In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with interdisciplinary artist and photographer Charles Lee.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today, Emily chats with photographer and interdisciplinary artist Charles H. Lee.
About Artist Charles Lee:
Charles Lee is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, researcher and storyteller whose work exploits the fissures in the versions of U.S. history that we have been taught. His work confronts the fallacy of U.S. iconography and encourages critical dialogue questioning origins of American myths, the obfuscation of Black cultural creators and innovators from the historical archive and empowers Black viewers with a more accurate depiction of their histories and encourages the building of future histories. The stories offer insight into the notion of what it means to be a Black American today. The work rebuilds histories by uncovering truths that have been hidden. By unearthing these narratives the work also traces a lineage from deep in the historical past in order to move forward in the future as in the Ghanaian (Akan) principle of Sankofa.
Whether it be film, photography, installation, sculpture or sound, Lee chooses whichever means of expression he sees fit for the dissemination of a feeling of belonging and identity. He is the recipient of the 2022 Edwin Anthony & Adelaine Boudreaux Cadogan Scholarship and Contemporary Art Award, All College Honors, Graduate Merit Scholarship, the 2021 Pabst Open Door Grant and is a 2022 Recology Artist in Residence. His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally. Lee’s first solo exhibition, “Sweat & Dirt,” opens November 7th, 2023 at SF Camerawork.
Visit Charles' Website: CharlesHLee.com
Follow Charles on Instagram: @ohhh_so_sirius
For more on Charles' exhibit at SF Camerawork, CLICK HERE.
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
2024-0130 - AIA - EP018 - Charles Lee
Artist Charles Lee: [00:00:00] I'm doing this for the culture, for the Black diaspora here in the United States. It was really important to me that we're seen in the way that we want to be seen. Agency is a huge, huge part of my practice. And the response from my audience has been a lot of thank yous. It's really important to me and it really touched me.
Host Emily Wilson: That's Charles Lee on his photos documenting people working with horses.
Welcome to Art is Awesome. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work. Art is Awesome is now carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9am and 7pm.
You can listen live or stream it there.[00:01:00]
Curator and photographer, Charles Lee has a solo show at SF Camerawork, sweat and dirt documenting black ranchers and rodeo workers. Before becoming a professional artist, Charles had a successful career in sales. He was good at it, but he didn't like it. So he went to San Francisco's California College of the Arts and started working on the idea that was the seed for this show
To Charles Black cowboys and ranchers aren't exotic or unusual. They are part of Western culture. He sees his work documenting them as furthering the conversation of what it means to be American. And in Sweat and Dirt, up at SF Camerawork through February 3rd, his black and white photos show ropers, equestrians, and tattoo artists or people just relaxing around horses. [00:02:00] We met at SF Camera Work and Charles talked about his grandfather's love of Westerns, being inspired by the work of Latoya Ruby Frazier and Oliver Lee Jackson, and how the response he's gotten to the show is gratitude. He also talked about his family's encouragement of his work.
Artist Charles Lee: My cousin Julie, who's featured in one of these photos, she was like, you know, we need to get this story out there. At the time in 2017, there were some white photographers that were covering this, but they were making it seem like it was a sensational thing. Like, I've never seen a Black cowboy before where, where we're from, that's pretty normal. Before there was a mascot for this job, Black folks were doing it, you know, before there was this white, rugged Clint Eastwood or whomever. There were Black people that were doing this job. So the goal was to get the story out there without it being sensationalized and just wanted to show like kind of [00:03:00] everyday mundane, peaceful type of lifestyle.
Host Emily Wilson: That lifestyle was when Charles was familiar with. His family, along with about 300,000 other black Americans were part of the Great Migration from the South to the Bay Area.
Artist Charles Lee: I've always kind of been around it in a way. I've got family members that, you know, have land and had a great aunt that had a farm in Hayward.
Uh, she was originally from Louisiana. Like my mother and my mom's from Louisiana. My dad is from Houston, Texas. So I have like, country cousins, I guess, that we would visit. My uncle actually had a horse in a stable in North Richmond. A lot of my family came during the Great Migration to the Bay Area, but with them traveled culture.
So, that being said, I feel like it's not too foreign here in the Bay Area, particularly like Black folks, their ancestry to be from the South. So, you know, I, I always say I'm a first generation Californian because my family is all from the south. So it's, it's not something that's foreign to me, [00:04:00] but I was not a cowboy or I may have ridden a horse when I was in Boy Scouts and that was about it.
Host Emily Wilson: In 2023, Charles graduated from the California College of the Arts, where he earned several awards and scholarships. Now he teaches photography there. Earlier, Charles studied marketing at college in Maryland and worked in sales, but he was always interested in the arts. I
Artist Charles Lee: I guess you can say that when I was a kid, I was the person that always had a disposable camera at every event and I was snapping away even in high school in class. I still have prints and negatives from those times, but I didn't really take it seriously, I guess. Until 2015, I was working at a sales job making pretty good money, but I hated it. So I had always been an artistic person. I started out playing music. My cousin taught me bass when I was young. He was a superstar musician and prodigy.
And so then I would like play in [00:05:00] his band. I always had one foot in the corporate world and one foot in the artistic world. And then in 2015, I was 31 at the time. And I decided to just I just quit my job and I said, well, I'm just going to make it as an artist now. I didn't know what type of art at the time.
With my severance check, my last check there. I actually purchased a one 35 millimeter camera, a Pentax K 1000 and a consumer level Canon T6i and just started making photos until a friend tapped me on the shoulder. And she was the vice president of a real estate company. She liked the photos I took of her child's birthday party and said, Hey, do you want a job to take real estate photos?
And that's really how it started for digital camera and then street photography with the 35 millimeter.
Host Emily Wilson: Charles likes using mediums besides photography and along with photos, the show has an installation with bales of hay, a saddle and a video. Charles has been [00:06:00] exploring the subject for a while, including in a show been here at Cubespace in Berkeley, curated by Leila Weefur.
Artist Charles Lee: It was an installation featuring this video and then, uh, another video installation piece. And then prior to that, my, my thesis exhibition at CCA was also entitled been here, which this video piece was also in that, and it was a different installation, 15 foot vinyl. Cowboy, and a 3D like picket fence that was painted with the Pan African flag colors.I called it my Black picket fence.
Host Emily Wilson: Charles started documenting Oakland's Black Cowboy Parade several years ago.
Artist Charles Lee: My cousin, he's a Zydeco musician. Zydeco is Louisiana Creole music. Often associated with country stuff, you know, we do line dancing. There's that kind of stuff, even though he like grew up here, he was always back and forth between here and Louisiana.
But that type of music draws a specific type of crowd, folks that are from Louisiana, which there [00:07:00] are a ton here in the Bay Area. So we would go to the dances and people would be wearing cowboy hats and boots and stuff like that. And then, you know, he got booked to play Black Cowboy Parade at Oakland numerous years. So we would often go to support him there and that just became a thing. Like, you know, just, just seeing that lifestyle to me, it was kind of romantic. I guess it was a romantic idea. My grandfather would always watch Little House on the Prairie. Like my grandfather just loves westerns. So it was something that was probably in my subconscious for a long time.
Host Emily Wilson: Along with a cowboy parade, there are also photos of a rodeo in Louisiana in the show. Another cousin introduced Charles to that.
Artist Charles Lee: In 2017, I just started documenting the Black rodeos and the, uh, Black cowboy parade in West Oakland. There's several images from that. And then I traveled to Louisiana with family and family friends that have their own ranch.
And one young man, Alex Prudom, at the [00:08:00] time I went in 2019 for Mardi Gras. And it was just, you know, a kismet. I went to my cousin's house and they have a ranch and they house other people's horses there. And those folks are family friends were there at the time. And my cousin, Julie, who actually inspired me to make this work. We were there together. And she, she mentioned, she was like, Hey, they call me Chuck. She was like, Hey, you know, Chuck is a photographer and he's covering Black rodeo and the family friend was there. And he was like, Oh, really? Well, we have one tomorrow. Do you want to go? So some of these images came from that.
Host Emily Wilson: The people in the photos - On horseback, getting a tattoo or relaxing before the rodeo —look at ease. That's because they are, Charles says. He mentions a man who's in a photo that hangs near the beginning of this show that shows him twirling a rope.
Artist Charles Lee: Most of the time people are into it. Not most of the time, all the time, honestly.
Like every person that you see in here that's engaging, like [00:09:00] with the camera, and you can tell there's some sort of exchange there because some of these are candid photos of folks that I don't. No, at all. But they don't mind it. Like after the, the photo has been made, they don't, you know, there's no pushback.
There's no issues. But some of these, like I've set up photo shoots with them. So I've contacted these people. Like the one in the front, his name is Paul Kevin Jaques. He's originally from rural Louisiana, but moved to Castro Valley, California. And I found him on Instagram and I had photographed him a few years back, 20, 21. And then again in 2023 for this exhibition, over that time we became friends. So that's why I like a lot of the subjects, like one of them is my cousin and this photograph. Another one is my cousin's husband's. These folks look comfortable because they are, you know, there's some sort of relationship there.
Host Emily Wilson: Usually the main response Charles is getting to the show is gratitude.
Artist Charles Lee: I'm doing this for the culture, for the Black diaspora here in the United States. [00:10:00] It was really important to me that we're seen in the way that we want to be seen. Agency is a huge, huge part of my practice and the response from my audience has been a lot of thank yous, you know, and that really, it's really important to me and it really touched me.
You know, it's like, thank you. Thank you. Like literally people have just been contacting me like, you know, thank you for that show. Like, thank you. The photos are here in the marina. You know, you don't see too many black folks up here. So, so like the opening, I felt like a marker of success was for there to be a lot of people of color in this space that you wouldn't normally see.
And now like people know it's here and you know, I've had folks that weren't able to come to the opening, but then came later, you know, and they didn't even know the gallery was here necessarily. So that was really the response from the audience that I intended to reach.
Host Emily Wilson: This is the part of the show, three questions where I asked the same three [00:11:00] questions. to find out more about the person they are. When did you know you were an artist? What was some work that made a big impact on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area? For the people whose work impacted him, Charles mentions two — a photographer who did an acclaimed photo essay on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as an Oakland painter and sculptor whose work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum of Harlem, and the National Gallery of Art, among others.
Artist Charles Lee: When did I accept that I was an artist, I feel, would be, would be the proper question. I felt like I was artistic or an artist my whole life, but I didn't accept it. Until, uh, 2019, when I was applying for grad school, I had decided that if I was gonna do this, I needed to [00:12:00] embrace the fact that I am an artist and that is the life that's for me, and yeah, I just, you know, 2019, I think there was Yeah, I think it was when I actually got accepted into grad school, let me take that back, that I really like, believed that this was going to be a successful path.
But I kind of always felt like I was going to be some sort of artist since I was young. I would always like, explain to people, like, I'm going to be a musician or I'm a producer, you know, I'm a music producer. Um, but with visual arts, it was. It's right around 2019.
Some work that has impacted me, I would say LaToya Ruby Frazier for sure, Flint is Family in 3X. That work was like really spectacular to me. I mean, all of her work to me is really phenomenal. And then, you know, another artist that inspires me, which you, May or may not be able to see it in my work. I mean, [00:13:00] this person is a painter, but Oliver Lee Jackson is a super incredible artist to me that I'm really inspired by the work is particularly like the abstraction, right?And not having to necessarily say I'm a Black artist and just making art. And allowing, like, your, your lived experience to live through that art without having to put labels on it.
For me, it's like, everything I see is inspiring. Like, I'm such a visual person. Whether it be, like, me riding on my bike or taking public transportation just for the heck of it.
I'm, I'm really into just, like, lived experiences. I create stories in my head of people's lives when I see them. I'm definitely, like, a people watcher. So just The streets really, you know, like I started, as I said, as a street photographer, so I'm, I'm really inspired by just the pulse of the city itself and not just San Francisco, but [00:14:00] like the entire Bay area to me.
And also like being in a natural element to is like, it's very grounding. I do like hiking. So Mount Tamalpais is a good spot, but also like even going out to Mount Shasta and places like that. I grew up camping. Something that I'm, I'm actually kind of diving back into now as an adult, so in the beach, like, you know, so like even Pacifica going, going out there, these things kind of just inspire me, I'm, I'm somebody that is in my head a lot, so if I get out and I'm like just walking the streets and, you know, meeting people, that's kind of what inspires me, it's just like making relationships and, and hearing people's stories and, and sharing stories with folks.
Host Emily Wilson: Thanks for listening to Art is Awesome, a bi weekly podcast. And thanks to our guest, Charles Lee. His show, Sweat and Dirt, is at SF Camera Work in Fort [00:15:00] Mason through February 3rd. Please subscribe and join us next time when our guest is Andrew Wilson, an artist in Detroit, whose show, Torn Asunder, is at Jonathan Carver Moore's gallery on Market Street in San Francisco.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotu of Gotu Productions. It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays. At 9 AM and 7 PM. Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with incompetent music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at art is awesome podcast, or visit our website till next time.[00:16:00]