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Speaker 1: up on the Getting Even show page in Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or at Pushkin dot fm. A fern of mine brought
Speaker 1: some of their students by my studio. One kid was
Speaker 1: saying how he liked the work. But then before they left,
Speaker 1: he said, but do you know what's solow While you're painting,
Speaker 1: the sculptures show what's happening in our communities. We don't
Speaker 1: need to be told what's happening. We know what's happening.
Speaker 1: If artists are created, why can't they create a solution?
Speaker 1: And I just went, whoa wait a minute. That's Rick
Speaker 1: low and artist MacArthur Genius fellow and community organizer who
Speaker 1: lives and works in Houston. His work engages and transforms
Speaker 1: communities through social practice and collaboration. And nearly three decades ago,
Speaker 1: the question that student asks changed the course of Lowe's career.
Speaker 1: I mean, this student just pulled the rug from under
Speaker 1: me of like you know. I mean, by that time,
Speaker 1: I had been practicing as an artist for almost ten years.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like, it took me aback, and that's
Speaker 1: when I closed my studio down and started researching artists
Speaker 1: that actually did art that was both poetic and symbolic
Speaker 1: but also had a practical application, and so that led
Speaker 1: me to this journey. Lowe started out as a landscape painter,
Speaker 1: but soon took up the practice of social sculpture, using
Speaker 1: creativity to shape communities. He uses space, architecture, and opportunity
Speaker 1: as mediums like clay or paint to shape society itself.
Speaker 1: For the past twenty five years, Lowe has crafted one
Speaker 1: particular social sculpture in Houston's Third Ward. It's called Project
Speaker 1: Row Houses, and it's an artist led community space that's
Speaker 1: dedicated to the creation of art, education and housing. In
Speaker 1: the initial stages, we thought maybe we were just gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, take these twenty two shotgun houses and we
Speaker 1: were going to do a few art shows in it
Speaker 1: and you know, bring artists in. We didn't have this
Speaker 1: idea that was going to be this thing, but then
Speaker 1: it just kept growing. I'm Anita Hill. This is Getting
Speaker 1: Even my podcast about equality and what it takes to
Speaker 1: get there. On Getting Even, I speak with people who
Speaker 1: are improving are perfect world people who took risk and
Speaker 1: broke the rules. In this episode, Rick Lowe and I
Speaker 1: discuss how he views his art and the role it
Speaker 1: plays in his Houston community. Low is represented by the
Speaker 1: prestigious Cogosian Gallery and has won numerous awards for his paintings, sculptures,
Speaker 1: and installations. Low and I speak about how he developed
Speaker 1: his social art practice, the importance of space to equality,
Speaker 1: and the impact that artistic investment can have on underserved communities.
Speaker 1: So you started out your career as a landscape painter.
Speaker 1: You went to a school that specialized in landscape painting,
Speaker 1: but also there was something else that drew you to it. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I went there to play basketball. That
Speaker 1: was my main focus at the time. Where I grew
Speaker 1: up in rural Alabama, there were based five ways your
Speaker 1: life would go after high school. The big one was
Speaker 1: really people were joining the military. If you were lucky
Speaker 1: and talented enough of something, you could get some kind
Speaker 1: of sports scholarship or something like that, or you become
Speaker 1: a factory worker or a drug dealer, or you just
Speaker 1: stayed at home. It was very limited options, and so
Speaker 1: I took the root of sports and went to school
Speaker 1: thinking that sports was going to be my way of
Speaker 1: elevating myself to a point that I could actually do
Speaker 1: things for other people, I could live a purposeful life.
Speaker 1: But it was there that I ended up taking art
Speaker 1: classes and made a shift. So it was so interesting
Speaker 1: for me because I had spent so much time just
Speaker 1: sucking in the red color of the soil, in the
Speaker 1: green pine trees and rural Alabama, even the white clay.
Speaker 1: So this combination of red and white and green was
Speaker 1: always something that it had a huge imprint on my psyche.
Speaker 1: You know, that kind of earth. So you've seen spaces
Speaker 1: in a number of ways, I mean the physical sense,
Speaker 1: but also in the legal and cultural sense. You've seen
Speaker 1: segregated spaces, and Nope, what that feels like. Absolutely. I
Speaker 1: was trained as a painter, and I always had this
Speaker 1: mission of doing work that would contribute to transforming the
Speaker 1: conditions of people that are in disadvantaged situations. And so
Speaker 1: as an early painter, I painted things about police brutality,
Speaker 1: about poverty and all those kinds of things. And then
Speaker 1: I end up switching over to something that was inspired
Speaker 1: by the German artist Joseph Boy's concept of social sculpture.
Speaker 1: Joseph Boy's definition of social sculpture was basically the way
Speaker 1: that we shape and mold the world around us, and
Speaker 1: that everybody is participating as artists. I went from landscape
Speaker 1: paintings realizing that, Okay, the landscape's great and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: but I want to do stuff that talks about issues
Speaker 1: that people that come from backgrounds like I came from,
Speaker 1: are all about. I want to speak to those issues.
Speaker 1: And so I switched from landscape to doing figurative work,
Speaker 1: and I went through this whole thing of trying to
Speaker 1: make sure that it wasn't work that would just fit
Speaker 1: in galleries and that kind of stuff, and wasn't just
Speaker 1: for sale, that it connected with things, and so I
Speaker 1: started doing these very clunky, large scale things in conjunction
Speaker 1: with political groups like anders international human rights weak or
Speaker 1: activism and stuff. Let's talk about some of your very
Speaker 1: specific work project Rowhouses in Houston, which has been a
Speaker 1: big part of your artistic work for the last thirty years.
Speaker 1: This isn't I think nineteen ninety there were two people
Speaker 1: killed by the police here in the Third Ward neighborhood.
Speaker 1: Activists had been working on this thing for like a year,
Speaker 1: trying to call attention to the injustices and get get
Speaker 1: the police charged. But after a year or so, the
Speaker 1: media got a little tired of it and kind of
Speaker 1: dissipate a little bit, and so I was just an
Speaker 1: artist around among the crew, right, passing out flyers and
Speaker 1: doing stuff for the community leaders. But then one day
Speaker 1: I at a meeting. They were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how could they get media attention, and I said, oh, well,
Speaker 1: I could create an installation, you know, an art installation,
Speaker 1: and they kind of looked at me like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 1: So I went out and I went to this little
Speaker 1: handball court in a park and I built this giant, giant,
Speaker 1: giant installation with all these big giant paintings and cutout
Speaker 1: sculptures and all this stuff dealing with police brutality and all.
Speaker 1: And they saw me out there doing it, and as
Speaker 1: it got closer to finish, they went like, whoa, we
Speaker 1: should have a press conference here, and so they did.
Speaker 1: So they had this press conference with all the activists,
Speaker 1: you know, they were sitting in the table in the
Speaker 1: middle of this big installation, all the media from all
Speaker 1: over there, and I was like, that was so meaningful
Speaker 1: for me to be of service that way. After the
Speaker 1: press conference, it was on the cover of all the
Speaker 1: local newspapers and all the television shows. So my work
Speaker 1: was out there and I was feeling like I'm really
Speaker 1: doing exactly it, you know, I'm being an artist and activist,
Speaker 1: until a friend of mine a year later brought some
Speaker 1: of their students by my studio where I had disassembled
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and it was just all, you know,
Speaker 1: sitting around, and this one kid was saying how he
Speaker 1: liked the work. But then before they left, he said,
Speaker 1: but do you know, miss Lowe, why you're painting The
Speaker 1: sculptures show what's happening in our communities. We don't need
Speaker 1: to be told what's happening. We know what's happening. If
Speaker 1: artists are created, why can't they create a solution? And
Speaker 1: I just went, whoa wait a minute, I mean this hold,
Speaker 1: are you right? I mean this student just pulled the
Speaker 1: rug from under me of like you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: by that time, I had been practicing as an artist
Speaker 1: for almost ten years, you know, I'm like yeah, So
Speaker 1: it was very shocking, and it just it took me aback,
Speaker 1: and that's when I closed my studio down and started
Speaker 1: researching artists that actually did art that was both poetic
Speaker 1: and symbolic but also had a practical application. And so
Speaker 1: that led me to this journey that started project to
Speaker 1: Our Houses. Can you describe that project for us? I've
Speaker 1: found these little houses that reminded me of John Biggers.
Speaker 1: He was an artist that had come to Houston and
Speaker 1: he started the art department at Texas Southern University here
Speaker 1: in Houston, and he did a lot of paintings about
Speaker 1: shotgun houses and stuff. And he had gone to West
Speaker 1: Africa and he saw the relationship between the shotgun houses
Speaker 1: in the West African villages that he visited, and he
Speaker 1: just he dove in and he did all this research
Speaker 1: and he came up with this whole kind of mythology
Speaker 1: around it about how the shotgun house was a product
Speaker 1: of the slave trade, slaves moving from West Africa and
Speaker 1: to the West Indies and having opportunities to build their
Speaker 1: own structures. Sometimes they were just built in the way
Speaker 1: that they were accustomed to. And then from the West
Speaker 1: Indies into New Orleans was the kind of the first
Speaker 1: location of these little shotgun style houses that were expanded
Speaker 1: with a Western influence, a European influence, and so it
Speaker 1: was like a narrow, skinny little thing, and you walk
Speaker 1: into the middle of the house and you can look
Speaker 1: to the left and you'll see it goes straight out
Speaker 1: to a window there and you look to the right.
Speaker 1: So there were things about it that spoke to the
Speaker 1: brilliance of people that brought that with them, and then
Speaker 1: it just kind of moved out. So he wroped all
Speaker 1: that history in that gave me a foundation through which
Speaker 1: I could actually pursue social sculpture to generate interests of
Speaker 1: people in sculpting with me a community that had such
Speaker 1: a rich history. And when you found those houses, they
Speaker 1: were shattered right. Yes, yes, in fact I found the
Speaker 1: houses because at that time, after the student had pulled
Speaker 1: the rug from under me about my painting practice, I
Speaker 1: just was spending a lot of time volunteering in the
Speaker 1: community and working with the act of this that were
Speaker 1: in this neighborhood. And one day they were organizing a
Speaker 1: tour of dangerous places within the community, and they had
Speaker 1: representatives from the city and the county on a bus
Speaker 1: and they were driving around saying, this is a place
Speaker 1: for harboring drug activities, this is a place for prostitution.
Speaker 1: They were asking them to be torn down. On the
Speaker 1: bus going back to the center, they stopped at this
Speaker 1: little block and a half of Shotgun House. This was
Speaker 1: twenty two of them, and they said, and this is
Speaker 1: the absolute worst place in the entire neighborhood. And they
Speaker 1: said it just needed to go. And I was just
Speaker 1: sitting there on the bus with them. I had no
Speaker 1: thoughts about it until later going back looking at those
Speaker 1: houses and then thinking about John Bigger's glorification of the
Speaker 1: shotgun house or shotgun communities. Then it just kind of
Speaker 1: hit me. I was like, well, wait a minute, this
Speaker 1: could be an ideal place for social sculpture because it
Speaker 1: had a deep level of history and it could symbolically
Speaker 1: mean something and also address some practical elements. You know.
Speaker 1: And where I'm from, when I've heard the term shotgun house,
Speaker 1: it's usually said disparagingly. And so it's amazing to me
Speaker 1: that with the right history, with the right amount of
Speaker 1: knowledge that you got from Professor Biggers, you were able
Speaker 1: to see the beauty and the worth and value in them.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely, So now you take possession of these
Speaker 1: twenty two houses, correct, That was the initial concepts. We're
Speaker 1: going to take these houses and then you have to
Speaker 1: figure out what you're going to do with this space.
Speaker 1: How was that process? Well, identifying those houses and saying
Speaker 1: these houses mean something and we should do something. Not
Speaker 1: a clue about really how to manage that and stuff,
Speaker 1: but it was just really taking that first step, knowing
Speaker 1: that there's meaning and there's value there, and with a
Speaker 1: trust that somehow it will end fold. And I think
Speaker 1: that to me also became the point when I learned
Speaker 1: really and truly the value of social sculpture is that
Speaker 1: if you're sculpting in society, you can't do it alone.
Speaker 1: You must do it in a way that rely on
Speaker 1: the gifts and strengths of other people. And so for me,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know the first thing about real estate.
Speaker 1: I had never purchased any real estate anything in my life.
Speaker 1: So immediately, all of a sudden, it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I had to find people that knew something about real estate.
Speaker 1: And then it was like, oh, well, the houses they
Speaker 1: were all falling down. I was like, okay, so now
Speaker 1: we have to find somebody it knows something about construction.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because the six other artists that I was
Speaker 1: working with, you know, they were all behind me. They
Speaker 1: were interested in this. They believed in it, I guess
Speaker 1: because I had. When people have that energy and that
Speaker 1: thing in their eye, and people okay, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you might as well get with this person because you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna not gonna stop, right, That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you and once I was able to get a
Speaker 1: least purchase agreement on these twenty two houses, we just
Speaker 1: started cleaning up. In fact, there was an elder lady
Speaker 1: who had lived behind this particular property. She was the
Speaker 1: only person that was still living and basically a four
Speaker 1: block area, and she had lived there. She had bought
Speaker 1: her house in nineteen forty nine, and in the midst
Speaker 1: of all that chaos around her, she still had her
Speaker 1: picket fence, white house flowers in her she you know,
Speaker 1: she was The community just died around her, but she didn't,
Speaker 1: and she was very tough to be there. She would
Speaker 1: walk outside with her pistol and ask us what we're
Speaker 1: doing and says, if you're not, you know, if you're
Speaker 1: playing around, I'm gonna shoot. You know. We're like, okay,
Speaker 1: but we're not. We're gonna And then I remember her
Speaker 1: saying that she says, if you want to do something
Speaker 1: in this place, clean this mess up and that was
Speaker 1: our first Q. It's like, okay, we've got the houses,
Speaker 1: let's call people out and say, let's clean up this block.
Speaker 1: Let's clean up this block, these two blocks here, And
Speaker 1: so that's kind of how we started. Was just people
Speaker 1: with shovels and rakes and trash bags and it was
Speaker 1: almost like excavating because so much had overgrown. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: were just having fun cleaning up a place. After the break.
Speaker 1: Rick low and I discussed the far reaching impact of
Speaker 1: his social sculpture work, particularly Project Rowhouses. You're listening to
Speaker 1: getting even. I'm Anita Hill. I'm speaking with artists Rick
Speaker 1: Lowe about Project Rowhouses, a social sculpture in Houston's Third
Speaker 1: Ward that he started over two decades ago. Isaac Rowhouses
Speaker 1: currently includes thirty nine houses and covers five city blocks
Speaker 1: and provides transitional housing, gallery and residency spaces for artists
Speaker 1: and storefronts for entrepreneurs. I've seen photos of the houses,
Speaker 1: but for those who haven't, can you describe where they
Speaker 1: are now and who's in them? Yeah? Well, when we
Speaker 1: start cleaning them up, just a handful of us artists,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, children from the neighborhood started coming.
Speaker 1: They were curious about, you know, what are they doing
Speaker 1: over there? And little kids, the ones that are five
Speaker 1: to ten twelve years old, they would just come and
Speaker 1: hang out and we would buy lunch and stuff and
Speaker 1: hang out with them and kind of mentor them. And
Speaker 1: so that was our first unofficial program, was a youth program,
Speaker 1: just being older adults there to talk to children about
Speaker 1: what are you doing with your life and what do
Speaker 1: you want to do, what are you dreaming about it,
Speaker 1: you know, and giving them meaningful things to do. And
Speaker 1: so what we decided at that point was that we
Speaker 1: needed an education program for young people because the thing
Speaker 1: that we observed was that yesteryear, the grandparents and aunts
Speaker 1: and uncles were the people that took care of and
Speaker 1: looked after children when their parents were at work or
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. But after I guess the eighties,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, we lost so many of those
Speaker 1: grandparents and uncles and aunts to drugs, and so they
Speaker 1: were not able to provide those good, wholesome places that
Speaker 1: we remember, you know, where there was always somebody on
Speaker 1: the block that looked after all, you know, made sure
Speaker 1: everybody is okay. So we kind of called ourselves to uncles,
Speaker 1: the uncles and aunts of the community, because we were
Speaker 1: the place where the kids could come and be safe,
Speaker 1: and so we developed an education program that would work
Speaker 1: with them after school and during the summer so that
Speaker 1: they would have safe places to go that were productive.
Speaker 1: So that was our first programmatic thing. But then, of
Speaker 1: course then we said we wanted to make sure that
Speaker 1: artists were at the forefront. So instead of having an
Speaker 1: education coordinator, we just said we will allow artists. We
Speaker 1: give artists stipends and let them do what they do
Speaker 1: and educate people in the process. So then we started
Speaker 1: this art program that at eight houses where artists could
Speaker 1: do art projects, and we had the five houses in
Speaker 1: the back like little school houses and stuff. That was
Speaker 1: like the first year or so, and I remember we
Speaker 1: were talking about the other houses. What should we do
Speaker 1: with the other houses. The logical thinking was that, oh,
Speaker 1: we should, we should have artists and residents to live here.
Speaker 1: That was a logical thing, and then we ended up
Speaker 1: with those seven houses being used as a transitional housing
Speaker 1: for single mothers. Why did you choose the single mothers, Well,
Speaker 1: Deb Grolsfeldt, who was working with us at the time.
Speaker 1: She was doing research and she just she went to
Speaker 1: the local high school and she just thought, oh my god,
Speaker 1: she was at a They had like a whole special
Speaker 1: class for pregnant girls at the school, and she was like,
Speaker 1: there's so many. It was just a Yeah. It was
Speaker 1: an eye opening thing for all of us that that
Speaker 1: was such an issue in the community. But then it
Speaker 1: became pretty obvious once we started a program. There are
Speaker 1: lots of young girls that are out here in this
Speaker 1: community and they're preyed upon and all kinds of things,
Speaker 1: and they're ending up being parents of babies that they
Speaker 1: don't really know how to manage and deal with. So
Speaker 1: maybe we could help with that. What did you expect
Speaker 1: these young mothers to get from the project? Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, we were really trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: we could root this project deeply in the community, and
Speaker 1: so selecting single mothers at that time, the majority were
Speaker 1: from this neighborhood that we thought that would be a
Speaker 1: real way for us to show that we're really serious
Speaker 1: about connecting with this community. So that was our initial thinking.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, as as an art project, I mean,
Speaker 1: we didn't say that we were social service providers. We
Speaker 1: didn't know what we were doing, but we just we
Speaker 1: had our heart and our intention was to do something
Speaker 1: that was going to be meaningful for people. You know,
Speaker 1: we didn't know the rules, and sometimes not knowing the
Speaker 1: rules and limitations of things that open things up for you.
Speaker 1: And with these young mothers, you could actually influence two generations.
Speaker 1: I mean, you were really looking into the future. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you this one. I talk about
Speaker 1: her all the time because she was one of the
Speaker 1: first young mothers in the program. But this one I
Speaker 1: love to tell her story because she was amazing. But
Speaker 1: I remember when we were first talking about the program,
Speaker 1: they brought together a group of people that had applied
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, so this is our list
Speaker 1: of women that are interested. And I saw this woman's name,
Speaker 1: her name as Asada Richards, and I went, no, no way,
Speaker 1: because I knew her from this community center that I
Speaker 1: had been doing volunteer work with. And Asado was just
Speaker 1: she was a handful. I mean, she was so she
Speaker 1: was so angry, you know, and she was a part
Speaker 1: of the black nationalist movement that all white people of
Speaker 1: the devil and all this stuff, and the reason it
Speaker 1: was it was odd for me and I was just saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we can do this because a
Speaker 1: lot of our supporters were not black. We made sure
Speaker 1: that we centered all of our programming and everything we
Speaker 1: were doing around this community. But our support network was
Speaker 1: very broad. And I was like, she's not gonna make
Speaker 1: it here because we have people on committees that she's
Speaker 1: going to be, you know. And it was interesting that
Speaker 1: the person who was coordinating said, well, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a chance on her. When she signed up for
Speaker 1: the program, I saw her and I spoke to her,
Speaker 1: and it was the first time I had seen her
Speaker 1: like in a position was a little bit reserved, because
Speaker 1: she was always on the proactive, you know, and always
Speaker 1: aggressively challenging everything, but she was observing. And then I
Speaker 1: just noticed for the next year how she was just
Speaker 1: she was just a calm person. She had been on
Speaker 1: academic probation at University of Houston, but while she was there,
Speaker 1: and she had this support network of basically she had
Speaker 1: a home that was secure for her, all of her
Speaker 1: utilities were paid, We had the childcare situation taken care of.
Speaker 1: They had group counseling, individual counseling, and all these different
Speaker 1: things right, and all of a sudden, like she was
Speaker 1: in her junior year that year, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden she was doing really good. And then she ended
Speaker 1: up doing so well that by the time she graduated,
Speaker 1: one of her professors basically recommended that she applied to
Speaker 1: graduate school. We encouraged her. She applied to Penn State
Speaker 1: and she got in, and she was like, it was
Speaker 1: the hardest thing in the world to get her mind
Speaker 1: around the fact that she was gonna leave. I remember
Speaker 1: she and her little son, you know, we all packed
Speaker 1: stuff up and like a family, you know, we sent
Speaker 1: her on away and she went there and she worked,
Speaker 1: and it was it was a struggle for her, though,
Speaker 1: And I mean, she's just she's become amazing and she's
Speaker 1: a major leader here in this community, and I'm just
Speaker 1: one of those stories. And she also helped me understand
Speaker 1: the social sculpture aspect of it. I remember her saying
Speaker 1: at some point doing that program, she was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I finally figured out why I'm here and why this
Speaker 1: is valuable. And I was like, what do you mean.
Speaker 1: She goes, we are you always talking about social sculpture?
Speaker 1: And she said, I understand it now. Our lives as
Speaker 1: young mothers, we're already and we're sculpting ourselves, and you're
Speaker 1: all helping us, you know, you're helping us figure out
Speaker 1: how to sculpt ourselves. I have a question about the community,
Speaker 1: and I wondered if you could tell me how the
Speaker 1: community responded to the project once it got out, once
Speaker 1: it going and they saw what she were doing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there were probably some skeptics initially, And I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask you to answer that question through the eyes
Speaker 1: of the woman who had been there all along. Was
Speaker 1: she there to see the project developed to fruition. Yes.
Speaker 1: Her name was Ernestine Courtney, and she was She became
Speaker 1: a big champion of ours in the process. I mean
Speaker 1: early on it was so interesting, like I said, when
Speaker 1: we were first kind of milling around looking at the
Speaker 1: site and trying to assess what could be done. And
Speaker 1: she came out in a very protective way of her homestead, right,
Speaker 1: and she watched this and I think it was like
Speaker 1: after the first month or so of her seeing us
Speaker 1: showing up every weekend with people out there just cleaning up,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden she started like fixing iced tea.
Speaker 1: She'd just lemonade. I mean she'd just bring it out
Speaker 1: and like sit it around, you know, and she would
Speaker 1: see us like doing things like we would have to
Speaker 1: get bucket it's of water to clean. She unraveled her
Speaker 1: hosepipe and extended across the street so we could actually
Speaker 1: you know, have running water. And yeah, so she lived
Speaker 1: into her nineties and so she got a chance to
Speaker 1: see all of these things happening. I mean, she was
Speaker 1: there to speak to the young mothers, you know, about
Speaker 1: how it was in the old days. And many of
Speaker 1: the people in the community knew her because they knew
Speaker 1: her as with her maiden name, Miss Davis, and they go, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: miss Davis. She used to keep she used to keep
Speaker 1: street clean, you know, because you know, everybody knew Miss Davis.
Speaker 1: You didn't want to cross her. So she was a
Speaker 1: living example of the big Mama, the grandmothers and grandfathers
Speaker 1: and uncles and aunts you know that looked after people.
Speaker 1: Every community had him. And once you had her approval,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you knew you were in Oh yeah, but
Speaker 1: then of course, yes, there were people that that were skeptics,
Speaker 1: you know, and there were people that are you know,
Speaker 1: when they say, oh, it's art thing, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't know what to do. You know, they're like, I don't,
Speaker 1: we don't. I don't do art, you know, whatever, and
Speaker 1: so they would just watch and one day we had
Speaker 1: some kind of even maybe it was I think it
Speaker 1: was at the time when Destiny's Child was performing at
Speaker 1: our little festival. That was Beyonce's group. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: early days, and so of course they all came over
Speaker 1: to experience that. And that's when he got connected with us,
Speaker 1: and I started talking to him. He was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we should see all over there cleaning up.
Speaker 1: And I said, there's some crazy people over there. We
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing, but they're they're completely crazy.
Speaker 1: They're just they weren't accustomed to that kind of stuff happening.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure they were skeptical too, because they were thinking,
Speaker 1: with a bunch of artists, Yeah, that's right, what do
Speaker 1: they know about housing? What do they know about construction?
Speaker 1: It's at urban planning, Yep, that's right, that's right. And
Speaker 1: actually we had a local politician who was you know,
Speaker 1: in the early days, he was he felt like we
Speaker 1: were stepping on his turf. He had tough challenges with us,
Speaker 1: until finally, after eight years he realized, well, you know,
Speaker 1: these these kinds, you know, they're they're doing stuff, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden he became the biggest supporter
Speaker 1: from a government standpoint. You know, he's been huge supporter.
Speaker 1: So now, other than the revitalization of these houses that
Speaker 1: you bought over the years, have you seen the neighborhood
Speaker 1: change in other ways? Well, that's that's a big talent
Speaker 1: because artists generally look for places that are affordable. You know,
Speaker 1: the best way to maintain your freedom as an artist
Speaker 1: is to be able to control your spending, right, so
Speaker 1: you have to be able to situate yourself in a
Speaker 1: place where you're not having to work two jobs and stuff.
Speaker 1: You have time to do your second job, which is
Speaker 1: your art. But in general, when places are affordable, particularly
Speaker 1: if they're located in areas as close to the center
Speaker 1: of town, at some point those places will change. And
Speaker 1: so very early on, probably as early as nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: seven ninety eight, just working on that block and a
Speaker 1: half the twenty two little shotgun how this and paying
Speaker 1: attention to what was happening in neighborhoods around, I just
Speaker 1: kind of realized this neighborhood is going to change, and
Speaker 1: we could either work toward being the force that's moving
Speaker 1: the change, or we could have change kind of change
Speaker 1: around us and force us to adapt to that. And
Speaker 1: we just intuitively started buying land. And land was very,
Speaker 1: very inexpensive at that time, so we just kept buying
Speaker 1: plots and plots, and then all of a sudden, we
Speaker 1: start we start doing planning, you know, land planning. What's
Speaker 1: going to happen with this land and how can we
Speaker 1: influence that? And as we would talk to people about
Speaker 1: it and people would come and visit us, folks would
Speaker 1: just volunteer to donate land because they liked what we
Speaker 1: were doing. They liked the idea of this preservation, historic
Speaker 1: preservation and trying to hold some aspect of the culture
Speaker 1: of this community together. And so we just started accumulating
Speaker 1: more and more land and started a community development corporation
Speaker 1: that could actually focus on housing development. It seems to
Speaker 1: me that being out of this guardian of history and
Speaker 1: culture in this neighborhood would be kind of scary and
Speaker 1: pretty daunting. You seem to really have flourished, though, and
Speaker 1: I hear you talk about it. It doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: you're easily challenged. But is there anything at all that
Speaker 1: sort of wakes you up in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night that you worry about with in terms of this project,
Speaker 1: how it could possibly go wrong. Yes, there are actually
Speaker 1: as an artist and one who aspires his social sculpture
Speaker 1: and understanding that things like the civil rights movement could
Speaker 1: be described as a social sculpture. Right, so the scale
Speaker 1: could be huge. But for me, as the scale of
Speaker 1: project row Houses started to shift, I started to feel
Speaker 1: less comfortable because, you know, the stakes are high, the
Speaker 1: stakes are much higher. I mean, I've had to kind
Speaker 1: of watch this baby that I've birth and grew, you know,
Speaker 1: to a certain point, take on a personality that's separate
Speaker 1: than mine. And it's been really interesting. It's been very
Speaker 1: very interesting, and I'm having nightmares and other times I'm
Speaker 1: looking at it and I'm looking objectively and thinking about
Speaker 1: it in the context of social sculpture in that you
Speaker 1: have to have faith, confidence and belief in everybody's ability
Speaker 1: to contribute, and it may not be exactly like you want,
Speaker 1: you know. I think at one point when we were
Speaker 1: doing planning, we were saying, you know, we should be
Speaker 1: able to do like at least ten thousand affordable housing,
Speaker 1: you know in this area. You know, I can't do that,
Speaker 1: you know, it has to be someone else, you know,
Speaker 1: that's gonna do that. So it's been interesting watching how
Speaker 1: watching this transform. And I'm still here in the community
Speaker 1: and I'm one of the people that watch it and
Speaker 1: try not to step in too much, but to be
Speaker 1: supportive because what I found was that doing socially engaged work,
Speaker 1: social sculpture work is so demanding of your person. And
Speaker 1: I started realizing how much I enjoyed time reflective, reflective
Speaker 1: time and being alone. And so now it's it's the
Speaker 1: way that I balance things out, you know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can go out and do the work that's working
Speaker 1: with communities, but then I also have a place that
Speaker 1: I can go inward and just kind of work on myself.
Speaker 1: And as it turns out, yes, I started painting again
Speaker 1: based on a practice that kind of carried me through
Speaker 1: the whole Project Rowhouses experience, which was playing dominoes. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was my way of being a part of the
Speaker 1: community and connecting with community and educating myself about community
Speaker 1: was all there at the domino table, and so I
Speaker 1: you know, I just kind of devised this way after
Speaker 1: looking out so many domino games and playing so many
Speaker 1: domino games and start drawing patterns and they turn out
Speaker 1: it look like maps and all that stuff. And then
Speaker 1: just last year things kind of like took off in
Speaker 1: that direction. And so would have never been my dream
Speaker 1: that I would be a part of the Cogosian Gallery
Speaker 1: group of artists, which I'm doing that now and they're
Speaker 1: placing work in collections and museums around the country. So
Speaker 1: it's been really it's been a real interesting kind of
Speaker 1: journey to go from studio painting kinds of things into
Speaker 1: social sculpture and then back into painting with a sense
Speaker 1: that painting is part of the process for me, it's
Speaker 1: a necessary part of the process of me to continue
Speaker 1: to do social sculpture. And you know, it's so funny.
Speaker 1: I always feel like everything that I have done has
Speaker 1: been to help me get to the next thing, and
Speaker 1: this is the next thing for me to hear from
Speaker 1: other people, because all of this work, whether we're doing
Speaker 1: art or whether we're doing law, or whether we're doing
Speaker 1: policy or advocacy, all of this work really comes together.
Speaker 1: It's connected, it should be connected. It really is a
Speaker 1: part of the social sculpture. I mean, we don't have
Speaker 1: to call it that. But that's what it is. We're weaving.
Speaker 1: I'm weaving from one side, you're weaving from another. Rick
Speaker 1: Lowe is breaking the rules of the art world and
Speaker 1: looking at creativity differently. It's work embodies Joseph Boy's idea
Speaker 1: of social sculpture, inviting community members to develop the world
Speaker 1: around and shows us that organizing can be a creative endeavor.
Speaker 1: Rick Low's project Rowhouses is a direct investment in his
Speaker 1: community's future that demonstrates the impact and collaborative nature of
Speaker 1: social sculpture. Art and community can be connected in a
Speaker 1: way that improves and uplifts both. His work connects past
Speaker 1: and future generations through a shared sense of place, history,
Speaker 1: and cooperation, and creates space for a better tomorrow. In
Speaker 1: the next episode, I speak with venture capitalists Arlin Hamilton,
Speaker 1: who is pushing for greater inclusion in Silicon Valley and
Speaker 1: democratizing it. I was also revealing it because they had
Speaker 1: worked so hard to make it opaque and mysterious and
Speaker 1: like nobody, only a few select people could get in.
Speaker 1: And I was over here given the blueprint, you know,
Speaker 1: with the with the flashlight in between my teeth and
Speaker 1: showing people like here, okay, let me open up the
Speaker 1: blueprint for you. This is where you go, this is
Speaker 1: who you talk to, this is what this means. And
Speaker 1: if I'm able to do that without a college education,
Speaker 1: without any money, without any connections, homeless coming from nowhere,
Speaker 1: it must mean that they they're not as special as
Speaker 1: they've made themselves out to be. Getting Even is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries and it's written and hosted by
Speaker 1: me Anita Hill. It is produced by Mola Board and
Speaker 1: Brittany Brown. Our editor is Sarah Kramer, our engineer is
Speaker 1: Amanda kay Wang, and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Luis
Speaker 1: Gara composed original music for the show. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Mia Lobell and Lee Taal Malaud. Our director of
Speaker 1: Development is Justine Lane. At Pushkin thanks to Heather Fane,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Julia Barton, John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at Anita Hill and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Anita Hill. You can find Pushkin on
Speaker 1: all social platforms at pushkin Pods, and you can sign
Speaker 1: up for our newsletter at pushkin dot fm. If you
Speaker 1: love this show and others from Pushkin industries, consider subscribing
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