50 questions…well almost
What artist do you consider most influential to your ongoing development as an artist?
toni morrison
What has been the most significant challenge you’ve faced that you overcame to continue your art practice?
being broke
Describe your ideal workspace.
clean, bright, and warm, with music
What one sentence do you hope describes how your art practice will be recorded in history, and why?
“y’know…sola was right”
In thinking of the lulls and gaps or lost places in your practice over the years, who or what has re-energized you?
LOVE
What project of yours do you personally consider your most satisfying, and why – regardless of external support or accolades?
The Tutorial is a work of alchemy that i dreamed, envisioned, and spoke into existence before it came to be. despite the ongoing challenges of solo performance, the rewards of manifestation, self-fulfillment, and ownership have exceeded my expectations
What are habitual internal fears and bogeymen that come up for you around making art – excluding universal concerns of time, space, money, in/adequacy, and recognition?
losing balance, squandering creativity, and exploitation
Who of all the artists who have ever lived would you most love to share your work with? And why?
beyonce?? beyonce??!!! beyonce???!!
If you could travel in time, within what era or milieu would you most like to have an artist residency? And why?
not slavery
What is you current guiding motivation to work and/or express yourself?
leaving a blueprint for my daughter’s freedom
Who or what would you most like to collaborate with?
my friends and family
Do you have a relationship with the distant future – in other words, are you making artwork that bears a message or impact for coming generations?
absolutely
What role does your genetic or cultural background play in your practice?
all of it
What surprises you most about what you are doing right now in your practice? If the nine-year-old you could see you right now, what do you think they would think?
most actors don’t make a lot of money. & my nine year old self would say, “wow she’s so pretty!”
What do you worry you will never be able to express?
colorism is bad, kids
What emotion as an artist makes you most uncomfortable and why?
hope. in this current hellscape of late-stage capitalism, neoliberalism, female subjugation, tighter borders, and human beings’ overreliance on big tech, it’s hard to say that everything will be ok
Can you recall your first memory of bliss in self-expression?
i…cannot, unfortunately
Do you have a relationship with an animal in your life that influences your art process?
nope
What unchangeable fact has been most frustrating to you as an artist?
racism
How deeply do you feel your self-expression is impacted by the field in which you work – its morés, standards, culture, legacies – and how so?
before the algorithm was the formula and before that was the prototype, which was deepened to a legacy, systematized generationally. blk artists have had to dodge, negotiate, and compete with white supremacist hegemonic vocabulary proliferated by Hollywood for over a century
so, i been known the metaverse
How would you describe your ideal relationship with other artist colleagues?
them doing the work while I get all the credit
What do you feel are the greatest or most tenacious barriers to creating art over an entire lifetime?
capitalism
Is destruction a positive phenomenon for you?
all the ideas, words, and images I convey are pieces of myself I have been broken into
When does Joy tend to visit you?
with my daughter, on a swing, folding sheets
Who or what are you speaking to or with in your current work? Who or what would you like to speak with in your art in future?
sula
If you have one goal for change in your artistic field, what would it be?
pay blk artists
If you could amplify a specific sense, which would it be?
intuition
If you could minimize s specific sense, which would you choose?
judgment
How has your years in artmaking affected or influenced your sense of self?
it’s made me tired, irritable, more empowered, better at communication, self-actualized and indulgent
What do you suspect is your most powerful artistic blessing? Or blessing in general?
vision
Have you ever had a physical illness, event, or impediment that has changed how you make or approach artmaking? And how?
pregnancy showed me that creation is always happening, whether we enact/perform labor or not
If you could create a new public institution for your field, what would it’s mission be?
to pay blk artists and entities reparations/restitution for all creative labor extracted and exploited from us over all time
Who or what do you feel is most invisible to others in your practice?
loneliness
What is your relationship to criticism?
it helps to ground me. it helps me to grow
What is your relationship to praise?
it builds me up and points me right
How would you describe the prevailing norms in your field – are you impacted by them? How or how not?
shrug “we in strange times yo…”
(i.e. one of the professional performer’s unions I belong to, sag-aftra, is currently on strike, joining the wga in a long-awaited double labor stoppage in the mainstream/large-budget tv and film production industry.)
What is your relationship to your audience, real or imaginary?
gratitude, respect, admiration, and curiosity
What makes you most likely to shut down or go into dormancy as an artist?
being broke
Do you have a particular skill or knack of which you are most secretly proud? Something you feel you can do that few others can, no matter how small?
great kisser
Which would you prefer: to be a rogue artistic outsider or to fit within a community of similarly-minded creators?
community
If you could be anything besides an artist in human form, what would you like to be?
midwife
What would be the most thrilling moment or situation in timespace to find your art being enjoyed?
with my grandchildren