Artist Jamele Wright Sr.

Rodney is joined by artist Jamele Wright Sr., who grew up in Dayton, to discuss his journey, his influences, and how taking dance classes helped shape his artistic perspective.

Follow Jamele on Instagram: @artthenewreligion 

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Rodney, Jamele Wright, Sr.

Rodney  00:00

Hello, everyone. My name is Rodney veal and I am the host of Rodney Veals, inspired by podcast. And today we are having a conversation with Jamelle Wright senior. He is a phenomenal artist that I got a chance to meet at the Dayton Society of artists exhibition, a joint exhibition of work with Amy deal and his work was truly I considered to be magnificent and magical, but also haunting, well thought through sculptural, artistic pieces that speak to so many things and so many layers and so much, so much context, that I was like, I have to have this guy on the podcast. And so with that, Jamelle, welcome to the podcast. Thank

Jamele Wright, Sr.  00:52

you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Before we get started, I want to send a special shout out to Amy deal. Thank Oh. Thank you Amy for introducing us, me, for bringing me up. Thank you for all the hard work that Amy deal did to put me in place and back at my home, I met her in South Carolina. She was at a residency, and I was showing at a gallery called works art space in right outside of Charleston. And she said, what part of Ohio you from? And I said, I'm from. I'm from the D like I am too. I said, I would love to do a show of Dayton, Ohio. I would love to do a show in Dayton, Ohio, if you can put it together, I'll be there, and she did it. I mean, like, like, lickety split, like, it was crazy how to pull it all together. That's Amy for So, full of gratitude for her and, and what she did for me there and and here

Rodney  02:03

we are. Thank you. Yeah, well, and, you know, if Amy hadn't done that, we would never have met, and I would never have been able to see your work. And so I'm like, you know, I'm a firm believer in those sort of like interventions, that people, yes, enter your life for a reason. They connect. You connect, and then you connect with other folks and opportunities and experiences, because it all leaves it's all a part of the train. And so, I mean, major shout out to Amy. Amy has always been that way for me. I've always been just like she is that person. I mean, she's authentic. She She loves your work, she loves you. Come on in, come back to the D, so to speak, the D. So you've been away from the D, and you are currently based in Atlanta, correct? Yes, okay, so talk to us, because this is kind of like the, you know, you know, I

Jamele Wright, Sr.  02:56

grew up, yeah, Dayton, like I grew up, you grew up here in the deep Yeah. So I went to Belhaven, I went to precious blood. I went, Oh, wow. I went to Chaminade.

Rodney  03:10

Oh, you, you went to the schools. I think it's better, yeah. I

Jamele Wright, Sr.  03:14

went to Fairview. I went to, yeah. So I, I am from Dayton, Ohio. I grew up there. I grew up off of free pike in Salem, off of crest drive with all my wonderful friends, like the Smithies and the cockerels and the Baileys and the meadows and the Petersons, like all those people, the Jones like all those people were my neighbors, the you know, people I went to school with, like the Miss Lacey and who was a teacher when I was a kid. And I have to spend a special shout out to mister Amos. Bob Amos, who was my elementary art teacher and nice I love he was the one that told my mother, I think he's got something, you know. And my mother started taking me, took me to the Art Institute to take drawing lessons as a kid. So, like I was 12 years old, an adult drawing class doing I'm supposed to paint this lady, like, I don't know how to do that, but, or draw this lady. So I was, I'm from Dayton, Ohio, when I took dance at Geraldine school of dance, like I

Rodney  04:27

you did. You were, you, you were, I'm loving that, like, because it's like, you were, you were in it. I mean, yeah, this artistic. I mean, how amazing is it that? Like, what I love with your shout out about the about the neighborhood, because a lot of people don't understand. I mean, I grew up in Dayton, yeah, so I lived in Philadelphia and Riverview, okay? And so I went to, I went to meadowdale Elementary, yeah, we moved to Jefferson Township. And so for me, it's like, it's those things, these parents and these people. That we were surrounded by who encouraged you. It was like, Oh, well, go take I took classes at the Art Institute, right? I took dance. I took, you know, I wasn't taking dance when I was young, but it was like, that's a whole journey, Side Story of my life. But it was like, but I was always surrounded immersed by art, and no one ever said no or yeah, she's, that's a pipe dream. You shouldn't do that, you know. No, they this community kind of embrace creativity, like, if they see it, they embrace it, and they saw it in you,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  05:34

yeah, you know. And I, you know, I also to say, like I played baseball at Dayton view, literally, and I remember riding my 10 speed down Gettysburg with a bottle Tahitian treat, and that's a cool range Doritos when they first came out, and riding my 10 speed to friend's house throughout Dayton. Like I like a lot of those memories of riding my bike through Dayton on a 10 speed, or on my huffy 76 like those are things that ground me. That's my foundation. And when people look at abstraction to me, it goes back to that childhood of my parents. My parents grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. So we would go to Birmingham, Alabama every summer, every spring, and as my mother grandmother got older, we went in the winter, but sitting on her front porch watching the train go by helped me to understand abstraction in a very literal what may appear literal now, way that you know, understanding the way the sun would set behind the trees and the train would go through and those houses in front, the green of the grass, the colors of the sky sunsets, is some of the best Art you'll ever see. And just to sit on that front porch and count train cars while my parents were inside doing adult talking, you know, kind of things. And then we bring that back to Dayton, where I used to sit on my where I used to stand in front of the street light on on crest drive, and we all used to gather there and then scatter back into the house when the street light came on, but watching those sunsets and playing bass basketball down at Belhaven during the daytime, and like all that stuff, informs, informs. Like people think that you just become an artist out of nowhere, but really, it's all these little things that help you to be, Oh, wow. You know, like Miss Smith, my reading, my second grade teacher, and, you know, there's all those people helped me to become who I am. And I'm so incredibly grateful for Dayton, Ohio, like and although I live in lake Atlanta, and I love living in Atlanta, partly because it's warm

Rodney  08:09

on the cold, just also remember

Jamele Wright, Sr.  08:11

standing on the corner of Fairlane and free Pike, and excuse me and the watching the bus go by me because it was a because it was a sub bus driver. She didn't know it was her stop, and it was 20 below, and I was standing outside as a young kid. I remember that day saying to myself, I do not want to live here when I grow up.

Rodney  08:45

Like this, no one, no one. I hear you on that one because, like, I remember that. I remember those days, you know, and I grew up when I started going to school at JC, Jefferson Township. We lived out the country, yeah, so you were really standing out there like, Okay, I'm not liking this experience at all, but, but what I but I love, I love to how you describing it. Because I think every person I've talked we've like, we've been doing this podcast for a little bit, every artist, and doesn't matter what, what genre it is always those formative early years of teachers and folks and adults who kind of in and teachers, not always necessarily, meaning I have a degree and certification. It's the people who kind of wanted to inform you and inspire you. I consider grandparents to be teachers. I consider family members to be teachers. It seems to be a universal theme that they we all have gone back to those folks who kind of are in our lives, who you know provided us these experiences, and you describe things so vividly, and I think that's why it was so. Attracted to your work because there were such layered contextual memories and ideas, and especially this kind of notion of i For me personally, I always hear people talk about abstraction and almost an analytical way, but they never talk about abstraction in an emotional narrative sense. And I'm kind of curious about your take on that,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  10:23

yeah. So I really like when people talk about my my palette, I often refer them back to an idea that I have called Emotional tones, right? Like, I don't really deal with like, I know the color will, of course, and I know how those colors was, but I've almost forgotten the way that the color wheel is supposed to operate, because I kind of created my own palette and created a new understanding for myself on color. And a lot of that comes from just spending time sitting outside, looking at the sky, or are being out of nature itself and looking at that like I remember in eighth grade at precious blood. We went to a park in Dayton. We would go camping. All the eighth graders got to go camping for a week, and I remember finding out what the sycamore tree was and how the sycamore tree kind of had, like this white and brown color on it, right, yes. And like little things like that, like watching waterfalls as a kid, and like always, like mentally gathering these colors together, and look at how nature references color, as opposed to the idea of the color wheel, and sometimes it doesn't really match. And I think that sometimes allowing each color to stand as an individual, and like when you go back to the idea of being layered, especially in the work that you saw dealing with the Dutch wax pieces. I think of us as layered beings, right? Like oftentimes, as black people, we are considered a monolith, right, right? We're all just one thing. But I think that even you and I speaking here, we come from varied experiences and different kinds of experiences that's expected and and we're very layered. So I think that the work is necessary for that work to be layered, so that every time you stand in front of one, I try to make them slightly different, or enough difference that you will notice something very different about this one than you will the next one, in the same way that you're dealing with black people, or the way that you're dealing with people in general, because we are all individuals, and we deserve a kind of individualistic kind of conversation and with abstraction. Often say that, like in figurative work, the figure is the external experience of humanity, and especially in black figureization that became very popular during COVID Because of the Black Lives Matter movement, but in abstraction. Abstraction is the internal experience of black people. And what that does is it's showing you, not necessarily in a very literal sense, but in a very visceral sense of the experience of of myself, and I often say that I am human looking through the world through a black gaze, right? Like I'm experiencing life as a black person, right? But I'm a human experiencing life through this black experience. So the two thing coincides. So there's oftentimes, if I'm out in nature, I'm not black, I'm just in nature. No one's there to reference me or tell me what my complexion is. But it's not into the world that become this other thing. So in the in my Studios, where those two ideas begin to meld together, this idea of what it means to be human, what it means to be black, what it means to stand in nature, what it means to live in 2024 the year of truth.

Rodney  14:40

Well, yeah, that's yeah, that is that, yeah, it absolutely is and, and I when you and, I love how you talk about because this is when you're standing in nature, your blackness is just, it's just it, it is. Do you know I'm saying, like, right? It is, it doesn't it's not the defining. It's your, you. You as a human being, far outrace the outweighs the relationship you have being in the space, right in the natural realm. And so it's like, you know, as it was, one of those things that you know, as a as an art maker, myself, as someone who, who works in the, kind of, predominantly in, like, movement based, and that's why, when you talked about, you know, take a class from Geraldine at Geraldine school of dance, I was like, Yeah, I get it. I see it. I see that. I see that informed experience in the movement and the materials, right? That of what you showed with your COVID exhibition with Amy, it's just like, you know, there's, it was one of the situations where it's like, you know, it is, I'm referencing not just the black experience, but the Rodney black experience, and the experience of rodney's body, that is a male body that was these, you know, all of these things and all the things, because I was a kid who didn't move right, like a lot of people, is that I wore corrective shoes and braces on my legs, right small child, so there was no anticipation that I would ever be athletic or physical. And then I became that. And so that's informed by the limitations, or were informed my movement as much as what the expansion is. And so that complexity of layering, I seem to and this is not a like a dismissive of other artists and from other races, is just that there's a tendency for those of us who are African American and Black, Asian, Hispanic, Latinx, whatever we want to describe groupings our experiences are, have to be multi layered, because the relationships we have into the world we live in are complex and multi right, and that and it's just richer work,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  16:55

right? It's

Rodney  16:56

like, you know, when you I used to, I was thinking about this the other day. It's like, your privilege can limit the scope and depth of your perceptions, right? And that was reflected in the work that you make, right? Yeah. So this, I was like, you know, so I, that's what, what got me and you when you start talking about the Dutch wax textiles, and because when you started, you talked about it in the when you were showing the work at the DSA, and used, a lot of people don't realize that these, these textiles, that you were referencing, these African textiles, Really, there's a Eurocentric

Jamele Wright, Sr.  17:40

base, yeah. So, like, with the relationship to it. So, like, if I go into that body of work, those textile pieces are based on Dutch flats cloth. So when I began coming up with this idea, I was thinking about what would be telling the story of the African American experience. Like, how can I combine these two ideas? So the idea was, if I take fabric that looks African, that I thought at once I was African, and then painted canvas, and then sew those two things together. Then if I painted the Canvas in a abstract way, referencing Pollock or Rothko are those that I'm using this kind of Euro American philosophy, about painting, about abstraction, but then when I'm adding this African fabric, then when I sew them together, then I'm creating something that's African and American, and then those two ideas being sewn together. But what happened is I kind of fell in love more with the patterning and the texture, um, texture, of the fabric. And I was looking for, and even though I draped those two together, I still was looking to kind of drape this fabric in a different kind of way. Yeah. And then I began doing this thing where I was buying scraps. And I started off buying scraps from this philosophy of like found material, like Thornton doll and Lonnie Holley, and these bins quilts, and finding these scraps and using them as a found material and sewing them together, and I learned how to sew in grad school these fabrics, and as I begin sewing them together, they begin I begin feeling as though I was telling a multiplicity of stories, like I'm not just telling my story. I've been telling the stories of generations. So this textile begin to almost be like sampling, like hip hop, sampling, grabbing these, these things that are familiar to us, and putting them together, like like hip hop, where you take these great riffs or breaks from different. Songs and then make it into one great song. But I found out something very interesting. Because of one of my professors, Sheila Pepe, she forced me to do a lot of research on this fabric. And because I did a lot of that research, I found out that what we think is an African fabric is really made in Holland. Wow. And it was a batik that was made in Holland, and when they figured it out, they sent it to Malaysia. Well, Malaysia liked it, but not as much. So they sent it back. And then Holland then tried it with Africans, and because it kind of, it kind of was this mass production of something they were doing by hand, right? And that is, that's what beats everything, right? Like you get a burger at home, or you go to McDonald's and buy a burger, right? So, because this fabric came in, they begin to adopt it into the community. So then, like this idea of sampling happens again, right? Because now this fabric is reminiscent of a fabric that we make, or resembles a fabric that we make, and the colors that we like them to be, and then we can buy it in bulk. So then it becomes this added thing where they're then sampling, appropriating it. But what I really like about the appropriation of this material is we now know, we now think of it as being an African fabric, right? So to take something that someone else gave you, and then to embody it to the point that people think it's yours, is fascinating to me, right? Because it just talks about this level of like, this ability that these people had to just completely envelop themselves in it, that they begin to own it, that the whole world begin to think it's theirs and and associated with them, and associate with them, right, right? Well, now there are places in Africa that make this fabric. There are places in there are other places Indonesia, Malaysia that make this fabric, but it begins here. So this kind of fascination with this fabric, then I begin thinking, Okay, well, if this is a pattern, what if I added a pattern on top of a pattern? So if they gave me a pattern, and then now I need to add my pattern on top of that pattern, right? Because now I need to combine my experience with this other experience, this commodity, this thing that has been sold and shipped around the world. So now I'm going to add my pattern on top of that, and then what happens after I drape it, yes, yes. So then I'm draping it, so now I'm hanging it on the wall. So now I need to add, like I had, a spray paint on there for to bring back in that hip hop, to bring back in that,

Rodney  23:23

that graffiti, right? Yes, you're right, which

Jamele Wright, Sr.  23:26

I used to draw in school in Dayton, Ohio, not on anything, but definitely on paper. And then after adding the graffiti in there, then I put that red clay on there, right? Oh, yes. Clay is really amazing because, yeah, red clay, or the Georgia red mud, is very indicative, just to this part of the well, it goes all the way up into Virginia. Yes, it does, which a lot of people don't understand. But if you take the great Pangea and combine all the countries back together, then the same place where you have red clay in Georgia is the same place you have red clay in Africa, yes, so it creates this magical land bridge that brings everybody back home to Africa. Right? So I'm but also, what I like about it is, here in Georgia, if you step in red clay and you bring that into your house and you have, like, beige carpet, you're never getting it out. You get on your sofa. This is so you're never getting

Rodney  24:38

it it is. You could never scrub it off your gym. You never scrub it up enough, right? Yeah, you can't. I mean, no, I've been, my family's from Macon and Griffin, and, like, we would go down there and like, Well, those are pair of shoes I'm not wearing anymore.

Jamele Wright, Sr.  24:52

Georgia. Yep. Give them back, right? Yeah. So the so, there's so you're doing. That. So, like, there's this red clay, but also there's a certain level of mica in in there. Yeah, at some point, I heard that some pregnant woman used to eat it because it would give them, like, the minerals that they needed for their body. So, like, so this red clay kind of has this medicinal and then it also connects us. And so for me to add it on to the painting is, like, my final stain. Like, I'm, I'm putting my mark on this. So, like, Why do I even need to, like, sign it by me putting the red clay on there, I've signed it. Like, that's

Rodney  25:35

my Wow, right? You're, yeah, absolutely.

Jamele Wright, Sr.  25:39

So then draping and hanging on the wall becomes this thing where you're standing in front of this individualistic composition, and you're engaging with it. You're navigating yourself around it. You are speaking to it, and it is speaking back to you, right? And every time you look at it, you'll find something different in it. You'll find like, maybe the way the movement is, or maybe you find, like, a little glyph that I have painted on there that you may not necessarily recognize the first time you see it, but yes, you turn a corner and you'll see it one day. So there's all these little things added into the work that helps it to give these layers, but also is showing these layered this layered experience

Rodney  26:30

and that, and also you, you're showing the layered experience. And what I love about that is that it challenges the notion that you can assess it quickly and move on, right, right? There's a tendency. And, you know, this is me pontificating about how people experience art, right? It's like, No, don't go rushing through the museum. If you're standing in front and it catches your eyes, sit with it, right? Sit with it and just kind of take it in. You know,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  27:03

Rothko would say that he would want you to stand 18 inches away from the painting. So that way, if you look left to right, you're completely engulfed in the painting. And if you spend that kind of time in front of those paintings, absolutely then you will begin to feel as though you're being lifted off. They often remind me like those spaghetti western sunsets, like, feel like you are being lured into this other universe. And with my work, with those textiles in particular, and most of my paintings, I want the viewer to get lost. I don't. I want you to have to spend time with each one individually, whereas most of the time when we go to like you would say, because I had the same frustration in a museum, where people just go through they take pictures, they keep walking. Take pictures, keep walking. But then what happens? What happens to that documentation? Like, yeah, never see this painting again. We never go back and look through our falls and return back to those paintings. They just become this moment that's gone away. But this person has spent hours and decades to acquire this talent to make this one thing that's now in this museum that's being, that has been collected and gathered to tell a story about a people at a certain time, at a certain place, and yes, and you know, take one picture and keep walking. That's

Rodney  28:38

exactly I would

Jamele Wright, Sr.  28:39

never, never give yourself a day at the museum where you go, Okay, well, I gotta be somewhere at three o'clock.

Rodney  28:46

No, absolutely go there

Jamele Wright, Sr.  28:48

at 11, because I don't believe in waking up before 10am.

Rodney  28:53

I love that. I wish, unfortunately, I wish I could do that. But, you know, but go at

Jamele Wright, Sr.  28:58

11 and just take lunch. Yeah, lunch there, if they have a cafeteria, go there and take lunch and then return back to the museum. Like, enjoy your time, because these people spit time to relay a message. Like, I always think that it's amazing to me that within the caves, or within the rock art of Africa, that someone was leaving a message behind me. They were saying to me, I was here, and this is what was happening when I was here. Absolutely. And every time you see a painting, whether it's Velasquez or Goya or David or Joseph Albers yes or Jack Whitten, Thornton Dahl, all these people are saying, Basquiat i. Was here, I was here, and this was I here. This is, this is what I was experiencing while I was here, and I want you to experience what I was experiencing when I was here. And I don't want, I hope that, I hope that this doesn't get lost. These ideas don't get lost.

Rodney  30:19

Are glanced over, right? And I, and I don't know, I so believe in exactly what you're saying, and it's like and so I, I always take it as we as a society, have taught people, have trained to that it has to be quick, instantaneous, as opposed to let me languish and the linger that that's, you know, that kind of I was telling some of the thing I was telling someone

Jamele Wright, Sr.  30:51

the other day, if you listen to a song the first time and you don't like it, you're gonna love that song Eventually, because something that's really new. You're not going to instantly go, I like that. No, it's over time that you begin to listen to it. You begin you like, there's some paintings that I didn't like for a while, and then I found myself going back to them and referencing them, right? There's artists that I've looked at. I'm like, Ah, it's okay. And then I go back another day and I go, Oh, I didn't see that thing. The thing is, is, if you like something immediately, sure, and there are some things you like immediately, but there are often times where the newest thing, because it's not familiar, it doesn't give us anything that's familiar. It's so new that we have to shift. We have to grow a little bit to even understand it, you know, like they talk about how when you have a writer's block, and a lot of people go, Oh, well, what do you do during writer's block? Or what do you do when you don't feel like painting, you know, Rakim said, I just go outside. Go outside. I walk around. I may go cook, I may go live life a little bit, and then I come back, and the words are right there, because he doesn't see it as a block. He sees it as at this time, I'm not ready for the next part of this, right? So I need to go live life a little bit, and then come back, and then you're right there, absolutely. You meet in that spot. And that's sometimes what painting is, this painting, and the way the artist sees the world. So when you see me paint the textile pieces, and now I'm painting, I'm doing these different hand dyed pieces, and then I'm doing, wow, these um, abstraction where I'm staining the surface and then painting on top of it. So like you would think, Oh, he's doing all these different things, when really, to me, it's one of the same. I'm riding my bike down Gettysburg.

Rodney  33:05

Oh, I love that, yes, with a cohesion treat

Jamele Wright, Sr.  33:09

in one hand and cooler in Doritos in the other. And I'm driving Pat I'm driving from the top of Gettysburg. I'm driving past UDF I'm driving, I'm riding past Trotman studios. I'm riding pass all the way down into Trotwood. And it's all there, it's all there, it's all there.

Rodney  33:33

So, so my thing is like, so when you talk a bit to be able to like, so there's a tendency, in other words, I love you're talking about the fact that, okay, this is a certain group of work, and then this is all one in the same but then there's a different iteration, because you are exploring materials and techniques and ideas, which ultimately ideas are fundamentally part of it, but and but the memories, but ideas are also about the Memories. So like, I love the fact that you're incorporating your memories as a human being who exists on this planet, in in Dayton, Ohio, existed in the Big D, in the war in America, right? It's gonna if it is not showing up in your work, you are truly blocking something out for some odd reason, right? And that's why I have a heart. Sometimes with some art, I go, I there's a barrier you've put up to guard yourself, as opposed to letting it all hang out, let it drink.

Jamele Wright, Sr.  34:35

I think that that's where a lot of times people say, Well, why is this person more successful than the other. I think oftentimes we negate, like we don't want to share those experiences, right? Like they say, Oh, well, I don't want to tell you this part of my life. So how are you going to not deny that in the studio, because you're it, because being an artist is a solo sport. Work, right? Yeah, you're in the studio. You're by yourself. It's not like dancing where you're over, you're like I did. I was work I was going to do, I was going to do a production, a dance production, related to a body of work. So I got all these dances together, and then I ended up not being able to complete it because of funding. But it was really different for me to be around dancers, because as a solo, as an artist who's only in my studio by myself, and then to see them laying on top of each other and hugging each other a lot and touching each other, because they are this a physical kind of art form, right? And it's based upon your trust of this other person physically, so you relate to them differently, and you seem a little bit more romantic and sentimental when you're around people, right? And whereas painting I'm in the studio by myself, yeah? Well, all my imagination, all my thoughts, all my understanding, all my experiences, are coming up as I'm painting. The music may be on and may not be on, but I have to deal with the person on the inside. And if I'm blocking a memory or blocking an experience, I honestly believe that you can see it in the work. Wow. Sometimes when you look at people's work and go, there's something about this that doesn't just it just feels like, like they just missed it a little bit like, or holding back. Like, why are they holding back? And it's because they're not dealing with that other thing, and then when they deal with the other thing, you go, Oh my God, look at this. It's

Rodney  36:46

and the thing is, artists know it. You don't know it. You know it. You sense it when you've that switch, right? Um, with the you let down the guard, and it just kind of explodes, right?

Jamele Wright, Sr.  36:59

So, like when you look into someone like Pollock, yes, and

Rodney  37:02

you see his earlier work, you can see there was a block,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  37:06

right? And then all of a sudden, when he does the splatters, you start going, oh my god, Rothko, he did, like, figurative work. And you like, Okay, that's good. But then when he does the work that we know him for, we go, Oh my God, that's what we needed to see. Like, it's a full expression. It's an absolute expression. De Kooning and Jack Whitten, like our loving Joe Overstreet, like these people were willing to like, you know, this is line by Jay Z where, in this song called beach chair, he says, because I'm not afraid to fall out the sky, you know, and that's the thing is, like you have to be willing to fall. You have to be willing to leap off of the cliff and and find the other thing, rather than and not know if you're gonna land on safety or pillows, or because there is no safety, because

Rodney  38:06

there's no safe, there's no net,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  38:08

there's no net, right? But what do you learn?

Rodney  38:14

And what do you grow? How do you grow? It's and, and what you know is so interesting because it was like, because I've been in this kind of place because I'm interviewing like artists like you, and I mean, different genres. And I was thinking, you know, I think back to I when I was dancing and performing in a company, it used to frustrate everyone. I enjoyed the rehearsal more than the performance, right? And they were like, I was like, they were like, You're so calm about the permit cell. You're like, well, we discovered what we need to discover in the space, in the rehearsal. It's, I just have to tap back into that. And I'm present enough to be able to tap back into it. I'm not afraid I've already tapped it right? Because the

Jamele Wright, Sr.  39:01

thing is, like, don't be nervous as an art, right? Because the thing is, is, like, now people have this thing where they go. I

Rodney  39:14

What an imposter syndrome, that phrase, yeah, absolutely.

Jamele Wright, Sr.  39:18

And I don't like whenever people would talk to me about it, I always felt weird, because I don't I never really felt imposter syndrome, not that I feel like I'm that great, but it's just like I feel like I've been asked to be here because of the work that I've done previously. So why would I feel like I have some type of symptom of something. I stand in this place of gratitude. So like, if there's not a bean Davis, there's not a bob Amos, if there's not a Thornton dollar or Joe Overstreet or Thorn absolutely Melvin Edwards, if. If there's not a holiday in a Pindell, if there's not hell Woodruff, if there's not Robert Duncanson or Edward banister, if we don't have those people doing and being doing and be being then how was there? So I stand in the place of gratitude, absolutely, you know, I, I'll say this, this really kind of, it's a weird sidebar, but I remember when I moved to New York and for grad school. Because I went to grad school at I graduated from undergrad at 45 years old with a Art History degree at Georgia State. So I had to take French at 4344 years old, which I thought my brain was going to crack some of those days, my brain was just going to explode off my head. I had wonderful teachers at Georgia State, and then I moved to New York to go to grad school, at School of Visual Arts. And I remember going there because when I when I went there, I knew that I was going to New York to be around the top artists in the world, in the world, shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest artists that we've ever known walking the same streets as a Rothko or Pollock or de Kooning walk the same streets, yeah, as Billie Holiday and Mark Morris.

Rodney  41:25

Alvin Ailey, Bill T Jones, do you know I'm saying

Jamele Wright, Sr.  41:29

like, all of it, all of it, all of it. James Baldwin, I walk in the same streets as those people. Remember whispering to the elders that have long passed, the Jacob Lawrences and the such and saying, you know, oh my god, I can't believe this. I'm walking past the Apollo like me, little boy from Dayton, Ohio. How did I end up here? And I heard a voice from the ancestors that said, Okay, we got you here. So what are you going to do now? Hmm, you're here. You're here. You're walking on these streets. Can you smell? Can you smell? Elvis Gerald? Can you smell? Can you Charlie Parker, can you feel? Can you feel? Miles Davis, can you you all that stuff is here, all that stuff is here, but now you gonna do?

Rodney  42:29

What are you gonna do with it? Yes, what are you gonna do with it?

Jamele Wright, Sr.  42:34

So at that point i i had to straighten up. I was a nostalgia for a while, but then I had to straighten up, because then I had to realize that the work that I make, someone else is going to stand on my shoulders. Wow, and the work that I make, the dedication took for me to be there, the sacrifice that my children took for me to be in New York for two years, the set, you know, all those things that happened for me to be there, I had to earn it. So I had to work really hard. So I dedicated myself in New York like I was not thinking about anything else but art making. I had fun, oh yeah, and I met some really wonderful people, but my dedication was to be a New York artist, to be an American artist, to be a black artist, to be the artist, to be a artist, and to have a conversation with past and create dialog in the future. Oh, so that's why it's really important that I went back to Dayton, yeah, because being in Dayton kind of brought back this idea that a little black boy from Dayton, Ohio. He can do it. We can do it. Yeah,

Rodney  44:06

it's possible. It's possible. The possibilities. And when you talk about, you know, that nostalgia, yeah. So it's like, you know, I It's when you and one of the things that was unusual, is unusual about Dayton is that you could be in the presence of a Bing Davidson or Geraldine blunder, right? And an Amina Robinson in Columbus, who I super excited. I just kind of have kind of discovered for myself how amazing this woman, she's wonderful. She's incredible, incredible, right? And and they're exhibiting her work at the Springfield Art Museum, and we're going to cover it for the show. And cover it for the show. Absolutely, I'm I'm immersed. I mean, right, I look at it, though, is as how, how you said it, that gratitude of being in this place, to be able to kind of share those stories, to be immersed in those stories, to get excited and motivated by not just like the. Amina, but like artists like you in the present and seeing the work of getting excited, let me tell you, I should be a visceral feeling about people that you should have. I applied to

Jamele Wright, Sr.  45:11

that Mina grant twice, and haven't gotten it yet, because I think I was born in Columbus, but, I, you know, we moved to date when I was three. Okay, so I it was amazing to me to find out how much connection that Amina and I had in our process of art making, from style and abstraction. And it's very interesting to think sometimes that you're just by yourself again, this solo idea of being an artist, but then you find out that there was someone else in Ohio that was just like me, that was before me, you know. So like, there are these connections. What is it about the soil of Ohio, absolutely, that produces this kind of, these kind of ideas. Is it the cold weather?

Rodney  46:16

I What is yeah, what is it because the

Jamele Wright, Sr.  46:18

sunsets? Is it those, those very picturesque landscape, farm views that you get driving from Cincinnati to Dayton, from Dayton to Columbus, from Columbus through Lima,

Rodney  46:36

I know. So it is

Jamele Wright, Sr.  46:39

Cleveland to Kellie, you know, and then Detroit, like, so Akron, like, all these little places in Ohio, and we're surrounded by this farmland. There's something that is very interesting about the soil. Like, this is a valley? Is it the fact that we were in a valley? Like, what is it like? The Ohio River? What is it like? There's something about, something about research on on Robert Duncanson and finding out that he was living in Cincinnati, and how many great artists during the 1800s African American artists were living in Ohio

Rodney  47:20

and Cincinnati, absolutely, and they were these landscape, portrait artists who were doing, these are phenomenal, beautiful works. I mean, I, you know, I and Cincinnati

Jamele Wright, Sr.  47:33

was considered the west at the time. Like that was the West. I know,

Rodney  47:38

because, you know, losing Louisiana Purchase, right? That was the west of our country and so and you talk about, because I always think about it like, like, when I went to grad school or Ohio State, the Ohio State, I always said the but I was taking classes from BB Miller, like, how right is she from Ohio and Columbus, being this post modern mover, creating multi disciplinary installation, performance work, black woman. I mean, it was such a, it was such a, it's been such an eye opening experience at my age, to realize, like, oh, whoa. We need to see this in a different context, that we need to see southwest Ohio in a different context, in Ohio in general, that we are, what are the sources of the creativity? And I think that that's you're questioning that, and the work that you make, the sort like, where is the source to this, right? And it's coming through. And that's what I was like. I was like, I cannot wait to talk to my brother about this, his artwork and his process because of that. And I want people to kind of hear these podcasts and go and explore, right? Go and sit with the work. Go and dig a little deeper, because it's, it will enrich you, right? It will inspire you. That's in the title, and that, you know, I'm inspired. I love I love that because I, I, I base my entire thesis on memory and forming and infusing work and fracturing memory. So

Jamele Wright, Sr.  49:22

my thesis for grad school was called in transit, and it was about the idea of moving, and about the idea of the great migration, where a lot of African Americans moved from the south to north in hopes of of opportunities, right? And Ohio is one of those places where a lot of people from especially Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, moved to by these African Americans moved there in hopes of the manufacturing also, you know, I remember in the 80s, black people making $25 an hour at Cadillac are. For like that was unheard of. And because of that, what is Ohio known for? The Funk. The Funk

Rodney  50:07

because they could afford to vet their kids by instruments exactly,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  50:11

and they can afford to give them lessons, lessons, Roger Feldman, and you have Ohio players, and you have the

Rodney  50:19

Battle of the Bands, right? You hallow, the bands. I'll remember that. Remember that stuff, yeah, I remember it. And nobody questioned it, like it was, like we just, it was just a part of the DNA of our worlds. So, like, even

Jamele Wright, Sr.  50:31

me putting putting red clay on my painting, is putting that funk on there, putting that stank on there, right? And I try to do that in all the work, I try to always include this idea of something funky, like something that's going to make you go, like, why he do that to me? Like,

Rodney  50:56

you know, absolutely, absolutely

Jamele Wright, Sr.  50:59

so like, there's, I think, going forward in art making, I think the experience and taking time, I think that that's one thing that we've gotten away from. I think that being present, like we have a lot of we our thumbs are getting a lot of extra practice from tick tock and Instagram and right, um, our cell phones. But I think, I don't know, I think that we're getting to a time hopefully people are reconsidering our connection into the digital world, and finding a balance between the two, so that you can experience the now,

Rodney  51:50

the now, absolutely, I Oh, Jamil, this is, this is the kind of stuff that it just gets excited so we you've got one moment. This is we're wrapping things up. What? What would you say? Because you, I love the fact that, because we touched on it, that you went to school in your 40s,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  52:17

45 Yeah,

Rodney  52:22

it's not too late. No. So what would you say to some, some folks listening right now, because I love that you're you're setting it up for the art, especially for those who partake in like digest art and culture. But as a for art makers, what would you say to them, especially those who may not have had the opportunity in their youth, because I think that that's kind of all. I don't think I can make the kind of art that I'm making now when I was 18. No,

Jamele Wright, Sr.  52:48

no, I just as a side note, I remember I was going through this thing after I came back from Dayton. I was looking at Cy Twombly documentary a lot, and I was really blown away by it. And I was watching over and over again. I was falling asleep to it, and I begin getting frustrated. I got frustrated, and then I realized what it is, is that I'm not 75 I can't make a 75 year old painting, right, right. I need to wait until then. So, like this idea of as an artist, the idea that, you know, we want to be the next such and such, or we want to be the top such and such, there's a artist here named Michi Miko, who I think is probably the greatest artists in America, wow, because his work taps into something that is so incredibly honest, like he only he's painting his experience into the world, but and it's just so transparent. It's so incredible to see. The work is so beautiful. But he just, he says this thing, just do the work. Yeah, don't get caught up in what your friends doing. Like, you got to put that Instagram down, because that Instagram will destroy you, bro. Like, thank you. I think you Instagram, but I had to shift my algorithm. Like, I do all comedy, I do a lot of like, investigation. I I have like, other other topics, other topics, like, like whales, you know, or like otters, whatever, like nature, yeah, but yeah, I don't. I try not to look at too much art, because I don't want to compare myself to my peers. I don't want to be looking too much about what my peers are doing and get disconnected by what they're receiving rather than what I have. So as artists, I would often tell them, as I'm working through myself, is that whenever you arrive, there you are on time. My mom used to. At all time, when I would try to rush because I was running late somewhere, she like, whatever you get there, you're on time, so don't rush. It'll be there when you get there. And the thing about making art is, oftentimes we want to be the top artist, but you may not be ready right now, and that's okay. It's okay, because the things that are required of you at that net space you may not be ready for but it's okay and be okay with it, and know that, like when you arrive there, you're on time, and that way you don't have to have impostor syndrome, you don't have to have any of these other ideas, because when you arrive there, you're on time. Now a lot of us want to hustle and be, you know, be on the hustle, right? What stuff is fun. You think it's fun, but the same time, you sometimes are pushing yourself into a space when you really don't, when you're really not ready yet, or you don't belong yet. And then you wonder, why didn't people like your work as much as someone else's? Because they were on time. And so this is the thing is, is that I'm Believe me, I'm saying this to you, but this is something I have to remind myself every single day, that whenever I arrive there, I'm on time, so that I have to say for artists. But when you mentioned the idea about me going back to school at 43 I will add this. Choose life. You can have whatever you want. You can have whatever you want. You just have to choose it. You just have to choose it. I chose to go back to school to get our history degree. What is a 43 year old man going back to school to get our history degree for is it practical? I mean, I thought it was practical. I wanted to be our history professor. But does the world think that they need it? They do, but they don't realize it. But I made this choice that this is what I wanted. I shifted my entire life to do that, and then I moved to New York because I wanted to stand next to the greatest artists in the world. So I chose that, and it came to be. And now I'm back in Atlanta, raising my kids, raising my family, taking care of my family. But the thing is, is, if there's anything you want at life, at any time, you know, Thornton dial started making art at 69 years old as he retired from the railroad. And we can go on and on with different artists that started what we consider late in life, late in life, right? But the thing is, are later in life, yes. But really, all that does is present to you a great opportunity, because, as you were saying earlier, your experiences of you not being able to walk as a young child, wearing braces as a young child, has informed the way that you dance, and you have a greater appreciation for the fact that you're able to Dance then maybe the person standing next to you who never had to wear braces, right? Absolutely. But when you dance, you're dancing out of pure joy. Absolutely, you, you know the road it took, yep. So I would say to anyone, when I was in in undergrad, I was sitting next to a woman who was like, I think she was 80, taking art history courses. So the thing is that you can do you can choose whatever life that you want. Just choose it and do it. I

Rodney  59:03

You have given us the words of wisdom. There we go. This is a great conversation. Oh, they're amazing.