Mildred Howard and Amalia Mesa Bains: A Conversation on Community and Public Art
This paper reflects on the intersection of community arts and public art though a conversation between Mildred Howard and Amalia Mesa-Bains, leading community and public artists. They will reflect on the role of the artist in culturally diverse communities. What constitutes community knowledge? How does the artist build relationship to a community? What aspects of the artist’s experience are critical in building reciprocal relationship with the community? What community art works embody the reciprocal practice? This conversation between artists will address the philosophy, skills and experience needed in working in diverse communities from their perspectives and history.
I would like to begin by establishing some insight to the work of Mildred Howard as a prelude to our conversation. As an introduction to Mildred’s work I would like to describe the sense of congregation she inspires in her installation work, her community practice and in the last number of years her public art commissions. This intersection between community and public relies often on a deeper understanding of histories and memories of a community. In the case of Mildred Howard this insight to community history is rooted in her own memories and experience in an African American community and through her family’s relationship to spirituality.
Mildred Howard’s early memories are tied to her parents’ home in Berkeley, a place of community activism and debate. As the youngest of ten children one might imagine she was the “one who would remember”. Her family cherished the past though the collecting, restoring and dealing of antiques. Surrounded by family mementos and objects carrying the mark of time Howard has sustained this ethos of memory in her work. At the same time the role of labor and civic engagement in the community was an integral part of her upbringing as her father, three brothers and grandfather were longshoremen and union activists. Her work is located in this larger context of black labor, social justice history, gendered identity and the remembrance of community life.
The early works of Howard begin with the ‘architectural remainders‘ as she calls them. Beginning with discarded windows through which her transparent memories are shown, Mildred Howard creates her alternative chronicle of time and place. The faded images of family mementos of loss and memory began to establish her structures as she moved from a private reverie to a public declaration. Moving to the storefront church and its call and response, the artist creates the sense of congregation. The importance of religiosity and spirituality is palpable in the early works. From the beginning of her career Mildred Howard’s work has not been an interpretation or borrowing of vernacular form. It has been an expansion of true and deep community life drawn from her personal response to events, experiences and losses. Her work arises out of her life and each artistic juncture is reflected in the materials she chooses and the strategies of representation.
From the beginning of her work Howard has created architecture of memory focusing on community forms that establish sites of meaning. In her piece, the Bottle House, 2004 Howard blends the tradition of the Shotgun house with the yard show of bottle trees expressive of West African traditions and the Black Atlantic South. Howard’s bottle house extends the Afro-Atlantic tradition of using the bottle as a decorative and protective device. Used for centuries to protect either the grave or the house against bad spirits, the bottles also serve to retain and shelter the good spirits.
Howard’s works references meaning and metaphor through the serialization, accruing and volume of everyday materials. Stacking, arranging, and organizing the materials have included bottles, taps, ceramic hands, artificial eggs, silverware, and various other discards. The patina, reflection and translucency of these various phenomena provide insight to each piece giving the viewer a metaphor for the experience being addressed. Like a symbolic touchstone the objects in their repetitive scale open the memory to the past as light and surface compel us to feel the vast amount of people who might have marched for freedom or danced in jubilation within Taps, or who might have served the master’s silver in Safe House or called the spirits in Bottle House.
The use of residue, discard and remainder is experienced as a form of gathering together, a congregation not unlike the holding of community through a symbolic representation. Howard’s materiality and formal elements of production speak of a relationship to the vernacular and domestic life of African American people over time. Her inventory of objects is a testimony to the struggle, celebration and power of African American religion, sacrifice, music, dance, daily labor and political struggle.
In beginning to establish a discussion around community practices I think it is important to reflect on how Howard’s work and values as an artist.
AMB What aspects of working in the community have been most important to you as an artist?
MH
“I must say that working in the community has changed over the years. When I first began as a community artist in the mid to late seventies I was not aware of that title. I was trying to fill a need that was two fold. One I wanted to do something that involved the creative process while developing my skills and teaching methodology. Secondly, I wanted to work directly with what I considered my community – targeted toward African Americans, people of color, low income and the marginalized. This is not to say that I was not interested in working with a broader spectrum of the population. Up until recently, this population has been overlooked. It has been important because I continue to find ways and ideas for doing my studio work while providing the service of making and thinking about art with others.
Even when I have worked on larger projects that do notrequire me to work directly with the community I have approached the work with the idea of including aspects that the community could relate toin some kind of way. Whether that was done through research of the area, looking back on historical aspects of the site, talking with community leaders to see what the area means to them, basically understanding the place. If one is a visual thinker and uses memory, history, myth and metaphor as a way of looking at the world thenparallelscan be made that can connect the community to what you are attempting to do.
AMB How do public art and community arts connect in the way art is made?
MH
I think that you can look at this in a few ways. The community is part of the public. The terms can be interchangeable. On the other hand, "Public Art" sometimes on the surface does not always include a broad spectrum of the population that I am part of. I think that community art directly involves those who are part of the community where art will be placed.
As a public artist and a community artist one needs to be extremely observant and have the ability to listen and ask the right questions. Not always to get an answer but to be used as a way to enter into the process being a community or public artist. What is made is often inspired by what is learned from understanding the needs of the place and also informing what is not known. Often what is not known ends up being the most important.
AMB What is the most critical skill an artist needs to work in community?
MH
I think that some of the most important skills need to work in the community is an openness to listen and observe. One needs to have the ability to translate what has been observed into something visual that can connect and transform how we see the world. There are basic things such as understanding thejargonand language needed to be able to speak with the bureaucracy. It is a back and forth situation when you are in one community you may express the same thing in a different way. Basically,one needs to have good communication skills. It is important to be open to new ideas and ways of approaching the idea at the same time knowing what will work and what will
not work.
(The remainder of the essay will present some of Howard’s public works and the strategies and struggles within this work. I will bring in my own responses to the same questions and with some description of my and values work.)
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