RUFUS SNODDY - Hybridized Mythologies

What was the environment like in which you first came to making art and how did it inform your early creative practice?

I’m from a large family. My mom gave birth to seven girls and five boys. As the tenth child, my formative years were spent in rural, segregated East Texas, A hotbed of Jim Crow, separate but equal racism. I remember being bussed thirty-five miles to the nearest Black elementary school while living within walking distance of an all-white school. It was all about survival. To most black people where we lived, art was a frivolous pursuit. But I liked art.

Whenever I saw paintings by the Old Masters which was rare, I was mesmerized that human hands could produce such things sparked curiosity. My first memories of a strong desire to draw came when I was about seven years-old. My brother was in the Army, stationed somewhere in Germany and would sometimes write letters to me with sketches included. They would often be of someone in his platoon, the barracks, jeeps, or of places he had visited and liked. I remember being impressed with these sketches and of course thought my brother was a genius. “If only I could draw like that”, I would think. So, I tried copying some of these drawings, though mostly unsuccessful. That was the beginning of a passion to create, as I refused to accept the failures and wanted to get better. This spirit has sustained to this day.

Throughout the years I remember spending long hours looking, observing, and many trials and errors of trying to draw something that resembled what I was seeing. By the time I was twelve I was starting to be somewhat satisfied with my drawings. My mom was most supportive of my art efforts. Usually, I was met with “You can’t make any money off art. That’s not a real job!” by my siblings and friends. We were poor and my dad, having only a sixth-grade education, urged me and my siblings to get a college degree. He saw that as a way out of poverty.

After moving to Los Angeles from Longview, Texas, I took an art class in the seventh grade and really hated it. The class focus was mainly competitive and of course, every kid wants to be acknowledged as the best. This experience caused me to swear that I would never take another art class (note to art teachers). Though I continued to draw and make things I was interested in, it wasn’t until four years in college that I took another art class. As a Physical Education major, I chose an art elective the semester before I was to graduate. Going to the art department was like going home. These were my people, this was my world. I dropped the rest of my P.E. classes and changed my major to Art, with only eight units needed for a degree. I never regretted and never looked back.

I loved everything about the art department, especially all of the tools, materials, and different disciplines. In the next six years, I became familiar with as many of these things as possible. Majoring in Design, with a focus on illustration, was my pragmatic move to be able to make money. But, in graduate school, I began to hone in on what was my real interest, sculpture. Welding, brazing, metal casting, fabricating with an array of materials was my nirvana.

The environment of my early years instilled a deep-seated desire for freedom. I very much disliked the idea of limitations based on my skin color and have always searched for situations where I have had an optimum amount of freedom, whether lifestyle, world view or creative endeavor. The conventional has never been attractive to me, as I have mostly experienced it not in my favor. Of course, these things are relative to my personal origins. Jim Crow east Texas is a long way from a communal living artist in Los Angeles.

"My interest was to create three-dimensional illusions of space by using simple low relieved elements and linear perspective."

When I entered the art world I didn’t have the funds to set up a welding studio and was not sure I wanted to. My search was for a direction that was a hybrid that employed painting and sculpture equally. Again, I desired the freedom of creating objects without a lot of limitations, in regard to materials or direction. I painted pictures on canvas for a while and became extremely frustrated with the banality of the end results. Thus, I decided to experiment with the fundamentals of mark-making, by simply doing expansive fields of painted brush strokes. The goal was to work with translucency and opacity to create the illusion of depth by overlapping brush strokes. Still dissatisfied with the two-dimensional surface quality, these brushstrokes evolved into backgrounds for some three-dimensional elements I wanted to work with. My interest was to create three-dimensional illusions of space by using simple low relieved elements and linear perspective. Combining these painted surfaces with dimensional elements was the beginning of my “construction paintings”. This was an opportunity for creative freedom, 2D and 3D.

Entering into the Los Angeles art scene was a sobering experience for me. This was the late 1970’s and the ‘good old boy’ syndrome was alive and well. Most of the mainstream galleries may as well have had a “Black Artists Need Not Apply” sign on their doors. Many of the white artists I went to school with were being embraced with opportunities. Most black artists I knew were spectators on the sidelines. I recall an experience I had which was an atypical situation. I was showing my slides to an unnamed westside gallery owner. The gallery owner took my book of slides, began leafing through them, all the while never losing eye contact with me, never looking at the slides, then closing my book with “I’m sorry, we are not looking for this type of work right now”. This was a common scenario for me in the late 70’s early 80’s in Los Angeles. As I experienced it, most of the opportunities for unknown Black artists at that time were with ‘The Gallery’, operated by Samella Lewis, Brockman Gallery, run by Dale and Alonzo Davis, Watts Towers Art Center and the Watts Festival, or other African American or municipal art centers.

The other part of the scenario concerned Black identity. Galleries were reluctant to deal with Black artists who were not dealing with Black imagery. I recall Christopher Knight, the L.A. Times critic, whom I have high regard for, saying in a review of The Emerging Artist Exhibit at the Afro-American Museum, 1990 in L.A., that it was all about Black identity. However, the bone I still pick is the summing up of the identity of Black artists. As American Black artists, we are not stereotypes of a singular experience in ‘any one file of the multicultural index’, codified with knees on our necks, through institutional bias and bigotry contrive to put us there. We are American and our expansive experiences of survival are of duality, intersectionality, understanding the rituals of the white infrastructure of white brothers and sisters, and others much beyond their experiences of who we are. However, until recently, the gate openings for Black artists had always been narrow, allowing only a few through, typically with conditions.

"The work was judged on the merits of what a successful work of art is, not the color of the individual creating the art."

In L.A. in the late 1970s and early 1980s those gates were extremely and tightly shuttered for Black artists who were just starting out. So, I went to New York. I had conversations with Ivan Karp, Muldoon Elder, and others, who looked at my work, gave me feedback and advice. I was able to garner a few exhibitions there, which were invaluable to my self-esteem and track record as an artist. The work was judged on the merits of what a successful work of art is, not the color of the individual creating the art.

What was your perspective of New York at the time, as it concerned being a Black artist living and working in Los Angeles, and in regards to the potential of accessibility and acknowledgment of your work by a wider audience?

The Los Angeles art scene felt a bit too “old boy” to me, stilted in favor of those within a certain social loop. I was not focused on my Blackness as an artist. I say that not as a derision of myself or those who were, but simply as a matter of fact. The art was more important to me than the social conditions of the environment in which it was created. The artists I associated with at the time were socially and culturally diverse. Perhaps this had much to do with my optimism at the time and the fact that I was living in a communal environment during the 1980s.

New York was the center of the artworld in the 1980’s, from my perception. The Warhols, Basquiats, Mary Boones and Castellis were on the radars of many young artists at the time. Seemingly, it was the hub for new ideas and challenges to the old guard. Many young artists were opening up storefront spaces to show their work and works of their contemporaries. I related too much that was going on in New York, which seemed a contrast to what was happening in L.A. at the time. A friend introduced me to Mickey Kaplan, a bi-coastal artist who had procured one of these storefront spaces near Soho, called ‘L.A. Artists’. The vision was to give Los Angeles based artists an opportunity to be players in the New York art scene. A group of us put together an exhibition, which was my first show in New York. During this same time period, I attended an exhibit at Viridian Art Gallery, a well established cooperative gallery in uptown Manhattan, at which time I applied for membership. These two spaces gave me my initial exposure to New York. I solicited gallery owners from attractive spaces to go see my work. This led to getting an exhibition and representation for a short while at Vorpal Gallery in Soho.

"Execution of my ideas became more important than trying to get in upscaled galleries."

This activity during the 1980s did wonders for my esteem and led to acknowledgement from some of the L.A. art scene. However, my sensitivity to whatever was going on in L.A. had been altered. Execution of my ideas became more important than trying to get in upscaled galleries. Someone encouraged me to check out L.A. Artcore as a venue that might be compatible with my sensibilities. This was my reconnection with Lydia Takeshita, who was an instructor I had taken classes with and who was also a very strong supporter of my graduate thesis project screening committee at CSULA.

Many black artists I knew were moving to New York, as they saw it more opportune than L.A. While considering that move myself, the contrasting physical environment was a bit intimidating to me. While attracted to the energy of the hustle and bustle, I always longed for space when there. There was a prevalent feeling that my personal space was constantly under attack. I could never relax for long periods of time. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the city in small bites. The energy was both attractive and repulsive.

Around this time, representational imagery began to emerge in non-representational spaces. How would you characterize the visual dialogue that was taking place at this point?

The works I was doing when first showing in New York were the earliest pieces emanating from the construction painting direction. That is to say, in the early 1980’s I resolved to move toward approaching painting as an object. This would incorporate my sculptural as well as painting desires. The earlier brushstroke work were now to be textured backdrops for the illusionary work I was interested in. They were made as demonstrations of perception and, to some degree, a kind of trompe l ‘oeil. Probably the most important aspects of this work was that it offered opportunities to work with an unlimited amount of materials. Materials that were being used included painted images, raw and painted canvas, collage, three-dimensional objects, carved wood, plastics, leather, paper, metal, or any other thing that was compatible with my process. I wanted a process that was relatively unlimited and one that I could contrast the physical with illusory.

Another reason for this approach was to be able to obscure the line between painting and sculpture. The illusions often juxtaposed two dimensional painted objects with three dimensional objects with little distinction appearing between them. We are often deceived by our first impressions or by cursory observations and glances.

What is the role of storytelling in your work, and how does it play into your creative process?

Most of the works I do are thematically based. The themes are personal reflections and observations. Much of it has a psycho-social bent, having to do with my interest in human behavior and general cultural proclivities. The power of symbols interests me very much. I am intrigued by the why of cultural values and rituals and the how of the effects, for better or worse. As a Black artist, the constant reminder of skin color, as a symbol, brings about a rich world of human observational material, whether expressed in the form of allegory or the literal and figurative. This often leaves me to live and carry a dual consciousness and awareness of insensitive gate-keepers and others who look to define me and my work. So the ‘critical eye’ becomes a fitting metaphor and shows up often in my work. These observations can lead to some of the more evocative themes.

The themes sometimes drive the kind of shapes I consider, e.g., windows, shields, wings, etc., all as symbolic devices to appoint compelling visual elements, and sometimes, stories.

Mythological stories intrigue me as displays of man’s ritualistic archetypes. My work is often about building a variety of creative, physical metaphors of thematic concerns. The storytelling is left to the viewer’s perception.

There are times when I use certain materials, shapes, and objects to infer moods, visual energy, or subliminal messages. But, sometimes the work is simply about demonstrations of the properties of certain materials in my environment, their compatibility with other materials and the joy I derive working with them. My career has been much about searching for innovative approaches and ways of objectifying painting in a way that expresses freedom and shares my vision.

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