Professor Gene Fellner
Arts-based Research
Shawn Brown
5/15/2018
What did you set out to do in this class?
I had no predefined goals for the course. I’ve always had a love for art, but uncertain of how it would translate into research. The class presented an opportunity for me to consider different ways that I could uncover information from participants. I took this course to wrestle with internal challenges I face as a Black man. When I was young art was an alternative manner of dealing with daily pressures. As I have gotten older, I’ve moved away from this form of self-therapy. As the class progressed, the goal was to find my voice as an artist. I began to understand the science and artistry of research. It is virtually impossible to truly understand a population that has been silenced through written or spoken word. It’s imperative that visual arts be a part of the process we use to understand marginalized groups. Art provides a cloak of safety for the artist. Slaves used cryptics quilts, spiritual hymns with multiple meanings, self-deprecating humor, and express themselves without feeling the weight of reproduction from their masters. The artistry of survival bled into Black men becoming phenomenal artists. I set out to be an audience member, yet was compelled to be an artist.
What were your initial objectives and expectations?
My objective stemmed from wanted my artistry to play a role in my future research. Barack’s image as a screen saver became a place of internal inquiry. It was something about his smile that caught my attention. His hidden sadness covered in political correctness caught my eye. There are images of positive Black males that I would reference as a source of encouragement. They provide images of possibility and hope. I often think about Malcolm, Martin, Marcus Garvey, Fela Kuti, Shaka Zulu. The plethora of negative photos forced me to revisit the few positive images time and again. Most sitcoms, television series, and movies have a scarcity of images that displays Black men as protagonists. Subconsciously these images start to develop biases within any person. I began internalizing these images which led to assimilation, socialization, and many other issues for me as a young man. Demons that I content with presently. This stream of propaganda must be broken. I then considered the number of images that are floating throughout the internet depicting Black men as savages, super predators, deadbeat dads, thugs, and the like. On the same google search were images of African kings, civil rights leaders, and my man Barry. The coolest image was Obama smoking a joint, bell bottoms, and a fedora. That image embodied the complexity of the Black male experience. I saw that there were clear-cut extremes in regards to the photos that are across different time periods. The majority of images were negative except for the few pre-colonial African images. Combining the images became my passion. I wanted to produce images in hip-hop, graffiti way. I started to remix old with new and placing tags all around. My form of hieroglyphics. I wanted viewers to reconsider the polarization of Black men in media. I want people to wrestle with the image and address their inner turmoil.
The demonization of Black men resides in the hearts of all races. This project is designed to challenge us as a nation to rethink our underlying biases. I knew that I would have to be vulnerable and discuss emotional topics that I face regularly. Art is therapeutic. This project helped me reconcile some issues I have been facing. I expect viewers to be angry and uncomfortable. No human can look at what America has done to Black people in general, have a soul, a spirit, and walk away at peace. Many people choose denial as a way to self-medicate. Some are angry and feel justified in returning such hate towards their oppressors. This mindset is hypocritical and is not representative of what my ancestor’s sacrifice.
Were they personal?
The project was very personal. The current climate around racial issues compels me to add to the conversation. Besides current topics, the historical portrayal of Black males has always disturbed me. This program has validated some of my deepest fears about system racism. The images I started to research continued the same narrative. I had to deal with seeing these images every day. The pain increased as the research grew. Little pieces of strange fruit dangling from southern oaks. Segregated schools for Blacks filled to the brim. Soulless humans standing under fathers, brothers, and sons charred by the sun. With gauged eyes, a castrated Emmit Till lay decomposing as his mother weeps. Simultaneously Pharaohs, Kings, Mansa Musa, watching across the same table. Malcolm and Martin lay adjacent. The depth and breadth of a Black man’s history before me to navigate, comprehend, and re-produce for the world. James Baldwin’s bulging eyes wink at Trayvon. I begrudgingly opened doors to my heart. I grew less sensitive to such issues knowing that my elders had paid the ultimate price. The spiritual obligation to this project overtook my insecurity and fear.
Dinner time conversations with my children became mandatory. I have to was the response when they asked about the project. I saw pieces of my children’s innocence fade with each image.
Were they political?
There are political undertones throughout the artwork. I address mass incarceration, colonialism, slavery, civil rights, gun laws, etc. I want this work start critical conversations about the way Black men are portrayed. If this can lead to educational reform or political changes, that would be excellent. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about politics while doing this project.
Did you want to elicit and evoke and understand or make sense of and/or persuade?
I want the audience to be emotionally engaged. The brutalization of Black men has become so commonplace that people, including myself, no longer internalize emotions when it happens. If every evening a Black man is being killed for one reason or the other, empathy becomes almost impossible. If every television show the Black man is a thug, gangsters, a former drug dealer turned good guy, we forget about other aspects of Black men. Americans mock Kim Jon-un’s propaganda campaign. America does the same thing without being transparent. The desensitization of emotion towards Black bodies is disturbing. I want the audience to face the dehumanization we have created. Disgust, pity, rage, and anger are the dominant sentiments we have towards Black males.
I fight with internal challenges that I face daily. I want men like me to see the king in them, yet not forget the pain that was suffered by our ancestors. Trayvon should be just as crucial as Cornel West. During slavery tribesmen of the same tongue were placed in different barracks to help divide and conquer.
They did not have the time or space to communicate with one another, leaving them more vulnerable. The same happened when the west coast of Africa was left bare. Other Africans would travel further east to capture brethren. The common language was a decoy which worked sufficiently. The combining of these images reunites the past with the present. Brethren of different generations, hues, and dialects, are now joined. The King, the civil rights leader, the Author, slave, renaissance man, and poet are one. By joining these men, a symbol of unity forms through art.
What did you want your project to serve and do?
The art will be a constant reminder of the complexity of the Black male experience. The acknowledgment of the Black male experience must be seen holistically. As a Black man, I struggle with linear, compartmentalized views of Black men. It’s difficult to look at my brothers as well as myself in a favorable light. The art will be conversational catalysts to confront dominant portrayals of Black men. The images are temporary, and may eventually be forgotten. Through conditioning, most people will return to their original beliefs about Black men. I hope that for a short moment, things could be different.
What was the first arts-based artifact you produced/collected/elicited whether it was a sketch or something more “finished.”
The first thing I did was take a picture of myself. I wanted to re-reproduce an image of myself and what I was thinking. I took a picture of my self at home and saved it to my cell phone. I then looked at the image to analyze what I was feeling. I purchased acrylic paint and started painting at work. I painted while being interrupted by staff and students. I played Nina Simon and Gil Scott Heron.
Their music speaks to me though it was created in the 1960s. I am incredibly insecure about my art but felt obligated to commit fully to the project. I was trying to find out what would be my practice, ritual, and rhythm as an artist. Techniques and theory consumed/paralyzed my process. The more I drew, the more I’d forgotten or become less interested in the process, and more interested in expressing myself. I drew the face; then I let my mind roam free. I kept asking myself, “what is my message?” The final piece was far from my original vision. I wanted what I experience daily to be encaptured in one piece. I continued to add different layers as the paint dried. After the painting was complete, I felt like it was too perfect. It felt too normal and typical. I wrote different titles I carry in graffiti. I wrote around the image. This felt unauthentic, superficial. My titles do not live outside of my being. Then I wrote the names on my face and all over the paper. I made sure that it would be cryptic and hard to understand. I felt aggressive about not compromising my images to make sure that the onlooker was comfortable because I live in a world in which I regularly have to make someone else feel comfortable. Fine art is no longer a category I respect. Art is freedom. The final product is a piece that I did not want to be labeled or defined in one genre. As I have many complexities, so will the art that I produce.
What did you produce/collect/elicit next?
Next, I examined several reference photos throughout the internet. I looked at four distinct time periods (Pre-colonial Africa, Slavery, civil rights and current times). There were few photos of Pre-colonial Africa. There was a significant number of slavery images. The disproportion reinforced my thoughts about America’s propaganda. It reinstates a narrative of weakness and inferiority the creation of race. The next period was civil rights. During this era, their Black bodies were mutilated in droves. Images of revolutionaries were also captured during this time. Pride and rage were in my mind while looking at these images. I enjoyed researching this time because it in many symbolizes the best times for Black male leadership in their community. Sadly this time was purposefully interrupted by the government that went about destabilizing the community through murdering their leadership.
Current times was a conflict as well. I saw powerful images of Cornell West, Ta-Nehisi Coates, yet also seeing pictures of countless black men that were murdered by police officer throughout the nation. I realize that all of these images needed to be close to one another to articulate what is presently happening to Black men.
After collecting all of these images, it was clear that I needed to balance the presentation. We cannot have the first memories of Black men as slaves. I remember growing up thinking slavery was the first origins of my being. I realize that I needed to show the ugliness and the beauty of being Blacks before we were taken from our homeland.
Make a list of all these pieces and place each in the order in which it was produced and collected.
What was the relationship between you and your materials?
I am a doodler by nature. I started off with sketching drawings in my planner, notebook, etc. I then purchased an iPad with an apple pencil that I could use to draw and keep my images in one central location. I became obsessed with drawing. I would keep all of my materials in a bag far away from the children. I know that they would also become obsessed with the materials as well. One of the pieces I gave to my professor, in fear that I wouldn’t take care of it. The truth is that I wasn’t confident in what I had produced and rathered someone else holds on to it. As the course continued, I started to hold on to the pieces realizing that it was less about the technique and more about the message.
Why did you choose the materials you chose?
I chose watercolors, markers, and acrylics to try new things. I was used to graffiti and basic pen sketches. Using these materials represented a certain level of commitment that I had avoided in the past. I wanted to commit to this project and not find a way to be comfortable. I knew that the images would not be as good as I would want them to be, but I wanted to be uncomfortable and challenge myself a little bit. I chose images that I remember seeing when searching throughout the internet. They were taken during different eras that I was interested in researching.
How did the materials you used mediate your thinking?
My google search for “black men” project a specific image. I internalized and personalized many of these images. The differentiation of the pictures made it difficult to consider that they all had the same lineage. How could Barack, Sambo, and Imhotep, all be from the same place? I wanted to express that diversity and symmetry of this demographic.
Did the relationship between you and your materials change over the course of the semester?
Over the course of the semester, I had become more comfortable with my artistic voice. My fears stem from insecurity in the products. The importance of the message trumped my technical shortcomings. I started to think about how I could add to this body of work in a unique way that changes the narrative of black men in America. I have always have been frustrated with the polarized manner in which Black men are portrayed. It is possible for me to be a striving professional and have a history of being gang affiliated. I can be a great father and wear a hoodie. Ther universalization of Black men became a source of inquiry for me. I started to consider how I could bring different worlds together through my art.
Did you find it necessary to add text or sound to your imagery? Why?
I eventually added text as an additional form of art. Some pieces, I believe, need text to help articulate the message. My concern for the audience’s comprehension led to writing on some of the pieces. I also view tagging, graffiti writing as art itself. It is like hieroglyphics, a secret way of writing few understand. I want audiences to see, misunderstand, and argue about the writing. I have always been interested in the font, size and style of spelling within graffiti. The old trains of New York that were riddled with tags and confusing lettering still draw my attention. I also want to include music, sound, and dance in future projects.
Reflect on how your thinking about arts-based exploration changed as you were creating/curating images.
I felt a certain shame about wanting to infuse art into my research and practice. Since childhood, art has been therapeutic. I lost the desire to use creativity in school as I was regularly punished for sketches that paralleled homework. Like the unpredictable nature of water, my art poured from the classroom to the street. As a professional, I still doodle to stay focused when in long boring meetings. Art became something that I tolerated and stopped celebrating as a gift. Through this course, I have realized that art is a necessity for many people to express their thoughts and ideas.
Marginalized people have used art out of necessity. Other mediums have become saturated and polarized to articulate the beliefs of the dominant class. African culture is rooted in dance, singing, visual arts, drumming, stepping, etc. The arts are our secret way of challenging status and holding society accountable. I now think of creative artistic qualitative methods that can be used to conduct research. I think of decoding language from music, students creating art instead of interviews, teachers writing poetry instead of traditional professional development. This course helped direct my specific style of research. Conversations have become more robust because of the art that I have discussed with staff.
Has your thinking/feeling about scholarship changed as you were creating/curating images? How?
I now value visual arts as an equal methodology of research. Before this course, I did not. When first entering the program I took a quantitative research course. The professor would continuously state the importance of creating a mixed method approach when writing a dissertation. I subconsciously thought that quantitative research is the most essential, credible form of research. It is pretty hard to challenge numbers regarding data.
I then took a course on qualitative research. It was impressed upon the students that we consider new, innovative, creative ways of obtaining information. Though, highly inferential, a qualitative analysis was something that I looked forward to when writing my dissertation. I am excited about hearing the stories of Black males within education and trying to share ways to encourage this population of students and professionals to strive for better academic outcomes. My mind did not consider the power of art at this time. I had mentioned it, my professor was excited, and told me to go for it.
Subconsciously, I believed she wasn’t serious. Coming to this course was further validation of the things that she had mentioned about qualitative methods. The biggest thing that I learned is the importance of finding and honing my specific, unique voice within research. It doesn’t have to look or sound like anyone else’s. My view and method of conducting research need no particular validation from an outside entity. I merely needed to learn how to organize my thoughts and articulate my opinions in a manner that was clear/concise.
Did anything unexpected happen as you were working on your project?
Unexpectedly I began to become more confident and transparent about the importance of completing my assignments and infusing the arts into my research. I expected to be moved by the assigned readings and art projects. I hoped to reignite some of my passion for the arts, but not to this extent. Emotionally dealing with images was a lot to handle. I didn’t think that looking at these images over and over would start to affect my mood. I literally cannot engage with the materials too much, because it distracts me, makes work and other facets of life challenging afterward. I was surprised at the different response from different people that saw the work. Students were more open to the possibility of a post-racial nation. They focused on how much the world has changed and how they feel comfortable interacting with White teachers and new members of the community.
The reactions to the work from different staff members and students were impressive. Older Black staff members that saw the images were angry, frustrated, and emotional. They focused the majority of their attention on slavery, oppression, and the pain they saw happening with Black men. They didn’t focus on the pre-colonial pictures.
I was also shocked when one White staff member just walked out. Now the reason for his frustration or un-comfortability is subjective. I haven’t spoken to him about why he left. If I did, I doubt that he would be honest. I wouldn’t. As his supervisor, he may believe that I would retaliate or be angry with his response. I think that he has become tired of my conversations about race, prejudice, sexism, etc. That is the overall sentiment that most people feel when looking at the historical treatment of Black men. I even think that way.
It gets you tired or desensitized after seeing it over and over again. It is a pain that we have to wrestle with before having transparent conversations about how we can move forward.
Were your objectives at the end of the semester the same as those at the beginning of the semester? Explain.
My objectives changed over the semester. Initially, I wanted to gather images that resonated with me as a Black man living in America. Not specifically negative or positive, but pictures that caught my attention for one reason or the other. It all started with my screen saver. I initially saw it on one of my mentor’s screens. I never asked her about it, but I felt guilty that she was a White woman, celebrating Barack, and I had nothing. I then started to search for images that spoke to me. The picture of his painful smile caught my attention. I did not see joy, happiness, or accomplishment. I only saw pain, burden, and pressure to perform at the highest rate at all times. I could relate. Of course not to his magnitude, but a similar existence.
Afterward, I saw older images or slaves, right civil leaders, and African kings I thought to my self that there are similarities in all of these images that aren’t being communicated. There is a familiar demeanor that all of these men have that I want to capture. I thought about slaves that were separated by language and tribe. I then considered ways to reunite the past with the present. The royalty of African Kings, Civil Rights leaders, slaves, and modern-day heroes. Black solidarity and unity have always been challenging for Black men. We have been conditioned to see each other in isolate, narrow ways that only further segregate us from one another. The artwork that I created was a way of rejoining us as a community.
What do you think the strengths of your process and products were?
I had to find a process that works best for me. I am a former graffiti artist, DJ, and hip-hop enthusiast. For me to produce art, I need to listen to music that inspires me. It was difficult to get to this place because of what I have been taught about proper expression. I would have to continually tell myself that drawing is excellent and healthy and what I am supposed to be doing. I had to rediscover my heart’s desire to create. Self-criticism was a daily fight for me while drawing. I was ashamed of the first drawing. Not because of the message, but more so because of the technical aspects that I didn’t execute. My shading, color blending, and other skills that I haven’t practiced in some time weren’t done well. The message was clear and had a decent effect on the audience. Through this course, I have learned to value the message more than process or even product.
What, if any, are the dissatisfactions with what you’ve done?
I am usually insecure and unsatisfied with my art. Out of fear of criticism, I rarely complete drawings. I am learning not to be so self-consumed. The people being depicted should be the focus. The fruit of the project is geared towards action and more in-depth dialog amongst races. To withhold my perspective on this topic is selfish. Matrys of the struggle gave me an avenue to speak freely. It would be irresponsible not to do so with intentionality.
Do you plan to continue using arts-based methods as part of your scholarly activities?
I cant see myself going forward in my research without doing so. I think it is a method of analysis that needs to be explored more within minority communities. Not only visual arts but also music, sound, dance, etc.
How would you characterize/assess your experience taking this course?
It was freeing. I felt excited about producing art that would change the world. I have been sharing my art on social media. The response has been tremendous. I feel ashamed that I haven’t done more in the past. I have a lot of catching up to do. I have also started using art in professional development to reach out to students that I have had trouble with in the past. It has been a great experience, and I would recommend this course to anyone that is interested in researching minorities. It is imperative that we try to find every possible alternative to conduct research that holistically articulates the struggles, challenges, joys, and pains of the human experience.
Anything you would like to add?
Thank you for encouraging us to express ourselves and find our voices through art. You helped me to understand the necessity and obligation of using this medium to express the thoughts feelings, hopes, and pains of Black males. I think this course should be considered a research methods course. I believe that art is truly underrated and could change the lives of many people throughout the research community.
school. Enjoy.
Professor G. Fellner
Professor Fellner
