Source Material: Glenn Ligon on the Residency that Inspired his Coloring Series
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Source Material: Glenn Ligon on the Residency that Inspired his Coloring Series

Installation view of Coloring: New Work By Glenn Ligon, 2000

Source Material: Glenn Ligon at the Walker, an installation in the Best Buy Aperture, is on view July 23, 2018–April 21, 2019
Recently, I organized a small presentation of materials in the Best Buy Aperture—a space dedicated to the display of objects from the Walker Library and Archives. I was particularly drawn to the center’s long history of community-engaged artist residencies, which were joint initiatives of the museum’s Visual Arts and Education departments. In 1999, Glenn Ligon undertook such a residency, during which the artist developed three distinct projects: he organized a youth-focused exhibition with the Walker Art Center Teen Arts Council (WACTAC), curated a display of books from the Archie Givens Collection of African American Literature, and led a series of coloring sessions with daycare-aged kids in Minneapolis. These sessions inspired Coloring, a series of paintings in which the artist exhibits a rare embrace of color and figuration. (These works were featured in the 2000 Walker exhibition, Coloring: New Work By Glenn Ligon, curated by Olukemi Ilesanmi and Joan Rothfuss.) Despite having found ephemera in the archive that evidenced these workshops and meetings, little information was available that spoke to Ligon’s experiences or his choices and responses to the interactions he had here. I reached out to the artist to gather some reflections.

 

Alexandra Nicome (AN)

Tell me a little about the premise of your residency.

 

Glenn Ligon (GL)

The mandate of the grant for the residency was to work with communities within a three-mile radius of the Walker. I assumed that meant working with different ethnic groups, but I wanted to work with a “group” that I defined, not one that was preexisting. Once I decided that “kids” would be my group, the project evolved around them.

 

AN

And the coloring book project specifically? How did that come about, and why did you make the decision to show the drawings?

 

GL

The coloring book pages I used were from Afrocentric coloring books published by Johnson Publications (among others) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All of this material was sourced from the Schomburg Library in New York, which is part of the public library system here. I don’t remember being hesitant about showing the kids’ drawings. But if I was, it was because they were better than my paintings or that there were a lot of them or that I hadn’t quite gotten over the idea that one’s kids drawing was better than another and that I should just show them all.

 

AN

What was your experience working with the young people of Minneapolis? It appears you worked not only with young children but also WACTAC.

 

GL

The most memorable thing was working with the Teen Arts Council. I remember thinking: “I wish in high school I had a peer group that was centered around museum-going, one that felt the museum was for them.” I found that as an adult, but the folks in the Teen Arts Council, they were having that experience as high school kids. I remember them being sophisticated beyond their years and self-motivated. You have to be self-motivated to hang out at an art museum after school, because it’s kind of a strange thing to do.

Since my coloring book project for the Walker was about, in some sense, sampling, I decided to explore that with the Council. I also thought it was a concept that they were already familiar with from music, and it was easily transferable to the visual arts. I am not an educator, though, so I relied on the staff at the Walker to push the project forward when I was not physically there.

Glenn Ligon’s display of book covers, Walker Art Center, 2000. Photo courtesy the Walker Art Center Archives

 

AN

Going through the archive, I could see that you also borrowed and exhibited books from the Archie Givens Collection of African American Literature. Could you describe your experience looking through these books?

 

GL

I just walked through the stacks until I found something interesting to think about, which was book covers and representations of black people on them.  The project came out of strolling through the stacks.

 

AN

And what was the impetus behind compiling the book cover images, years after the exhibition, for your publication A People on the Cover?

 

GL

We never did a book for the project at the Givens Collection, and I had a chance to make one with a press in the UK. Seemed to be a topic that was still interesting to explore.

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