Starting my Support Beam Residency/Grant Painting!
Day 1 - A New Opportunity
Last night my husband left to celebrate his mother’s birthday, which gave me the space to create the foundation of a painting that I believe is going to take my practice to a new level. There is a level of focus and patience within my practice when I am granted the funds to create freely, which gives me the agency and space to put so much more into my paintings. Something about this piece tells me so…that it will be treasured and loved by those who see it for many years to come.
I want to give a heartfelt thank you to the Regional Arts and Cultural Council for selecting me for their 2nd Round of Support Beam, which is RACC’s new Public Art Initiative out of the impact COVID-19 has had on artists in Oregon. To score highly among 200 applicants and be selected along 15 other artists is a feat worth celebrating over. This opportunity wouldn’t be possible if the Federal CARES Act hadn’t given additional funding and approval to and for RACC to move forward with this second round of support - so again, I am grateful.
Through this residency/grant hybrid, I am required to create one piece of work that will be acquired into RACC’s Public Art Collection - which will rotate throughout city buildings. Because of the way funding was laid out, I have been given a shorter work period - I must be done with my painting by the beginning of December. In recognizing that the shorter timeline may add pressure to our art practice, on top of everything else going on in our community due to COVID-19, RACC wanted to make the process as supportive and nourishing for us as possible, so gave us the ability to release a painting to them that we may have painted since March 2020. While the pressures are very true for my situation, it’s 11/22/2020…deadline is in a few weeks...I am working a full-time job with overtime...in a job assisting families who have been impacted by COVID-19…so having the mental and creative space to create a new piece was initially too much for me to comprehend.
When my husband left last night I took a nap with my bull terrier. I took a break and rested. I had just finished an 8 hour overtime work day and a quick hike into the forest for some forest bathing. I gave myself the ability to rest on what I would do with this residency/grant hybrid opportunity. Would I let go of a piece I had created during the pandemic, or create something entirely from blank canvas.
11/21/2020 - Forest Park trail via Newberry Trailhead. About 30 minutes in on a late afternoon hike with my husband.
My Responsibility as an Artist
I woke up from my nap and went to the dining room table. My father-in-law was watching television in the living room and Nefertiti was still in the bed snoring. I cleared the table and brought out two watercolor papers with sketches on them. Something tugged at me, telling me not to use them…I was using them to build my portfolio before applying to a BFA program. I put them away and brought out some papers I hadn’t used on a project yet. I decided to use 22”x30” cold press, high white, 100% cotton, archival papers with deckled edges from the Blick Premier watercolor paper collection. I slid one of the 10 sheets from the plastic sheath out and placed it on the table.
I thought about how funny of a situation I was in. How embarrassed yet amazed I was with this big opportunity, yet my studio is my father-in-laws dining room table. For those who don’t know, my husband and I lived in our first studio apartment together back in 2018, shortly after getting married. In 2019, he decided to go for his masters degree and began taking the pre-requisites for a masters in Clinical Mental Health Counseling. He envisioned helping youth and families on a deeper level than what he does currently as a Youth Essentials Coordinator Manager at REAP, Inc. We packed all of our stuff and moved in with his father to lessen the burden of rent and pay off all our debts (mostly my school loans), so we could pay for his degree out of pocket ($54K over 3 years). In the last three years as a practicing artist, I haven’t had a dedicated studio space bigger than the corner of a room. Recently, I decided it was time to finally work towards funding a studio space for myself to practice.
About a week ago, I purchased a space I would make my studio and hired JM Joints to design the space and bring it to life. I am excited to see how owner and creative producer, Jordyn Michelle (now Jordyn Jenkins), creates a space and everlasting experience for me to practice my artistry in. Until then…I’m at my father-in-laws dining room table. I felt bad for being embarrassed, then thought this would be a great opportunity to highlight the fact that not every artist is at a point in their lives where they can afford a private studio or loft space to practice. Every artist starts somewhere…I mean even the studio space I purchased is a $186/mo 10’x15’ indoor storage space that needs some TLC to bring out its full potential and make it comfortable to work in. One day, who knows where I will be with my artistry, but if I do become an Amy Sherald one day painting the next Michelle Obama, people can look back at these blogs and see where I started.
So anyway, I stared at this piece of watercolor paper on my father-in-laws dining room table. I had made up my mind and decided I was going to make a piece from blank canvas. I wanted to take this opportunity and fully run with it. I didn’t want to skirt away from the pressure of completing a new work in less than two weeks. I felt like my responsibility as an artist was to use these funds to its fullest potential through the opportunity to create a digital residency/blog for all to see and paint a piece of a local Black woman, which would be acquired by RACC for their portable works collection.
The Muse
But what would I create? I looked through my Pinterest board of Black Women. I looked through my saved Instagram posts of Black Women who inspired me to paint. I looked through my liked Instagram posts and saw something, I saw her, and stopped scrolling for a minute. I had liked her post because it was so real for me. She was talking about her writing, and how she stopped writing because she hated the feeling of needing to write a certain amount of times each week and month, to post to Instagram. She talked about how social media can pressure her to please other people…this “pull to fit a certain aesthetic or system in order to be successful”. She said, ”Who cares about algorithms, likes and dislikes. Create because you want to create and do whatever makes you happy…”. I agree, people, especially creatives, should create without the burden of pleasing others.
I thought about our relationship - I had met her for the first time when she was selected as Roosevelt’s 2012 Rose Festival Princess. I was Benson high school’s Princess. After that season, we had lost contact and went off to college. Years later, I’d find us attending the same church and within the same circle of friends and associates of Black millennials in PDX. We had reconnected on Instagram a little bit ago and its been pleasant to see her growth as a Black woman.
I looked through Asia Greene-Rhodes profile and considered two photos from the same post. She had different hairstyles with beads. Of four different pictures, I liked the composition of the first and last, but decided to go with the latter due to the softness of her face yet unyielding demand from her eyes - there was a story to be told. Why paint her though? Because she, like every Black woman in Oregon, deserves to be a muse. We deserve to have our stories shared and beauty displayed. Each painting I create honors the raw vulnerability, self-love, and visual voice of Black woman. She’s been sharing her vulnerability and poetry for many years…it just felt right to me. In this piece she is strong and reserved, yet open. I put myself in the shoes of the person looking at this painting a year from now, in some Portland building. What would their thoughts be? What were mine? It would be an amazing opportunity to see artwork depicting a Black woman, even more so a PDX native I could relate to. When I painted Zanele for the Portland Building, I had the same thoughts. What little Black girl is going to one day visit the Portland Building and look up at this painting with a Black woman adorned in this beautiful African dress for her wedding day. How proud of herself and beauty she must then feel to be represented on these walls within the whitest major city in the USA? Thank you Asia for inspiring me to paint this newest work.
The background was sourced from a trip to White River Falls State Park in Wasco County, Oregon. The falls represent the fluidity of my current life. 2020 has been an interesting year. One of many wins and defeats, self-love and self-doubt. With the pandemic in March, I decided it was time to leave my steamfitter apprenticeship for something different (wrong timing, but it is what it is). I went into bricklaying and then shortly after was on a job where I was sexually harassed and assaulted by a co-worker. I made the decision to leave construction all together and use my degree in business to go back to white-collar work. I found meaning in helping families impacted by COVID-19 get much needed assistance and resources. Now I work for Multnomah County doing just that. There have been many times throughout this year where I have had anxiety through the roof with decision fatigue and analysis paralysis. It’s gotten worse as I battled with myself on finding and staying in a full-time job or going all in on my studio practice.
The falls of White River makes me feel so small. The world around me feels so big and grounds me in the present moment. I love the bits of greenery jutting out from silver white rock crevasses. I feel challenged with the wilderness around me and felt it would equally challenge my hand and eye when painting.
The Process
I collected my reference photos and began sketching into the night. By the time I looked up at the clock it was 1:30am, but I was almost finished with sketching. When I looked over the sketch I was in awe. I had a range of emotions, as I do with all the paintings I sketch. My husband walked through the door and we spent the remainder of the early morning soaking in the jacuzzi, drinking champagne…me telling him about how excited I was about this new piece and the residency/grant overall, and a folded piece of paper on the bookshelf that had just come in the mail - stating that Sade DuBoise Studio is now recognized in the State of Oregon. He listened to my excitement, my fears, my everything…until 3:30am. Then we retired to the bed…I had to get up and finish the sketch the next morning.
We woke up at 1:30pm. He started doing homework for his masters program and I sat down at the same table to finish the sketch of my piece.
11/22/2020 - Me in front of a 22”x30” sketch of Asia Greene-Rhodes, muse of latest work by Sade DuBoise, funded by RACC’s Support Beam program.
11/22/2020 Up close sketch of latest work by Sade DuBoise for her Support Beam residency/grant. Muse Asia Greene-Rhodes, a local PDX poet/writer & wife & mother.
11/22/2020 - The studio space I am working with. Sharing it with my husband as he works on his masters degree and work at REAP, Inc.
11/22/2020 - A shot taken of my unorganized studio space storage. Different papers, cameras and film for an upcoming Artist Spotlight with Liquitex, a puzzle in progress I’ve been making from scratch, unfinished and finished paintings, my printer for shipping labels, gesso, paintbrushes, palette papers, etc.
Surprises and Writing this Journey
I genuinely love surprising others. When Zanele saw her painting for the first time, her joy had shown me the true purpose of my practice. When a lot of women see themselves depicted in my paintings their emotions make me happy with my work. I have no clue how Asia is going to react when she sees the sketch I’m about to post. I hope she likes it!
Writing is somewhat of a challenge for me, but I hope this blog helps other artists and creatives express themselves more vulnerably and openly. I hope it shows that we don’t have to have it all together. That we may be a work in progress as well.