if I just kept doing that it was just not going to be a good thing for me m is hearing up you see this right now oh don't tear up it's just you know I just you know I like I I'm telling you I wake up every day I have no idea what's happening and it's okay with me because I know this is what I was supposed to be doing yes yeah don't cry what are you doing I don't know why I'm crying I don't know Friday oh my God I'm just so tired and Quin qu Brunson chose you Jesus and that's it damn it you got me you're the first person to get me to cry I didn't mean that I don't know something you said at the end there was just because I think we've all had to do that and you I think sometimes realize it in retrospect like thank God I made that decision for myself because I think it can be really easy for us to stay in routine and stay in Rhythm but it takes a strong sense of and being an observer and you know coming from like my family and stuff like that like you see you a light of lot a lot of your elders or you know um my mom I feel at her heart she was a creative and because of other things she wasn't allowed to tap into that and so at some point I was like I didn't want that to happen to where I didn't at least give myself a chance to tap into it and really figure out what I'm here for and you know I'm just rolling with it pretty much like yeah I have a schedule but I'm just taking this thing that was was given to me and you know appreciating it and just pushing it forward I'm so excited I want a screen print or do I buy one well I'm working on it all right I'm still working on ideas how long is that Workshop or uh the apprenticeship my the uh my apprenticeship is from now until December so by December I should have something I should have something for you to look forward to um I don't know what it's gonna look like but you know we'll see when it happens you know yeah well thank you again this has been beautiful yeah you know and I'm sorry for the [Music] tears yeah sir what's going on y'all how the I feeling Al yeah