Abstract
Artist Johnny Coleman discusses his personal background and career as an artist. Coleman was born in Saugus, Massachusetts, and grew up in Redlands, California. Early in life, Coleman struggled as an artist, "drifting in the streets" as a method of learning the arts, but eventually took a full-time job at a drugstore. After several years at the drugstore, Coleman's friends and especially his brother encouraged him to pursue his artistic abilities. Coleman took formal art classes at Santa Barbara Community College and later enrolled at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. Artists such as Charlie White inspired Coleman's artwork and Ulysses Jenkins became Coleman's "immediate mentor." Coleman's works include a response to Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred," in which Coleman created a chalkboard just of reach of the individual, and artwork which individuals "physically inhabit the space." Throughout Coleman's life, music remained an anchor of inspiration. Coleman tries to work through local environments and sounds that emerge within spaces. Coleman taught Black visual art at Oberlin College after the insistence of his students. Coleman believes his experience at Oberlin helps him better articulate his own work.
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Interviewee
Coleman, Johnny (interviewee)
Interviewer
Busta, William (interviewer)
Project
Cleveland Artists Foundation
Date
10-29-2008
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
59 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Johnny Coleman Interview, 29 October 2008" (2008). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 901020.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/234
Transcript
William Busta [00:00:00] First of all, Johnny, I will be asking a series in the course while I’m talking to you, a series of open ended questions that don’t suggest any answers that sort of start like the first one’s going to be when did you first realize that you had artistic ability? So they’re open ended questions like that. Or did you ever realize that the thing to remember as we go through this is that this. What we’re. In the old days, what we used to do is we used to sort of do oral histories and then they got on cassettes, and then the cassettes got put in boxes and the boxes got put in bigger boxes and then they went to the bigger file cabinets.
Johnny Coleman [00:00:40] And then they deteriorated.
William Busta [00:00:41] They deteriorated. This is going to digital form and it’s going to be available through the Cleveland State University archives and it will become a permanent source so that if 50 years from now somebody’s going to be googling about your work, they’ll be able to come to this interview and they’ll be able to. We hope to have that. We expect to have them transcribed, but they’ll also be able to cue the digital parts of it. And one parts of it is that there will be an index to it so you don’t have to listen to the whole thing to see if there’s.
William Busta [00:01:19] So I’m just sort of giving you a little bit of a context to that. The second thing is that in many ways, as an interviewer, I’m a facilitator if I ask a question and feel comfortable answering the question I should have asked instead of the one that I did. So, no, I do that all the time. You know, when I take somebody to a radio station for WCPN, I say always answer the question that should have been asked. Because I said Dee doesn’t care what you have to say and say, what do you mean? Dee wants a good program and so go that way. So whatever where you feel comfortable, if you want to at some point lead the conversation somewhere, I’ll follow and we’ll go with that. We’ll plan to go for about, for about an hour. And I have sort of watched today, I forgot it yesterday. That will sort of do it maybe a little bit less than an hour because we have somebody coming in, but somewhere around between 40, about 35 and 55 minutes that we’ll be doing. So thanks.
Johnny Coleman [00:02:31] Yeah, yeah.
William Busta [00:02:35] And what I will start off by is when Matt says go, I’d like you to just say what your name is and where you were born. And then we’ll go from there.
William Busta [00:02:51] You’re ready to go.
Johnny Coleman [00:02:52] Hi, my name is Johnny Coleman, and I was born in Saugus, Massachusetts.
William Busta [00:02:59] When did you grow up in Saugus?
Johnny Coleman [00:03:02] No, my parents moved to southern California, Redlands, California, outside of Los Angeles, when I was six months old.
William Busta [00:03:11] Okay, so you don’t remember Massachusetts very well?
Johnny Coleman [00:03:13] Not for having lived there, no. No. I’m a California boy.
William Busta [00:03:17] And you grew up in California?
Johnny Coleman [00:03:19] Grew up in California.
William Busta [00:03:21] And when did you first- Artists have different stories of when they sort of started to think of themselves as an artist. When did you first start to realize that you might have certain abilities that other in the area of art that other people might not?
Johnny Coleman [00:03:39] I don’t remember. I thought that I was always an artist. I always thought that I was an artist. But the medium I thought of myself as an artist in was music. Although I drew all my life, I always had songs in my head. If I was waiting in the car for my parents, if they were shopping or if they were doing something and I was stuck in the car, I would be making up verses and melodies I drew all the time. But really in my head, I saw myself as somebody who would be engaged in music from as long as I can remember.
William Busta [00:04:14] And that drawing in the beginning, were you just drawing from with your own freedom, or were you consciously trying to learn some sort of academic way to draw? In other words, there’s one thing with the child who draws a house, and there’s another thing with a child who tries to learn how to draw a house.
Johnny Coleman [00:04:36] I don’t know at what point, but I do know that I thought that if I could draw something and it looked like the object I was trying to draw, that that meant I was allowed so very early. I was trying to draw things that looked like what it was that was in front of me.
William Busta [00:04:52] And how did the shift happen as you were growing between your aspirations toward music and your aspirations toward art?
Johnny Coleman [00:05:04] I’m not really sure how it happened in school after second or third grade, where art was still available as part of the curriculum. After that, I didn’t take any art classes. At 12, my mother got me a guitar because she misunderstood when I said I wanted drums and my brother said he wanted a guitar. I got the guitar, my brother got the drums, and I still love drums. But I really fell in love with the guitar at that point and had six months of lessons, but didn’t pursue lessons beyond that. And just because of family dynamics, I was not encouraged to join band at school. And although I was drawing all the time, and my father saved the drawings that I would do, and he would have them and my mother would have them, my aunt as well. Somehow I didn’t take it upon myself to take art classes. And I wasn’t encouraged, although my parents did make sure. We heard a lot of poetry. We saw theater, we heard concerts. I was not really directed to take art classes, formal art classes. So I kind of drifted and played with fellows in the street, just guys in bands, and tried to learn the guitar by ear and kind of enjoyed that. But I never really chose visual arts over music. What happened is later, after I had run out of money in school, after my first year in undergraduate school, I was working at a drugstore as a stockman or, you know, sweeping the floors. And they said, look, Johnny, we know you want to go back to school, but if you don’t say anything to the personnel director, we won’t tell him you’re going back to school, and we’ll hire you. We’ll recommend you for him to hire as a management trainee. And long story short, I ended up working for a drugstore chain that was in California and really established. It was called Thrifty Drug. And I worked for them for the next eight years, during which the whole time now, so I’m like 19, 20 years old. During which the whole time I’m drawing and I’m playing the guitar. Never really seeing a distinction between the two. It’s just art for me. So, I mean, music has always been at the kind of, I don’t know, emotional core of an image that I might try to compose. I didn’t choose one or the other. What ended up happening is that my friends and my brother just kept saying, you know, they’d see me buttoned down with a clipboard and eventually being an assistant manager and then getting my own store, not having gone back to school, looking like I’m more and more going to be submersed and disappear into this fledgling manager business role, right? And I was really, really young, and to all appearances, I was doing great. I had a job, and ice cream wasn’t dinner anymore. And, you know, I wasn’t sweeping up floors, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was doing well at it, but my heart wasn’t in it. And, you know, my brother just kept saying, Johnny, you’re an artist. Why are you doing this? My friends would do the same thing. Why are you doing this? It’s like, come on, man. You know, before you’ll put food in the refrigerator. You’re framing the drawings. We have all your drawings. So finally, a friend of mine who I had met at school, and while I wasn’t in school, most of my friends that were, that I had met through school, I was living in Santa Barbara. I had gone up to University of California in Santa Barbara. I thought I was going to be a pre-law, and I took a class in African American Studies called Creative Expression in the Black Experience. That ruined me. And so I found myself really investigating writing and creative writing and narrative in the context of culture and history. And, you know, I’d met several people, and they remained friends. And one in particular just called me one day and he said, you know, by this time I was a manager. I had my own store. And he said, look, when is your vacation, and when are you and your partner going to go on vacation? I told him. He said, well, here’s the deal. You are going to spend three days, man. I need you to spend three days with me, and if your partner will hang with us, that’s great, but if not, man, put on a flight. I just want to have three days with my friend where we aren’t doing anything, man. Let’s go listen to some music. Let’s take a run. Let’s eat some good food, you know, let’s just hang out. Haven’t seen you in a long time. I just want to see if you’re happy, man. Long story short, at the end of those three days, as I’m driving back from San Francisco to Santa Barbara and I’m due back at work on Tuesday, I’m driving back on Sunday, I knew that I was quitting. I mean, it was just the transition during that weekend of running and eating good food and listening to music and going to theater and hanging out, you know, we literally did run. We ran five miles through Golden Gate Park. We went and listened to all kinds of music. He’s a great cook. Just that weekend, it was enough of a kind of step outside of the routine for me to be able to look back in and, you know, just ask myself, is this what you really want to put your energy into designing for the rest of your life? I mean, you know, it seemed like I had kind of given up on myself. And, you know, my friends just saw that my brother was just a constant voice. Why are you doing this? Play your guitar. You’ll make at least that money. But you’re doing it, doing something you want to do. So I gave them, you know, I talked to the district manager, and, you know, you just tell me, Coleman, you got the world by the balls. You know, you’re this young guy, Black guy. How many black managers are there in Thrifties? Actually, I worked for one, and he had taught me a lot. And then the second youngest manager in the chain was a man by the name of Mario Lariba. He’s Mexican. And he, I was his first assistant manager at the biggest store in the city. And the call in store for the entire district. So I learned a whole lot from an elder black manager and a very young, the second youngest manager in the chain, Mario Lariba. And so there’s like three guys of color, and we’re knocking it out the court. I quit. And they brought these folks and they said, look, you know, if it is that you don’t want to move to another store, we’ll leave you in this store. If you want a schedule that’s going to allow you to go back to school, we’ll set up that schedule. You’re just getting ready to throw away a career. You’ve been here not even 10 years. By the time you’re 30, if you want, you’ll be a district manager. You could be a division manager. You can move the office. What is the problem? I just said, I appreciate it. I’m leaving. You guys have a month’s notice. And, you know, they kind of knew that by the time I was going to tell them it was a done deal. So it was a done deal. And I took my first art classes, formal art classes at Santa Barbara Community College. And I took drawing class, a composition class, and a life drawing class. I was 27, I guess, years old. Something like that. The way that music became much, much less of a focus. Like, I would get off work and go pick up the guitar, or I’d get off work and I’d be drawing, or I’d put the guitar down, draw, stop drawing, pick up the guitar. And I was fighting as well. I was always a martial artist. So a lot of my energy was very, very creative. Where the guitar became much, much less is. After undergraduate school, I applied for admission to Otis Parsons in Los Angeles. It’s the only school I wanted to go to. Charlie White had taught there. Betye Saar had been through there. Alison Saar had graduated there. David Hammons had been there. I mean, just so many people that were models for me. So I applied, and I was lucky enough to get in. And I took my profit sharing from Thrifties. I had enough to pay for tuition for one year. So, you know, my father’s question was, son, have you really thought this through? How are you going to pay for it? Pop? I got enough for one year. What happens then? I’m going to have to borrow a little bit and I’m going to have to get scholarships. So really, I didn’t have a net. I did borrow and I was very, very lucky because I did get scholarships. That helped. I didn’t get a scholarship going in. I got a scholarship after the first year. And then at the 11th hour, I got a scholarship for the third year. It didn’t pay the whole thing, but it helped a whole lot. Otis was and is a private arts school. It started as a county school, a real street school. When I went there, it was downtown, right on MacArthur park between 6th and. Oh, gosh, what’s the other one there? Wilshire, actually. Sheesh. So it was really a street school, funky school, really, really talented students, but it really had a live dynamic through undergraduate school. Music still was something I did. And I played with other artists at the school. But in graduate school, as I became more focused and more directed in terms of what I was doing as an artist, I just couldn’t do both. And after graduate school and being here and having my son born, time was more of a premium. And then my daughter, my second child. So it’s just become for about 20 years, honestly, the guitar has been kind of a memory and a background. But in terms of music and my passion for music and its centrality and my work and, you know, just the kind of core and the particular music that I’m drawn to, most significantly, that still is at the. Really at the center as an anchor or as a kind of reference or an aspiration in terms of what I’m trying to do experientially.
William Busta [00:15:55] When you- When you were- How did you- Did- As you started taking the art courses, was there a journey that you took in terms of what your major field of work was going to be?
Johnny Coleman [00:16:05] I absolutely wanted to be, I mean, Charlie White, who’s a master draftsman. I wanted to, you know, be a disciple of Charlie White. You know, I grew up in Southern California. It wasn’t a major metropolitan area, although the black arts was really centered in LA. And that’s why, you know, Charlie and his centrality there and Betye Saar and a whole host of folks there. I was not particularly aware in any meaningful sense of folks other than Bearden to a limited degree and Jacob Lawrence because it’s, again, graphic. And I could see that work in Ebony magazine or in calendars or postcards and stuff. Charlie was everywhere. I wanted to be an illustrative artist whose work had these kinds of references to history and culture, was accessible to folks, it was inexpensive, and as far as I was concerned, was so formally strong that it’s clear that you’re a gifted artist. You know, for me, the definition of an artist is somebody who could draw well. You know, that’s where I was. That’s where I started. And I still love Charlie White for different reasons now. You know, because of the narrativity of his work, because of the musicality of his work, because of the incredible formal composition of his work, but mostly because of the impact of his work and because he’s such an incredible visual griot.
William Busta [00:17:47] When, as you were an undergraduate, when did you start to do installations? How did that develop?
Johnny Coleman [00:17:53] By accident. I, you know, I was taking a lot of, they would call it advanced life drawing and advanced drawing in my first year. And it was really clear I was going to be, you know, an illustrative painter and draftsman. And so in my second year, I’m in painting class with a woman by the name of Robin Vaccarino, and she’s trying to break people of their habits of really holding onto the line and to learn about paint, shape, color, texture, music, flow, you know, and all my life I’ve been synesthetic, and I hear light, feel it on my body. So I was doing a series of paintings, really large paintings that dealt with experiencing particular sunrises and a moon rise. And I had just come back from. With a group of friends from San Francisco. Again, there had been a rally and calling for the UC system to divest from South Africa and, you know, a real support for the ANC and all. And so there had been a big group of people up in San Francisco, and we drove up and slept on the floor and had been at the rally all day. And the next day, we’re. Well, early the next morning, I’m driving on Interstate 5, heading south back to LA, and there’s a moonrise. And so when I got back, I painted that moonrise. And she just said, why are you painting? You know, this has nothing to do with paint. You know, she thought it was formally beautiful, but, you know, it was on a canvas. It was 4 inches thick off the wall. It was 4 feet by 8 feet. It really was. To her mind, it was more about the space. It was more about a physical experience. It was more about light and time and these visceral engagements in a space and how that feels on the body and she just said, you should just take this off the wall. You should be working in space, not on the wall.
William Busta [00:19:59] And how did you respond to that?
Johnny Coleman [00:22:02] I, you know, I loved color and, you know, loving John Coltrane and hearing color in his work, and I mean, both metaphorically and just hearing a rich composition that has so many subtle phrases and colors and textures. So here I thought, you know, well, you just don’t understand. I’m trying to do this on canvas. And she would have conversations. She was a very gifted artist painter, and she would say, music is always the first art. You know, painting will never be music. And I’m arguing with her. And I think at first, you know, as she said, and I’m feeling resistant. I was kind of invested in what I was trying to do, you know, but it just made all the sense in the world. And I think I did one painting after that, and the next big piece I did. Other than assignments in the painting class, I was still in the class. The very next piece I did, I think, still in my sophomore year, was a piece a response to Langston Hughes’s “Dream Deferred.” And what I ended up doing was take the student gallery. So it was a small gallery. It was probably about 20 feet by about 12 feet. It’s not big, you know, so around 240 square feet. And right at. I really painted out the walls so they were very, very clean white. And then I took fingerprints right about the level of my navel, and I taped them off and put fingerprints from one end of the wall all the way across to the other end of the wall. I built a little shelf rack for chalk then above reach. And I had a high ceiling. I painted a blackboard onto the wall and then dusted the blackboard with chalk so it was clear that it was blackboard. But you couldn’t get the chalk to the blackboard and just name the piece, you know, in homage to a “Dream Deferred,” or for Langston Hughes, “Dream Deferred.” That was my first installation. And for me, it still engaged, like, composition and, you know, the texture and color, though this was really muted colors. There was chalk dust on the floor. So it was apparent, you know, that it’s possible, but it’s very difficult. It was out of reach. So it was really a natural transition. It felt really organic, but it took that kind of just bam. Like I said, I loved Charlie White. Still do. And I worked really, really hard to develop the eye hand coordination and the looking. And it’s a really meditative process to draw, not be worried about. Well, does look right, you know, but to really just fall in love with contour, cross, contour, you know, speed of line, you know, density of line, texture, hatching, you know, to build and even to work non representationally, where it really becomes much more analogous to music where you’re taking patches, you know. So all of that really, really brief, but very, very dense, compacted period of time where I was looking formally, I had really good drawing instructors at Santa Barbara Community College. Community colleges are what’s happening. I mean, the resources there and the commitment of the artists there, that’s a great place to go and get very, very strong formal skills. So I had a year and a half there, you know, one full year, and then a summer before going right to. To Otis, and then at Otis, Sam Clayberger, Michael Wingo and, you know, just for drawing. And they really, really, really pushed me in a very, very brief period of time. So all of my energy had gone into graphics, into drawing. You know, it took a little break to get me to step out of that. But once I did, you know, it just. It felt very, very much more organic for me to be able to refer to the kinds of spatial things that music does.
William Busta [00:24:25] Well, that’s one of the interesting things to me about your work is that it’s. I suppose it’s natural in today’s world that you might. That sound is an element in a lot of artworks. But the problem is that it’s sort of. I guess it’s the same problem with visual artists dealing with history, is that they might not be good historians, but they’re good visual artists. The sound. How do you. There’s a famous story with Jack Kerouac that you had always dreamed of having these jazz greats play behind his poetry. And he hired them and they simply came in, they played and they said, okay, goodbye. They were done with their session, and he just thought this was going to be his transcendental moment. And they were just doing a day’s job. But how- I’m just trying to set up. How do you. With the training as a visual artist? Were there other people who were able to give you any teaching in how to integrate sound into environment? Or was it- Was it something that you learned in small pieces? Or were you following a model from another discipline that taught you how to use sound?
Johnny Coleman [00:25:38] I’m not sure. I’ve always loved film and, you know, as a kid, even when it made me look maybe a little nerdy, if I had a chance to Go with my Auntie Lane to a film or go with my Uncle Ray to the pool hall. I’m 12 or 13 years old and have a beer and be treated like a young man. I chose the film. I want to go to the movies, you know, so film, it was just always a strong reference for me. My parents did get us to the theater. That’s another space where sound was always. I mean, you have an orchestra pit and there’s music, but there’s also sound effects. So both film and theater were references for me. But I grew up in, you know, the mid-late ’60s, early ’70s, and those were points where there was a really, really strong relationship between a black power movement, the black arts movement, and, well, just. They were extensions of the same kind of cultural space. And even in high school, we had a really, really strong drama department and the director of the theater at Redlands High School, which is a big, huge high school and very athletic high school. And because Redlands is a small town, it was the only school in town. A lot of people there, Billy Daniels, who is European American, she was just invested in all kinds of folks. And she always had extremely strong programming that drew on black theater. She was amazing. And so we’re hearing Nikki Giovanni. We’re hearing Amiri Baraka. We’re on stage watching. Because I wasn’t in the theater, but watching programs with black students in theater, on stage in high school, doing pieces that involved the Last Poets. So there was already a kind of integration between. And conscious and really intentional integration between the spoken, the dramatic, theatrical and the musical. Then, you know, this is a while back. We’re close to the same age. You remember radio stations. One, they were local, and two, they were not driven by a corporate kind of playlist. And they drew from a much wider span of disciplines in terms of music. I still grew up. We’re outside of L.A. I’m growing up, I’m listening to. At the time, it was KBCA. And KBCA was the jazz radio. And I just. I don’t know how it happened. I just. It’s just jazz was part of popular music then. So I grew up hearing this all the time. But there was a radio station that came out of- There’s another one in L.A., KPFK, which was. It’s part of the Pacifica radio family. And so it’s really progressive. I was hearing all kinds of Gil Scott Heron. Gil Scott, you know, I mean, there you have, I mean, his first recording- I think he’s 19 years old. The revolution will not be televised. And he’s got a drummer behind him. Most everything he did from there had a full band. He’s playing piano. He had at least congas, bass, later guitar, you know, the first album that I bought of his had Ron Carter on bass. I’m not remembering the other folks all of a sudden who were on it, but it was a full jazz band behind him. So that integration of music to other forms of art was always present. But when I got to Otis, there was a man there by the name of Ulysses Jenkins. And I was on work study, and I was assigned to the tool crib. And my first day at work, I was introduced to Ulysses, who was working in the video studio. And this is, I don’t know, this is what, 1983 or ’84, something like that? Video at Otis was not very developed at the time. Video as art was, it was in its still infancy, if not youth. And Ulysses was painting the studio as a black box. He became my immediate mentor. Immediate. And, you know, he just kind of shook me with really pointed questions regarding, well, look, man, so you can draw. He wasn’t really gentle, you know, I really don’t care. And he didn’t use those terms. He was- He was more direct and rougher. I just don’t care. You know, the question is, what are you drawing? Who are you drawing it for? What is it about? Who are you talking to? Why does anybody care? Why should we? Right? So he’s asking questions of intent, audience, function, purpose, relationship. And really, essentially, he wanted me to know that I could choose to work very, very formally, I could choose. And I think he’s coming at me because he saw that I was really trying to have a process that was really engaged on a lot of levels, certainly engaged with African American culture and history and other expressive forms within the culture. So he came at me really hard because I think he realized, well, you know, here’s a guy who’s a little bit older and, you know, he’s probably really hungry, but he’s out here in California. He’s not in New York, he’s not in Chicago. He’s in L.A., but he’s not from L.A., right? So we don’t know him. And, you know, he’s old enough to be here with us, but he hasn’t had, in terms of the Black arts, he hasn’t been here with us. So, you know, let’s let him know he has a choice, shake him up a little bit and give him examples, you know, and challenges. So he just began right off, and the Second time I worked with him, and I think I worked three days a week. I honestly don’t remember. It’s a long time ago. He said, come here, man. And he took me to a classroom. He went into the classroom, excused himself with the teacher. And Ulysses, though he should have been faculty, was not faculty there. He was a staff technician. And he pulled a student out of the class and introduced me to Charlie White’s son, Ian White. He said, you guys need to know each other. All right. Boom. Real rough, you know. But he’s such a generous, genuine, and beautiful human being. And he taught me so much, and he shaped so much for me. And, you know, I had never heard of folks or certainly never had a relationship with folks that he introduced me to, brought me to- I met Matthew Thomas through Ulysses, got to know Matthew Thomas, was treated by Matthew Thomas as if I were a peer or a younger brother. He’s 20 years older than me. Matthew is somebody I haven’t seen in a long time, but he had a profound impact on me. Ulysses Jenkins, Matthew Thomas had profound impacts on me. I did grow up going to the Watts Jazz Festival, Watts Arts Festival, Watts Drum Festival, all my life. So I had been around all of these traditions. And also in Los Angeles, there’s the California African American Museum, and grew up going to that as well. My mother lived in LA and my aunt lived in L.A. I was in and out all the time. But L.A. had a really vibrant, dynamic black arts community. I’ve been gone a long time, but that’s still home, you know, that’s still home. And those are still my formative. I mean, just how I think of myself as an artist, it’s because of Ulysses Jenkins is as powerful as Charlie White was, and Charlie was not putting music physically into his work. But you have Goodnight, Irene. You know, you’ve got this image of Huddie Ledbetter and his guitar. You have all of these references back to the blues, which are part of the history and the narrative of the culture. So the music was just always there. Ulysses gave me very, very concrete experience because he allowed me to collaborate with him in performances. And Ulysses was the first person I ever saw write poetry to be sung with a full band in costume. I didn’t know about Sun Ra. I learned about Sun Ra from Ulysses. I came to really, you know, have a much richer insight into the work that David Hammons was doing. From Ulysses, I met John Atterbridge, though he had been the director of the Watts Towers Community Center. I came to John Atterbridge through Ulysses. I met Betye Saar through Ulysses. You know, all of that came to me through Ulysses. All of these folks had already been working in the context of the kind of fluid, organic flow. Not like separate things, but the organic flow between the spoken word, the environment, Whether it’s a restaurant, soul food restaurant, or the barber shop. I mean, these are environments. The street, the basketball court, the church, and then all of the sounds that are, you know, that emerge from within those spaces. So he just helped me. Like, man, the world’s already doing it. What are you talking about? Look. Just look. But, you know, he formally brought me to performances and then, you know, allowed me to participate in performances. There was another person who I met very, very early on. His name is Alan Nakagawa. And Alan, gosh. His parents were immigrants from Japan. So although Alan was probably eight years younger than me, he wasn’t sansei. He was, you know, nisei. But Allen is a multi-instrumentalist – guitarist, bassist, drummer. One of the best drummers I’ve ever heard. And just crazy and born and raised. He’s just a city kid, right down the street from my aunt’s place, just right there off of Olympic at 5th Street. City kid, grew up with all kinds of folks. Been around Black folks all his life. Been around Asian, obviously. I mean, he just was a city kid. And Alan, I met him my very first year. Alan’s a good friend of Ulysses, I don’t remember. I guess probably Ulysses told me about Alan and brought me over to meet him, and we became very close. And I became a part of a performance group in my very first year at Otis called Collage Ensemble. And I remained a part of Collage Ensemble, I guess, until just before I went into graduate school in San Diego. So a full four years and participated in Alan’s graduate thesis exhibition downtown in J-Town and in Public Square with a Noguchi piece. That was his graduate thesis exhibition. So all the way through. Alan was, when I came in, I guess he was a junior or a senior.
William Busta [00:37:48] Did you play an instrument or what did you do with the group?
Johnny Coleman [00:37:52] Built objects. I was doing a lot of sculpture, you know, somewhere there in Otis. As I moved away from the painting. I had building skills that I learned at Otis. I was in the tool crib, and I just had a facility I didn’t know about. I’d never been in a woodshop before, so I would build structures and then physically inhabit the space. And Alan did a lot of video work, a lot of music. It was just that image. The space and the music were, again, organically. Engaged in Alan’s work. And I began working with him as soon as I got there. Ulysses, as I said, snatched me up. And I had a really strong example of somebody who was very much engaged in the black arts movement in that space, who was very much a part of how that movement emerged and evolved in L.A., who gave me very concrete examples and brought me to other examples. So I just, I was shown really formally, I was shown a range of possibilities as to how sound and image and space could be integrated by folks who had a lot of facility.
William Busta [00:39:04] When you went to graduate school at San Diego, were there, did you have a specific objective in mind? But what you hope to accomplish in graduate school other than getting, I presume, a teaching credential as part of your objective?
Johnny Coleman [00:39:18] Well, yeah, I wanted to get an MFA, although I figured I would be like most everybody else that I knew of in L.A. We would be piecing together jobs on the freeway, go as far as San Bernardino, if necessary, Pomona, you know, Cal State, Dominguez Hills, Cal State Northridge. You just piece together the real deal is to get a space downtown, lease it and go to work and then be part of the community. And that was my intention. I went to UCSD at Ulysses insistence that I apply. So I have a choice. I was thinking of applying to the Art Institute of Chicago, CalArts, just because CalArts was everywhere, it was ubiquitous in L.A. at the time. I’m sure there were other places that I was thinking about, but I ended up applying only to CalArts. I don’t even remember if I did apply to Chicago. And as I said, Ulysses had insisted on San Diego. I grew up in Southern California. I had no interest in San Diego. I thought it was kind of just kind of a right-wing military encampment. And so why would I go to UCSD? But a man by the name of Scott Greger, who was the chair of painting at Otis, when he heard that I was going to go ahead and put in an application, and he supported that. He happened to be at a dinner party with Newton Harrison, who was on faculty at UCSD at the time. And he just- Scott had been a very strong supporter of mine from when I first got to Otis. He just, I was older, hungry, and had some skills and folks recognized, wow, you know, he’s got the drive. So let’s help him shape his skills and help him shape his voice and, you know, let’s support him. And so I was very lucky. So Scott talked to Newton Harrison and Harrison said, all right, man, so tell him to give me a call at lunch, you know, tomorrow. And Harrison said, so here’s what we need you to do. Are you working? Can you get time off from work? Drive down, meet us for lunch, bring your portfolio, and let’s talk. So I went down and they responded really well. And I ended up going. Not because I had any interest in being at San Diego. I didn’t particularly care for San Diego. I ended up falling in love with it. Once I got away from campus, I went because they were going to give me money and a studio. So I’ve got two years. Remember, this is the first time I’ve been exposed to art and had the opportunity to work. I’ve never been around artists who actually, you know, that’s what they do. Other than musicians who all had day jobs and, you know, we were all struggling, nobody had money, nobody that I knew. So I’m going to get two more years of this. You know, I’ve been working all this time, and this is the first time in my life I realized what a gift it is, you know. And I was working, you know, all the way through undergraduate school. I worked and now I developed building skills as a carpenter so I could work in galleries and the museums and installation or creating or framing or do renovations for people. So I’m going to continue to work. But this is time out for me to be able to go into my studio and do very little except focus on my development as an artist. That’s why I went to UCSD. They gave me a studio. CalArts cost too much and I didn’t trust CalArts. I didn’t trust UCSD either, but I didn’t trust CalArts and they cost too much. UCSD was going to give me a space to work. So I went.
William Busta [00:43:07] As you were developing as an artist. And then I’m going to jump ahead just a little bit because of its effect. There’s some questions about the effects on your work that I want to get into a little bit. You came to Oberlin directly after you San Diego?
Johnny Coleman [00:43:24] I was a year. I had completed classes. I really completed my second year review my thesis exhibition. I was really just formalizing, writing out my thesis. I was just too much of a perfectionist, so it was drawing out. But I came out to Oberlin with Nanette and we split a position in the art department. So we came and shared one position. I was one year out of my thesis exhibition.
William Busta [00:43:58] So the question I have is that you grew your ability, your interest seemed to have developed with a great integration with the community. In Southern California. And then you came to Oberlin, which was very, very different, and isolated you from this. Not only from, you know, I would expect from audience and from other art makers, but also, but also from an audience. Suddenly you’re in a context where, where do you, how do you, how did that affect and change your work? And how do you, how did that, how did that feel? How did that, did it feel like a culture shock that suddenly you couldn’t make, how could you still make work? Because it seemed to be so dependent upon what the other people you had contact with.
Johnny Coleman [00:44:53] Right. It was a big shock. It was a big, big shock. From the outset, the plan was never to be in Oberlin for more than two years. So come out, get the job, get the paperwork and go home. But to have had the privilege of having a tenure track position at a four year institution, and it’s kind of like getting credit. If you don’t have credit, you can’t get credit. Well, if you don’t have teaching experience beyond a TA-ship, you can’t get a job because you have to have teaching experience to get the job. So here was this opportunity to get the teaching experience, then go home. And in the meantime, in San Diego, I had been involved in the kind of birth and formulation of an installation festival called Insight. And a couple of folks that I knew, somebody I became very close to in San Diego was Ernie Silva. And Ernie asked me very early on if I would come on the board of Insight. I guess it’s like ’90, ’90 or ’91. So I had an opportunity to go back to San Diego for these kinds of dialogues around this festival. I always intended to go home. And, you know, I did have opportunities to actually later be invited to participate in Insight. And it was, you know, that first. Well, it’s actually second Insight. In ’94, I was going back and forth because I was working in a train station and then gathering stories. So I spent months gathering stories in southern California and then following trains all around the country. So I, you know, it made my work more intentionally out of the studio. And so I was writing grants so that I could be supported to get out. And Oberlin, although it really challenged the amount of time and freedom and flexibility and access to folks in Los Angeles, in San Diego, in California, and the folks, you know, the community of artists that I was coming to know and who meant so much, it’s like I, you know, I went back to school and school was this community of people and all of those people were saying, it ain’t about the classroom. It ain’t about the books. It’s not about the library. It’s about the street. It’s about the barbershop, it’s about the family. It’s all of these elements of living black experience. So. And folks were not, you know, always gentle in terms of. I mean, the language. It was like, look, man, we really, you know, this is- You can do that if you want. You know, you can do the gallery thing, or you can, you know, be a pretty artist, or you can do something that’s about the culture. And that was. That was, you know, very related to Charlie White. They got a lot of that from Charlie’s interest and the choices that. That he made as an artist, although he worked graphically, but, you know, you found his work in the barbershop, on the cover of Jet magazine, in Ebony, on calendars, that that’s where he chose to be accessible and who he chose to speak to. So that model and that model had other models. You know, the Mexican Revolution. Charlie’s very related to Siqueiros, very related. And Rivera. It’s a continuum. By now, I’m familiar with John Biggers and his whole mural relationship and the flow between his process at Texas Southern University and the Fourth Ward and the Fifth Ward and the Third Ward and North Carolina and Black culture and Ghana, all of that. So those are my references. When I got to Oberlin, it made me be much more intentional about how I was going to maintain if I was going to be an artist, how I was going to maintain this, even though I am just passing through, it’s going on 16 years later. But the intention was, I’m just passing through now. That said, coming into Oberlin, I hadn’t applied for the job. And it was through Ninette’s hearing that there was a strong African American studies program. I knew that I didn’t have a lot of confidence, to be very honest in the art department. I didn’t. And I was honest about that at the interview. But I insisted. In coming into Oberlin, I keep getting these O’s mixed up, keep wanting to say Otis. In coming into Oberlin, I insisted that I have an opportunity to talk to folks in African American studies, and I did. And because of the timing of coming into Oberlin, there was a Black Alumni association meeting that was taking place, and it was being held at the inn, and I was staying at the inn then. So I had a chance to meet then, I believe, the president. The president was a young man who was really ill at the time, but he was just generous and warm. And he really extended himself to me. Then he introduced me to Sylvia Williams, who was the director of the African Museum, and she was also alumni. And they actually had a trustees meeting and she was a trustee. So I met Sylvia Williams and she spoke about Oberlin as a person. She personified Oberlin and spoke of Oberlin as her. Then I met folks, students and faculty in African Heritage House. And this is on that first trip, my interview. And then in a blizzard the morning I was supposed to leave and then got stuck. There was an ice storm. Everything got shut down. It was hard to get from one end to campus, the other. James Millett and Mildred Millett - James was a historian and is a historian in African American studies - came and met me. He came from across town in a blizzard and met me for breakfast at 8 A.M. because I was supposed to catch a plane. We didn’t know yet that it was definitely going to be canceled. We were just checking in and out. He and his wife came out in the blizzard and sat down with me for breakfast at the end. And Oberlin. So from the beginning, I had always sought out a relationship, you know, even if it wasn’t formal a relationship with African American Studies. Not because I wanted to teach in African American studies, I just wanted to be an artist, but because I. The context of my work, and I just needed to actually have some context for my work that wasn’t in the context of an art department that I, you know, I hadn’t been in the art department yet, but I’d met the folks there and I had read the advertisement and I did not have a lot of faith in what I saw there, what I felt, what I intuited. So African American Studies. And, you know, I bit off a lot more than I was actually prepared to chew. And when I first got there, a group of black students came to me and said, wow, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. So can you teach a class or can we do a, you know, a private reading? Five students actually started as four, and then somebody else heard about it. Five students my first semester at Oberlin came and insisted that. That I teach a class on black artists and Black art, visual art. And I said, no, hell no. I need to get to my studio. I’m trying to get home. They would not take no for an answer. I ended up teaching my second semester there. This is the first semester they came and once they realized it was there, and it’s like they kept coming back and saying, saying, look, man, if you’re not going to do this. Who will? Why are you here? So my very first spring there, I taught what became the class that I’ve taught more consistently than anything else at Oberlin. I’ve taught it every year except on my sabbaticals. And that’s blues aesthetic, which is the evolution of a black aesthetic in its relationship to visual arts. So that class has gone through a whole lot of evolutions. And, you know, in the early years, I was just really trying to. Because the existence of these Black artists were very nearly invisible in the library, you know, and the resources that we had to draw from, with very few exceptions. So a lot of it was really just trying to build a kind of visual history of their existence. But, you know, more importantly was, you know, what kinds of salient core themes emerge over a span of history across a diverse range of artists working in different places, in different mediums, different genders, different class, even rarely. But what are the kinds of elements that seem to recur within that? And it helped me in grappling with how to put together a seminar around those issues. It helped me, at a really formative time in my own evolution as an artist, to actually articulate, clarify, hone my own thinking in relationship to my work. So the students provided. And then my colleagues in African American Studies, and I still wasn’t in the department then, they helped to provide some of that feedback and some of that reflection and some of that dialogue that I had just been pulled out of.
William Busta [00:54:41] Did, in a way, moving to Oberlin change you to becoming more of a national artist. It’s sort of like in Southern California. You could stay in Southern California, but once you were in Oberlin, you had to go everywhere.
Johnny Coleman [00:54:54] You had to get out of Oberlin to go everywhere. Well, I don’t know that I became or that I am now a national artist. I’ve always hoped that if the work was honest and if I was listening to folks who are further down the road than I am and trying to grow from the examples that they’ve shared, and I’ve been very lucky. Ulysses Jenkins, that was my graduate school before I went to graduate school. And I continued to work with him when I was in graduate school. And, you know, though I haven’t seen him since, I don’t know, maybe three or four years, he’s just seminal, you know, I’m still trying to just reach a point where the work responds, you know, with enough integrity to the richness of the world around me and the culture and my experiences set in the context of the culture. You know, personal and set in the context of what it is that frames my experience. Coming out of Southern California just took me out of that space. And, you know, if coming from Southern California to Oberlin and then saying, you know, I’m doing a piece that makes me a national artist because. Because it’s in Cleveland, I’ve been lucky. But, you know, a lot of energy. Oberlin is a kind of environment that requires a lot of energy, teaching energy a lot. I’ve got two kids, and, you know, to me, you can’t, on the one hand, be a creative individual and then not be engaged in, like, the biggest creative act that I think one can be engaged in. And that’s like guiding, growing, becoming a parent. So having kids has been a redirection of my focus and my energy. But that said, I’ve been lucky. I have had a chance to perform and compose pieces in New York and in Buffalo, New York, and in California and in Chicago and in different places. But I don’t see myself as a national artist. I guess, you know, I hope to get there.
William Busta [00:57:14] You know, maybe looking at our time, I suppose I would like. It might be fun. It might be good for both of us to get together and talk specifically about your work and the issues in your work. But that’s not going to happen today. But I think we’ve covered a lot about the discussion, development of you as an artist and what that means and where the work comes from and the context in which it comes from. But before we close off, do you have anything else you wish to say?
Johnny Coleman [00:57:48] Oh, gosh, I want to grow up to be a storyteller.
William Busta [00:57:53] That’s really good. Matt, do you sometimes. Do you have a question? I don’t know if maybe I missed it, but you were talking about this idea of being a national artist. Do you have, like, a definition or a framework that you would consider yourself to be a national artist in the context of culture? You said how you wanted to capture the culture of an area. Is there a way to do that? Do you believe there’s a way to do that?
Johnny Coleman [00:58:18] Be more visible, have the opportunity to actually make the kind of visual or narrative statements and have them heard, have them, you know, be more engaged in more places, more consistently, have the opportunity to actually do more work, produce more work. And I’m really looking to actually strike a balance where I’m able to do that more. For a while, I’ve been less productive than I’d hoped to be. My energy’s gone. Other places.
William Busta [00:58:57] Great. Thank you. Thank you. That’s been really, really good.
Johnny Coleman [00:58:58] It’s always a pleasure.
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