In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with Oakland born, multimedia artist Demetri Broxton.
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.
In this Episode, Emily features an in-depth conversation with mixed media artist Demetri Broxton whose work is showcased in several prestigious museums and exhibitions in San Francisco. The discussion delves into Demetri's artistic themes, including his use of beads, the influence of his family history, and specific works like 'Save Me, Joe Lewis' and textiles depicting Black whalers for the 'Black Gold: Stories Untold' exhibit. Demetri also shares his background, how he became involved with Root Division, and answers questions about his artistic journey and influences.
About Artist Demetri Broxton:
Demetri Broxton is a Bay Area artist, independent curator, and the Executive Director of Root Division in San Francisco. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, he earned a BFA at UC Berkeley with an emphasis in painting and an MA in Museum Studies from San Francisco State University. His artwork has been exhibited internationally and most recently at the Chinese Historical Society of America, Art Gallery of Alberta, de Young Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Kala Art Institute, and the Norton Museum of Art. Broxton’s artwork is held in several private and public collections including the Monterey Art Museum, de Young Museum, and Crocker Art Museum. He is represented by Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles, CA.
Visit Demetri's Website: DemetriBroxton.com
Follow Demetri on Instagram: @DBroxtonStudio
For more about the exhibit Black Gold - Stories Untold, CLICK HERE.
For more about Demetri Broxton at The Guardhouse, 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
2025-0708 - AIA - EP053 - Demitri Broxton
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is awesome can now be heard on KSFP 1 0 2 0.5 FM every Friday at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes,
Artist Demetri Broxton: my grandmother gave me a box of ancestors whose names I don't know, whose stories I don't know.
And the whole concept for me was that these are the shoulders that I stand on, whatever they went through and enabled me to, to be the person that I am and have the opportunities that I have.
Host Emily Wilson: That's artist Demitri Broxton, the guest on this week's episode of Art is Awesome.
I am your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this biweekly podcast to highlight their work.
Demitri Broxton is a mixed media artist with work at the Monterey Art Museum, Sacramento's Crocker Museum and the de Young in San Francisco. He currently has a solo exhibition at the Guardhouse at Fort Mason in San Francisco, and his work is in a group show Black Gold Stories Untold, which is in Fort Point, also in San Francisco.
Demitri is the executive director of San Francisco Arts nonprofit root Division.
Here's something to know about Demitri. He's a talented, prolific artist, and everyone I've talked with loves him and his work. I met him at Root Division, where, like I said, he's the executive director. Artists get studios to work in, in return for volunteering. They offer classes for [00:02:00] children as well as adults, and there's a gallery.
The current exhibition is Lay of the Land. In our conversation, you can hear noises from artists working in their studios.
Demitri and I talked about why he uses beads in his artwork. His piece, Save Me, Joe Lewis and the de Young's collection, and making tapestries about Black Whalers for Black Gold, an exhibition about the history of black Californians. The local artists in the exhibition include Adrian Burrell, Mildred Howard, Isaac Julian, and Trina Robinson.
It was curated by the founder of the Foresight Foundation.
Artist Demetri Broxton: I was approached by Cheryl Haynes, the amazing, like brilliant Cheryl Haynes, and she asked me to make an original artwork connected to the theme for Black Gold, where Cheryl had [00:03:00] compiled a whole list of people. Who had contributed to African Americans who had contributed to San Francisco from the Buffalo soldiers all the way up until millionaires that started societies and really supported the African American cause and community in San Francisco.
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri chose to make art about Oakland whalers
Artist Demetri Broxton: This is William T Shorry, his wife Julianne and their two daughters, Zenobia and Victoria. Well, they have this amazing house that became a landmark, a historic landmark in Oakland. He was the first black whaler. He was so famous in the news that as soon as his ship would pull into the Bay, our reporters would row out to him to talk to Black Ahab and his adventures, fighting whales in Japan and the Arctic Circle, and coming back with all this, you know, these well products that were so essential to society and lamps and electricity [00:04:00] and makeup and women's dresses.
And so when I saw the portrait of them, I knew I had to work on them.
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri didn't do just one artwork for the exhibition.
Artist Demetri Broxton: I actually decided to make two pieces because I'm insane. So I made the image of the Shorry family. The four of them is the largest piece to date that I've made. It’s three feet by four feet, which probably is not that huge, but when you're working with tiny beads and sequins, it took forever. And then the second piece that I'm working on is a little bit smaller and not as a picture of Victoria. I can't find whether this is true or not, but some, so there's certain stories that she became a whaler and was one of the only women. I think there was like three women whalers on the West coast ever, historically.
And so she was one of them. She later joined the naacp. She worked as a secretary. And it's a gorgeous photo of just her laid out on a lawn
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri made the pieces in his own style.
Artist Demetri Broxton: [00:05:00] My work is all about taking ancestors or people who, uh, have been in the past and transporting them to a future where whatever their hopes and their dreams were.
At the time that they couldn't achieve are achievable and are reality. So I've, I placed them into these futuristic landscapes, and they're also dressed like Yoruba royalty with beaded crowns and veils over their faces and totally bedazzled in beads in sequins.
Host Emily Wilson: It's meaningful for him to tell a historical story in Black Gold.
Artist Demetri Broxton: My mom passed away in 2015, and that's when I shifted into the boxing gloves. My father passed away in early 2024, and then I again shifted my work entirely into these, or not entirely, but you know, made a little diversion into making these textile based pieces that incorporate sequin and screen printing.
I had really been focused on family archives. My grandmother gave me a box of ancestors whose [00:06:00] names I don't know, whose stories I don't know. And the whole concept for me was that these are the shoulders that I stand on. Whatever they went through EN enabled me to, to be the person that I am and have the opportunities that I have for years.
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri worked at the Museum of the African diaspora, becoming the Senior Director of Education. There friends told him he should look for an executive director position somewhere.
Artist Demetri Broxton: I was like never. But when I saw the position for Root Division open, I was really excited, mainly because of the studio artist program.
Like that was really the core for me. I also love that there are these beautiful galleries that we program with exhibitions, and then also what I had been doing is arts education. So it really just kind of brings everything together and I love the focus area of emerging artists.
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri is with the Patricia Sweetow Gallery in Los Angeles.
He met her curating an exhibition. She's represented him since 2018 when [00:07:00] he made his first pair of beaded boxing gloves.
Artist Demetri Broxton: She has a really great relationship with her collectors and subsequently, I've had a chance to meet the collectors, and so I still know the person who owns that pair. And I get connected with everyone who purchases pieces of mine.
And so it become this extension of family. 'cause your artwork's like your child, right? And so it's like, oh, they're, and my work is in good hands. Right?
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri didn't start out making textiles. In high school, he took a photography class,
Artist Demetri Broxton: the dark room under the amber light for hours. And then the thing is that people who haven't done dark, traditional dark room photography don't understand is you're basically kind of blocking your senses.
Your visual senses with, with the dark room, whether it be an amber light or a red light for hours. And when you come out into the world, the colors are so vibrant and they're amazing.
Host Emily Wilson: In college, he took an [00:08:00] old painting class and found that if you thin it out enough, it can transmit light. Beads do the same thing
Artist Demetri Broxton: The history of oil painting is very deep in European history, particularly the Renaissance period. And I was looking for materials that spoke to my personal identity and I, I don't know why I landed on beads. I had actually gone to Michael's with my mom and they had a jewelry making book, and it was all about how you could hand uh, weave.
And stitch different beads to make like bracelets and jewelry and things like that. So, grabbed the book, found the very first project, grabbed some really cheap Michael's beads, instantly fell in love with the very first stitch that that I chose, which was the right angle weave for anybody who's a nerd on those kinds of things.
And then later started really investigating. Uh, traditional Yoruba bead, uh, making or or bead [00:09:00] work, looking at Filipino bead work. And then also my family has connections in Louisiana and so the Mardi Gras Indians and those techniques are what led me toward the embroidery that I've been doing for so long.
Host Emily Wilson: Beads mean something to him.
Artist Demetri Broxton: Beads particularly, and West African cultures are related to the sacred and also to royalty. It's a little different in for Mardi Gras Indians, but they spend an entire year making their suits and the stitch tells these stories that they want to keep continuing from generation to generation.
I just really wanted to learn this technique. I don't think I initially thought I was gonna actually make art, but then I started to think as you're working on it, you think of the symbolism of it. Okay, well the beads represent this protection and this ancestry and this spirituality. I first started working with boxing gloves.
They're like a stand-in for humans, but it's also this protection and uh, as well as a weapon used against someone and [00:10:00] just bringing those things together, particularly the masculinity of the boxing glove and the extreme femininity of, you know, little glass beads.
Host Emily Wilson: Boxing gloves have a family connection.
Artist Demetri Broxton: My grandfather Hiram was a soldier in the US Army during World War II and he fell in love with the army. It was his life. He didn't wanna leave. And during that time he also was a boxer and he was really, really into Joe Lewis. Like that was his hero because Joe Lewis was able to break out of racial stereotypes and the barriers.
And so for my grandfather, Joe Lewis was a superhero, so he'd talk about him all the time. So I grew up with these stories and about, you know, seeing the picture of my grandfather, you know, in his boxing gloves and in his shorts, and he, he saw it as a way to kind of escape his condition in the same way that Joe Lewis was able to be this.
African American who could say whatever he wanted and was accepted by everyone. [00:11:00] And so yeah, it became a really potent kind of symbol for me and definitely connected me to my grandfather. But as I started to work on the series further and further, I'm thinking about larger societal issues. I'm thinking about what are the things that people fight for particularly.
People like me, African American and Filipino, what are our struggles? What are the things that we thought that we had overcome but we're still fighting for on a daily basis?
Host Emily Wilson: Demitri had been using phrases from hip hop on the boxing gloves, but for the piece of the de Young Save Me, Joe Lewis, he did something different.
Artist Demetri Broxton: It became African American lore that this thing actually happened where this young kid was executed for supposedly whistling at a white woman, and then something happened to her later and he was accused of it, even though he said he was innocent. And Joe Lewis had become. This literal superhero figure for African Americans for the same reason that my grandfather [00:12:00] loved him.
He was able to get into a ring and he was able to punch a white man in the face, and he wasn't lynched for it or arrested. He was honored as a hero for all Americans, not just African Americans. And he becomes such this figure of like our Superman at the time, that when this kid was in the gas chamber in South Carolina being executed, he started yelling out, save me, Joe Lewis, over and over thinking that this superhero was gonna be able to save him from his fate.
And so that story. Whether it's true or not still just illustrates the power of Joe Lewis and how he was able to just overcome his circumstance and his identity to just be what everyone wants to be, which is free.
Host Emily Wilson: Having work at the de Young is special to him.
Artist Demetri Broxton: Means so much to me that a major museum in my hometown wanted to not only display my piece, but keep it in perpetuity.
So who knows what's gonna happen with it in the [00:13:00] future? Who knows what other works it's gonna be in dialogue with? And it's just, it's just extremely exciting.
Host Emily Wilson: This is Three Questions. It's the part of the show where I ask the artist the same three things. The questions are, when did you know you were an artist? What's some work that had an impact on you, and what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Artist Demetri Broxton: I first knew that I was an artist. Ooh. I wanna say probably when I was eight years old and I made my first drawing and my mom was like, that's amazing. Keep making more of them, even though she later didn't want me to pursue it as a career. So it was a Yosemite Sam drawing.
The first artwork that comes to my mind that had a huge impact was [00:14:00] Maria Magdaleno Campos Pons. She did an exhibition that was at the Indianapolis Museum of Art called Everything is Divided by Water, and seeing her photographs and the way that she artfully looks at ancestry and imagines. The importance of water, and not only how it separates her from her family that she grew up with in Cuba, but also how it connects to Africa.
It connects to Lineage. And is this just powerful tool? I mean, her work is stunning.
I love to go out into nature, and so going to the Brianis Reservoir in Lafayette is where I find peace. I found comfort. You know, Nature for me is the best teacher for art.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you so much to our guest, Demitri Broxton. His work is in a solo [00:15:00] show at the Guardhouse at Fort Mason in San Francisco through August 17th.
You can also go see his artwork about a whaling family in Oakland in Black Gold Stories Untold at Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge through November 2nd,
And thank you for listening to Art is Awesome. Please follow the show where you listen to podcasts. And please leave a rating that will help other people find the show.
Art Is Awesome. Is a biweekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday? It is created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Gotto of Gotto Productions. It's carried on KSFP, LP 1 0 2 0.5 FM San Francisco on Fridays at 9:00 AM and 7:00 PM [00:16:00] Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with Incomp Tech Music.
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