In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with East Bay Painter & Installation Artist David Huffman...
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 East Bay Artist David Huffman, a painter, installation artist and educator.
About Artist David Huffman:
David Huffman studied at the New York Studio School, New York, NY and the California College of the Arts and Crafts in Oakland, CA. He received his MFA at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco in 1999. Huffman has had solo shows at venues including, Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY (2019); Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA (2018); Worlds in Collision, Roberts and Tilton Gallery, Culver City, CA (2016). Recent group exhibitions include To the Hoop, Basketball and Contemporary Art, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, NC (upcoming); Ordinary Objects / Wild Things, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA (2019); and Sidelined, Curated by Samuel Levi Jones, Galerie Lelong & Co, New York, NY (2018).
In 2019, Huffman completed permanent commissions in Oakland and San Francisco at the Chase Center in collaboration with SFMOMA.
His work may be found in the permanent collections of Arizona State University Art Museum, Arizona State University, Tempe Campus, Tempe, AZ; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of; California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY, among others.
Visit David's Website: David-Huffman.com
Follow David on Instagram: @DavidHuffmanStudio
See David's work through the Jessica Silverman Gallery
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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
2023-1205 - AIA - EP015 - David Huffman
Artist David Huffman: [00:00:00] Meeting Basquiat was very exciting. The sort of Black presence was so much of a rupture. There was like no Black artists having any presence then in 85. So I just congratulated him that he was at this level that we'd never seen Black folks at.
Host Emily Wilson: That's David Hefferman on going to New York when he was in art school and meeting Basquiat and Andy Warhol at an opening.
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. I'm your host, Emily Wilson. As a writer in San Francisco covering the arts, I see so many hard working artists doing interesting work here in the Bay Area, and I wanted people to know about them, so I came up with Art is Awesome.[00:01:00]
David Huffman grew up in Berkeley, going to protests with his mother and helping her draw the Panther’s paws for the Black Panther logo. He got his BFA and MFA at California College of the Arts, and now he teaches painting and drawing there. David's art explores the symbolism of the space program, pyramids, and basketball, among other things.
His work is in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Studio Museum of Harlem, Oakland Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He's had solo shows at multiple institutions, and recently he was one of 30 contemporary artists whose work was acquired by the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
His piece, Waterfall, is on view at the DeYoung through December 31st. His new work, The Sun Still Rises, will be featured at Art Basel Miami at Jessica Silverman's booth later this week. We met at David's studio [00:02:00] in Oakland. You can sometimes hear someone in one of the other studios. David said he grew up surrounded by art.
Artist David Huffman: My mom did artwork for the Black Panther Party. She did a Black Panther logo for free Huey flags, and I helped my mom with the feet on the second iteration of that because the first one, They did a series of flags and then for some reason we lost the silkscreen to it. So she had to redo it and she needed help, and so I helped her with like the paws on the second iteration as we're thinking like 1969 or so. So I've always been. into art. My mom, she still is an artist, but she was really making a lot of art back then. Now she just kind of does it as a, to herself. She doesn't make work and tries to show it or anything, but everybody in the house kind of did something creative.
Like my brothers did music. I had another brother who did photography. My sister Pam, she did a lot of drawing and my brother Ronald, he did a lot of drawing and we all made art.
Host Emily Wilson: One of the things David is known for Is his traumanaut series.
Artist David Huffman: I was working with stereotyped imagery of black folks as a subject matter in the late eighties and early nineties.
And they kind of just got me thinking about that sense of the happy Black person or that what they call the happy darky back then fun loving. It just seemed to contradict the truth of the history. And so I got intrigued with those figures, those figures that you would normally see of the Aunt Jemima or the blackface minstrel characters.
And one thing led to another, as I was painting them, I got interested in things about UFOs and spaceships and outer space related iconography. And I just brought them together eventually as I was working and I think I just shrunk one of those figures, these minstrel figures down and put them in a spaceship and painted the, the, it was like a, a [00:04:00] traditional UFO vehicle, which was the kind that you normally see in fifties film.
So it had the circular form and like a little window dome and the figure was right there in the center, but I painted it kind of like a target. So it had a kind of a bullseye feel to it. And I think what I. What I was interested in was that this idea of black people being kind of like an unidentified flying object culturally to white culture.
Host Emily Wilson: David played basketball growing up and he uses it in various ways in his art.
Artist David Huffman: The netting for the basketball hoops and created these overall abstract paintings that are kind of like, I call them like a net field of a type because they are very much. An abstract space, but they're made out of physical urban iconography that I felt connected to who I am as an artist.
Host Emily Wilson: David's mother had pyramids in their house, and he likes including them in his art. He's painted basketballs in the shape of pyramids, and about a dozen years ago, he started building pyramids out of real basketballs. Jessica Silverman asked him to make one for her gallery's 15th anniversary earlier this year.
He did, in a rainbow of colors.
Artist David Huffman:Basketball pyramid was a way to claim some of the Blackness back into that form into the pyramid. And so by making them out of basketballs themselves, there was a kind of innate urban vernacular in them. So that's generally how that started. So I've done a few different ones.
The latest one I was very excited to do was Summit that was at Jessica Silverman's gallery. And I was able to bring another marginalized group to kind of voice some of. that situation because a lot of what I do is social political. So for me, it was like, yeah, LGBTQ is a no brainer to me. You know, I've wanted to do a rainbow pyramid for a long time.
So I was trying to think about [00:06:00] that sense of inclusions,
Host Emily Wilson: Lyrics from a song by Sylvester, a beloved disco singer wrap around the base of the pyramid.
Artist David Huffman: Then I was able to add text to that piece from Sylvester song,You make me feel mighty real. It's just, it was a song that I love so much. And I love Sylvester when Sylvester was around, he just exuded a certain kind of like beauty and energy and creative permission and just like boundlessness.
Host Emily Wilson: Last year, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco acquired works of 30 contemporary artists, including David. Curator Claudia Schmuckly chose David's piece, Waterfall. It's on display until December 31st at the de Young Museum, a museum David went to with his mother growing up.
Artist David Huffman: It's a sensation that piece has. It has a kind of like cascading feel. It looks like there's a kind of movement, like a waterfall acts. I was very excited. [00:07:00] Claudia was interested in that piece. It's a paper piece that I had rolled up here in the studio and it's quite large. It's like 16 feet so tall. And they had another piece there when I was recently going there within the last, I guess, six, seven years.
And they had like a Pat Steir waterfall painting and it looked gorgeous. And her and I had talked a little bit and she thought, you know, yeah, this kind of has a similar feel. And for me, that work on paper, that series of work are very much a formal. Delivery on abstraction, even though I'm using unlikely materials to produce it, I feel like it's in tandem with the language of abstractions.
Host Emily Wilson: David teaches drawing and painting at the California College of the Arts, or CCA, where he got his BFA and MFA. When he was a student, he did a program where he studied in New York in 1985. During that time, he saw a lot of art and met a [00:08:00] lot of people. Including Andy Warhol, Basquiat, Keith Haring, and light and space artist, Robert Irwin, who recently passed away.
Artist David Huffman: I met Roy Lichtenstein when he was starting his new practice in abstract expressionism, which he got a lot of criticism for, but that was a very fun opening and having the talk with him, have a chance to, you know, talk to him about comic books, which I used to be really interested in was pretty powerful.
And meeting Basquiat was very exciting. I thought the work was very unusual. I was not really into that kind of work, but I, to see a Black presence was so much of a rupture. There was like no Black artists having any like presence. Then in 85, I just congratulated him that he was at this level that we'd never seen Black folks at.
Host Emily Wilson: This is Three Questions, the part of the show where I ask the artists the [00:09:00] same three things to learn a little more about them. When did you know you were an artist? What's some work that made an impression on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area? David mentioned the impact of work by his CCA classmate, Jason Rhodes, an acclaimed installation artist, and a painting by Raymond Saunders, who's exhibited nationally and internationally since the 50s.
Artist David Huffman: I don't know. The answer is I totally don't know. I just know that I used to not finish works and it bothered me a lot. You know, I couldn't finish a piece. I didn't know how to finish it.
And around, I think somewhere in the late 80s, maybe even like 90, like 89, 90, 91, I started completing works and I felt like that's when the work really had its sense of voice. So for me, it [00:10:00] was like finding the voice in the work probably was more synonymous with being. And artists, because up to then you're studying, it's kind of like you're in medical school, still, you haven't become a doctor yet. You know what I mean? Like you can't call yourself, you can call yourself a doctor with your degree, but really your practice makes you a doctor, you know what I'm saying? And for me, my practice in completing works and finding my voice in the sense that this is me saying. Saying something very different and specific was when I feel like the sense of the artists, uh, most likely came about.
I was in school when Jason Rhodes was in school. We were both in like the same sculpture and like a drawing. I think it was like a drawing painting class. And one day it was his turn to be critiqued. So, we walked up into the painting studios on the Oakland campus at CCAC and [00:11:00] the whole floor of the studio, which is a very massive space because this is where you hold a whole class in it, it was covered with drawings.
They were covered. I mean, there was no place to walk really. It was like charcoal and like red pastel on like generally white paper or ivory or off white paper. And there were various sizes and they were like weird creatures and there were weird things on each one. And every one seemed important. Even though one wasn't really illustrative, it seemed important that that one was there.
And it raised the stakes super high in my mind about how art really is. That is far more than I thought it was. It is not about. Proficiency study and technique. It was about something way bigger. It was about a window so broad, so vast that, you know, it was like, I need mine. I, I, he raised the stakes so high.
I was like, this, this is the bar. Now, as [00:12:00] far as an artwork, I will say one artwork in particular when I went to the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco when it was in the Veterans Building, there was a Raymond Saunders bird painting and that painting stunned me and I was stuck in front of that painting.
That was like the first painting that spoke to me physically. It broke that thing where painting is only research for me. It took me to a different place of reading information and it had such a sense of blackness in there in a very clear way. It's almost like he just made a road for me. As far as like the creativity part.
I feel going to the museums are very exciting to go. I like, I love going to SF MoMA. I mean, SFMOMA has always been a kind of church for me because I would go there and see, you know, whether it be new work or old work or something. And same thing with the DeYoung. Those are [00:13:00] My place is in that way, as far as like my sense of being creative, it is the studio.
I mean, there's just no getting around that the studio is where it all happens. You know, it's the portal.
Host Emily Wilson: Thanks for listening to Art is Awesome. And thanks to our guest, David Huffman. His painting, The Sun Still Rises. We'll be on view at Jessica Silverman's booth at Art Basel, Miami, later this week. And his piece, Waterfall, is on view at the DeYoung Museum through December 31st. Please subscribe and join us next time when our guest is Rupi C.Tut, a painter whose show, Out of Place, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, through January 7th. She will also be in a group show, Interview, New Voices, New Stories, at [00:14:00] San Francisco's Asian Art Museum, January 19th. Through next October,
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast dropping every other Tuesday. It was created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by Charlene Goto of go to productions. Our theme music is provided by Kevin McLeod with incompetent music. Be sure to follow us on social media or visit our website till next time.