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Sydney G. James: How We See Us

Premiere: 3/21/2023 | 00:15:33 |

Filmmaker Juanita Anderson follows visual artist Sydney G. James, whose bold brush strokes in murals and large-scale paintings amplify the presence of Black women, Black families and Black culture in her hometown of Detroit. Through her work as a mentor and as co-founder of the BLKOUT Walls Mural Festival, James inspires her fellow Detroiters to come together to celebrate their community.

About the Episode

Juanita Anderson’s director statement

“[It’s] like our existence as Black female creators is activism, and that’s kind of crazy.”

Sydney G. James, photo by Lamar Landers.

It was day three of filming with Sydney G. James in her studio, when she spoke those words in a way that seemed like a surprise to herself. She had made measurable progress on her new painting on canvas, “The Westside Johnsons,” based on an old family photograph of Sydney’s mother and her mother’s 11 siblings. It was an image Sydney had wanted to paint since she was a child. By now, Sydney realized that this painting would take significant patience, something that she professed was not her virtue, but very little painting would take place that day.

Sydney had invited her fellow artists and frequent collaborators, Sabrina Nelson and Scheherazade Washington Parrish, to join her. As the camera continued to roll, they had been engaged in nearly non-stop conversation–not only about the new work-in-progress, but about addressing the challenges they faced as Black women artists in an art world which still far too often ignored their existence. Keeping silent so as not to disrupt my observational camera process, I mused that Sydney’s utterance wasn’t crazy at all.

It’s who we are. It’s what we do. We create space– where others won’t — to enable us to do our work. And, in doing so we create space for more to enter.

While I could go on about the many facets of Sydney’s process– the intricate patterning she creates as prelude to her murals, her preference for employing bold brush strokes, rather than spray paint on her murals, or the multiple layers of color she uses to render the distinctive pigments of Black skin, it is her process of space-making, which the public doesn’t see, to which I am particularly drawn.

Creating the 3500 square foot mural which honors the legacy of Malice Green, a Black man killed by Detroit police in 1992, and the “Way too Many,” who met similar fates was no small feat in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, and in the height of the Pandemic. To realize her urgent vision, Sydney launched a GOFundMe campaign, raising money to pay for equipment, paint and supplies, and most importantly for the artists who assisted her on the project. She donated the remaining funds to BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), a national organization of Black youth activists whose work is “centered on ending systems of anti-Blackness and emphasizing the urgency of protecting folks living on the margins of the margins, including women, girls, femmes and the gamut of LGBTQ folk.”

Sydney G. James mural, “Matriarchy” (2021), BlkOut Walls, Detroit, MI. Photo by Lamar Landers.

The effort was preparation for her biggest space-making effort yet– raising funds from foundations and corporations; and the organizing, permitting and contracting undertaken by Sydney to bring the inaugural BlkOut Walls Mural Festival to Detroit in 2021. BlkOut Walls would not only create a space for 24 predominantly Black female, male and non-binary artists to create new work, it provided space for the community to engage with artists as they worked, and a lasting space for residents to interact and see themselves in a space that reflected Black life and culture.

Her mentees, Bakpak Durden and Ijania Cortez, who collaborated with Sydney on both projects and who each created their own murals during BlkOut Walls, credit Sydney for teaching them the business of art. “We talk about processes, how to set things up, how to stay on task,” notes Ijania. Bakpak also credits Sydney with teaching them to research and use references in developing their work.

Indeed, for Sydney, creating space also means mentorship and she’s carrying on a long Detroit legacy of Black women creatives who have mentored emerging artists. They include Sydney’s own mentor, Marian Stephens, who appears all too briefly in the film. Stephens, who hails from a multi-generational family of artists and is a textile artist in her own right, was the Art Department Head and fashion design educator at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School where Sydney was a student in commercial art. When Sydney wanted to learn fashion illustration, Mrs. Stephens took Sydney under her wing and their relationship has continued to flourish ever since.

Sydney G. James’ 8,000 sq. ft. mural “Girl with the D Earring” (2020), Chroma Building, Detroit, MI. Photo by Lamar Landers.

“Marian Stephens provided me with creative nourishment I didn’t even know I needed at the time. She’s a large part of who I’ve become as an artist,” Sydney observed in a recent Detroit Metro Times interview.

“That’s what you’re supposed to do,” says Stephens in film footage that had to be left on the cutting room floor. “If you have a skill, if you keep it all to yourself, you’re not helping anybody. You’re not even helping yourself.”

As the camera continued rolling, Sydney noted that she is often asked what she considers her most important piece of work. Her response is, “ . . .honestly, the mentorship piece is probably my masterpiece if you will, because they’re now peers. You know what I mean?”

Indeed, 2022 has been a banner year for the mentees of Sydney G. James who appear in the film. Bakpak Durden opened their first solo museum exhibition at the Cranbrook Art Museum; and Ijania Cortez had a public unveiling of her new commissioned mural “To Whom Much Is Given,” which pays tribute to two of Detroit’s Black female iconic trailblazers in the arts.

Now both Bakpak and Ijania are poised to create new spaces, opening new doors that will further enrich Detroit’s creative community centered on ending systems of anti-Blackness and emphasizing the urgency of protecting folks living on the margins of the margins, including women, girls, femmes and the gamut of LGBTQIA+ folk.

About Sydney G. James

Sydney G. James, photo by Demetrio Nasol.

Sydney G. James is a fine artist/muralist raised in, and by, Detroit. She employs her fierce brushstrokes on canvas, fabric, brick and stone to provoke conversations, long silenced, on the ignored and invisible. Black women are first. Never last and never forgotten. Her figurative works boldly rewrite the narrative in hues evoking the complexities of Black reality, joy and pain, and phoenix-like resilience. Her murals have lit up walls in Detroit, New Orleans, Brooklyn, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Pow Wow Hawaii, Pow Wow Long Beach, Pow Wow Worcester, and across six continents. Sydney is a co-founder of the biannual BLKOUT Walls street mural festival, which debuted in Detroit in 2021. A 2017 recipient of the prestigious Detroit Kresge Artist Fellowship, she has been awarded residencies at Red Bull House of Art (2016), the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities (2020), and a 2022 International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP) residency in Brooklyn, NY. James’ artwork has been featured by marketing brands Vans shoes, PepsiCo, Ford Motor Company, Detroit Pistons and Detroit Lions.

About filmmaker Juanita Anderson

Juanita Anderson, photo by Emmanuelle Perryman

Juanita Anderson is a filmmaker, photographer, media educator, curator and Detroit native whose work spans four decades in public and independent media. Her creative work lies at the intersection of cultural history, artistic expression and the responses to social injustice that amplify the voices of communities too seldom represented on screen. A seven-time regional Emmy winner, she is best known for her work as executive producer of the 1988 Academy Award-nominated feature film “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” (a film by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima), which garnered a duPont Columbia Silver Baton, a George Foster Peabody Award; and was inducted into the National Film registry in 2021. She was also the executive producer of the ITVS-commissioned series “Positive: Life with HIV; the Favorite Poem Project” video anthology, originally commissioned for the Library of Congress bicentennial, and the PBS/NBPC public affairs special, “Black America: Facing the Millennium,” which she also directed.

Named the 2019-2020 Wayne State University Murray Jackson Creative Scholar in the Arts, she is a 2022 Firelight Media Spark Fund recipient for her humanities themed work-in-progress, “Hastings Street Blues.” A career-long advocate for diversity in public media and the arts, Anderson was a co-founder of Black Public Media and is a past president of the National Conference of Artists, the nation’s oldest African American visual arts organization. In 2022, she was appointed to the American Documentary Board of Directors.

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PRODUCTION CREDITS

Sydney G. James: How We See Us is directed and produced by Juanita Anderson.

It is produced by Indija Productions, LLC. A production of Firelight Media in association with The WNET Group.

For the IN THE MAKING digital series, Michael Kantor is the Executive Producer for American Masters. Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith and Monika Navarro are the Executive Producers for Firelight Media.

About American Masters
Now in its 37th season on PBS, American Masters illuminates the lives and creative journeys of our nation’s most enduring artistic giants—those who have left an indelible impression on our cultural landscape—through compelling, unvarnished stories. Setting the standard for documentary film profiles, the series has earned widespread critical acclaim: 28 Emmy Awards—including 10 for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series and five for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special—two News & Documentary Emmys, 14 Peabodys, three Grammys, two Producers Guild Awards, an Oscar, and many other honors. To further explore the lives and works of more than 250 masters past and present, the American Masters website offers full episodes, film outtakes, filmmaker interviews, the podcast “American Masters: Creative Spark,” educational resources, digital original series and more. The series is a production of The WNET Group.

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UNDERWRITING

Original production funding for In the Making is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Major support for the In the Making digital series is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Anderson Family Charitable Fund, The Marc Haas Foundation, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation and Edgar Wachenheim III.

American Masters series production funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, AARP, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Judith and Burton Resnick, Koo and Patricia Yuen, Seton J. Melvin, Lillian Goldman Programming Endowment, The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, Thea Petschek Iervolino Foundation, The Philip and Janice Levin Foundation, Vital Projects Fund, The Marc Haas Foundation, Ellen and James S. Marcus, The Ambrose Monell Foundation, The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation and public television viewers.

TRANSCRIPT

(crowd chattering) (tense music) - [Sports Announcer] Fans draw your attention to the Cure Auto Courtside Club.

Let's all give a warm Detroit Pistons to Sydney James!

- I'm inspired by Detroit, first and foremost.

I'm a native Detroiter.

My dad was a foreman.

My mom, you know, was born and raised in the Jeffries Project.

We're abundantly Detroit, if you will, and that's where I draw my inspiration.

I draw my inspiration from current events, the status of the Black woman in society, in the world.

That's really what I focus most of my work on.

Right now, my favorite is mural painting because you have a bigger audience, an unintentional audience.

The one that stands out the most is literally the largest 'cause it's 8,000 square feet.

Like, how can you miss it?

It's a tribute to Detroit.

It is a tribute to that area, which is the North End.

A Detroit, you know, dream, if you will.

(low rhythmic music) (dog barking) Hey, Ma.

Hey there.

The neighborhood I grew up in is Conant Gardens.

It's the first neighborhood where Black people were allowed to build and own their own homes.

Pistons starter coat.

Detroit is such a special place to grow up in because it's the epitome of Blackness and all that it encompasses, and Black love, specifically.

Like, the painting I'm painting right now, right?

It's my mom.

She's one of 12.

Same parents from the south, from Shorter, Alabama.

They grew up in a two-bedroom, and they would house people that were coming up here from the south.

That's really, "I'm coming up here to make it, and I'm gonna help you make it, too."

Hey, Ma.

- [Deidre] Now that's my oldest sister, Thomasine, but we called her Jean.

She was the one who had the burden of taking care of the rest of us.

So it was really a shattering moment when she passed away for all of us.

And I probably think that happens in every family when the first person that's close to you pass away, and you don't know what you're supposed to do.

- What I see in my mom when I look at the image is happiness in a real way, in a carefree.

It's crazy because I don't know if I've ever experienced her this way.

'Cause I feel like that probably changes once you have children.

Then, of course, once you start dealing with constant grief.

I'm about to paint a mural of a dear friend of mine, Waajeed.

He recently signed a record deal, and part of the promotion is they want a mural painted of him.

And he reached out to me, and I was honored to accept.

(upbeat music) - Our deadline is on the 18th.

- [Sydney] For real?

- It is.

So what's gonna happen is like, we took pictures for Sydney to do what she does, and then we take pictures of the mural, and that'll be the album cover.

- No pressure.

So many cameras, no pressure.

- You got this.

- Yep, we got it, brother.

- You can do the high spots, I'll do the low spots.

Put her up on the ladder.

- Oh, I don't work on ladders, baby.

That's dangerous.

- You just have to know how to do it, that's all.

It's all about technique.

- Oh no, I operate lifts and buckets.

That's what I'm talking about.

I'm not working on the ladder.

- [Male Speaker] What's the biggest job you've done?

How high up have you had to go?

- 108 feet.

- [Male Speaker] Really?

- Yep.

(upbeat music) - [Waajeed] Hey, Syd, does that happen to you often?

Like you kind of gotta be in a position where you gotta provide a (beep) resume for people and (beep) - Literally every single- - [Waajeed] Why do you think that is though?

- I'm a woman.

I'm Black.

I'm five four with freckles.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, you would be surprised.

They even asked me like, "Oh, are you just, "is this your work or are you just coloring it?

"Did somebody else do this?"

Like, it's never me because how could it be?

- Right.

- [Sydney] It's ridiculous.

- But I couldn't imagine what it's like from your point of view, but I know I've seen it.

- But it's all good.

Waajeed, I can see you.

- [Waajeed] It ain't all good though.

It sucks.

- It does suck, but this is why we create space.

This is why you're making a school.

This is why I co-founded BLKOUT Walls.

(upbeat music) I never created in a space like a mural festival where there was another Black woman creating a mural, until I created my own mural festival.

Until I took on mentees, and I started giving them walls.

The inaugural BLKOUT Walls Mural Festival came to Detroit because we all agreed that black love resides here.

Black creativity resides here.

It belonged here first.

It was conceived by myself, Thomas Detour Evans out of Denver and Max Sinsing out of Chicago.

Basically because of our shared experience participating in mural festivals, and it was always a lack of representation.

When kids come by with their parents, and they see us creating, it's really inspirational to them because they can see there's a future in being a creator.

- For many, many decades we've seen dilapidation, we've seen the wear and tear of the buildings.

We've seen them being unoccupied, unattended and ignored.

So when the BLKOUT mural festivals came, it was like a type of surgery because these buildings were being mended back together.

There are people here that have been here for 100 years, and we're not going anywhere.

(upbeat music) - I hope that this mural and Sydney's work can bring inspiration to the space.

It's her spirit that really has put her where she is and where she's gonna land.

I even noticed that spirit in her mom and in her aunt.

(upbeat music) It's an energy that just represents those who been counted out, been forgotten about.

(upbeat music) - This is my aunt Kathryn.

Kathy is what we call, or Kat.

She's an artist.

But yeah, this is just my go-to person.

She's my aunt, but she's also my person.

I'll take off my mask.

- [Aunt] So you're gonna paint me as an angry Black woman?

- Yes.

- Okay, it's very good.

(Aunt Kathy laughs) I'm probably still an angry Black woman.

- Aren't we all?

How could we not be, honestly?

- True, true, true, true.

- [Sydney] What made you the angry Black woman?

- Probably being a well educated Black woman who couldn't find a job.

- [Sydney] Yeah.

- Advertising agencies at that point, at least around here- - [Sydney] Weren't really hiring us.

- Yeah, they weren't.

They weren't.

- You were the one who made my mom and my parents period comfortable with me pursuing art.

Like, think about it.

You know it.

Even when that teacher said to my mom in kindergarten, like, you know, your daughter has abilities.

When she gets of age, you need to get her some extra, some art class, some real art classes.

She didn't know what that meant.

You guided her through that process.

(soft music) In a lot of my most recent work, I focus on women.

(people shouting) This video in particular is what changed the trajectory of my work.

- I want my mama, on God.

(people shouting) - Even Malcolm X himself said that the Black woman is the most oppressed person in this country, and the last few years have proven nothing else but.

Black women are treated as a doormats to the doormats.

Like, we are the last on the list.

I've painted myself as a doormat naked on the floor, and I laid it at the gallery entrance for a couple shows, and I saw in real time how people interacted with the piece, and I didn't like it.

- I felt like a first responder.

Like I wanted to be like, "Don't step on that!"

Like, I needed to, like I felt like I needed to do this for the whole show, just stand here like this.

But when I saw footprints on it, I wanted to cry.

(soft music) - It's interesting.

It still doesn't feel good.

(soft music) All of the marks came from people's shoes, dirt on shoes, people dancing on it, literally.

Oh, it's beer stains on it.

- When we talked about like how this was gonna go and what the concept was, I was like, whoa.

- [Sydney] Yeah.

- That's (beep) brilliant.

We honestly carry that every day.

We carry it and we prepare for it.

We know, as Black women.

- We do.

- That's what happens, and we can talk about it in different circles about how world steps on us and this or that.

- How we move outta people's way.

It didn't feel good 'cause it's my work, you're walking on my work, but you're also walking on me.

Literally.

So, I flipped it.

And I made the decision that day, I was going to paint nothing Black women as large and grand as I could.

(upbeat rhythmic music) (upbeat rhythmic music continues) - Being a part of this project is more than just my face on the building.

You know, this is my neighborhood.

My family's been here for three generations.

My children are the fourth.

When I look at this mural, I see community.

- [Sydney] What is the disruption?

- [Friend] Putting a Black woman in those spaces where most people don't acknowledge her existence.

- Like our existence as Black female creators is activism, and that's kind of crazy to me.

(soft somber music) (upbeat drum music) After George Floyd's murder, a Facebook friend of mine posted an old article about Malice Green who had been beaten to death by cops back in 1992.

He actually got a conviction.

Detroit artist Benny White Jr. painted a mural of malice at the scene of the crime.

The article made note that the mural had been destroyed against community's wishes.

And I thought to myself, "Oh (beep), I need to paint another Malice Green wall."

But at the time, I wasn't painting men, and I also don't do memorial walls because essentially a lot of people think that that's all the public art that Black people do.

In my mind, I had to make it bigger.

Bigger than Malice, bigger than George.

It had to be bigger.

And my idea was for the names of the victims of police brutality from the time I was born, 1979, all the way to 2020 will go on the wall.

It's impossible.

It was impossible.

- [Bakpak] We all fell into a puddle of tears.

- Everybody said, I'm tough.

I wasn't gonna let y'all see me cry.

(all laugh) - [Marian] They helped you on that one?

- Not even helped.

Like, they took the burden.

- Oh really?

- Because there is no database.

It doesn't exist.

- [Marian] Very hard.

- Yes, so they, along with Helena Castell, Sabrina Nelson, they all researched and found these names of these murdered victims.

Many of the victims were under age 18.

They were children.

If the victim was trans or part of the LGBT community period, nobody was even looking for them.

Over a thousand names graced the walls.

So yes, I introduced men back into my work because now I'm focusing on the bigger picture, and that's creating a safe space for us.

So process is ever evolving, it's ever changing.

Today, it's about family.

Family is not only your relatives, but it's community.

It's a feeling of safety and nurturing.

- What I can tell you about these loving people, these are my first loves.

These are the standard bearers.

- [Friend] When I think of this family, they look like guardians, right?

- It is not the the pose of aristocracy that we know, right?

That's not what- - She got that what up though stance.

That's a what up though stance.

- [Sydney] But for us, these are our postures.

That is the way auntie who is like holding it all down.

Don't try it.

I like that this is showing Blackness in its elegance, in its aristocracy, right?

- [Friend] In its fullness.

- [Sydney] But in its own voice.

And that's why I paint loud and large.

Even if I'm painting small, I want you to see me.

(soft rhythmic music) (soft rhythmic music continues) (soft rhythmic music continues) (soft music fades)

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