April 2020 - Arts Leader Spotlight
Announcing April’s Arts Leader Spotlight…
In honor of the year of the woman, MSDE Fine Arts has decided to celebrate the work of Carla Du Pree! Congratulations to an incredible woman!
Her leadership on arts-centered Boards and in the nonprofit community is marked with a strong track record of unwavering passion and commitment. Carla is a powerful advocate for artists and communities throughout the State!
Carla Du Pree
Executive Director, CityLit Project, MSAC Councilor
When did you realize you were an artist?
I realized I was an artist in the making when several things collided seemingly at once. We didn’t call ourselves artists then. My 6th grade teacher Mr. Stevenson publicly acknowledged an essay I wrote about a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. At that time I also stumbled upon the poetry section in our public library, my second home. In search of a good book, I scaled rows and rows of books while on my knees, my fingers sliding across the spines until discovering - in full bloom wonder - black poets on the bottom shelf. I sat transfixed by Clifton, Giovanni, and Sanchez. Their words struck like echoes through me. All of a sudden I saw myself in a poem, and knew then I was destined to be a poet. The power that rose in me digesting "Ego Tripping" was nothing short of audacity. I ended up taking - for keeps, Nikki Giovanni’s black feeling black talk black judgement, carrying it with me like new unapologetic skin. Later it would be Morrison's Song of Solomon, Naylor's Mama Day, Walker's The Color Purple and Marshall's Praisesong for the Widow that raised me as a writer. When I say nothing in the world mattered while engrossed in those books, I mean the drums sounded. The world stood still as I entered that sacred space readers go when they are fully raptured by words. I wasn’t only a writer, though. My sister Des and I staged events where we performed all over New Jersey - the Fondells (singing, contemporary dance) Ashanti Queens (African dance), the African-American Dance Troupe (skits, monologues, modern dance) and my first play The Era of Black Women, and it transformed my every day. In my growth, I recognized how deeply things affected me, how I could feel someone’s pain as much as their joy, how I took refuge in both sides of an argument, largely understanding at the root of all things what we want most in life is to be seen and understood, and how that could be implemented in my artistic work. Those feelings were and remain so intense. I believed at the time, everyone shared it. They do not.
How does creativity show up in your day?
Since I’m unable to perform my craft each day, it shows up in a variety of ways. In the music I play - blast, really - in my car; in the beautiful work spaces I create wherever I go; in the office, at the kitchen table, in my study you’ll find the beauty of a sculpture, fragrant candles, a small plant, an oversized ceramic mug (created by local artists), bookmarks, a special collection of seashells from a writer’s retreat, a piece of artwork, and always a notebook and a window to catch the beauty and ruins of nature. Those are things, but the every day artist in me, observes the world in the way people talk, the said and unsaid, in the way someone carries their joy in a footstep or their pain in a furrowed brow. As well, it shows up in my always black attire, jazzed up with a colorful scarf and a medley of gold and silver jewelry. When you’re an artist, it’s somewhat exhausting since you’re always paying attention, observing the singularity of a moment, the clarity that surfaces when you stand ready to receive it. The beauty of the every day creativity shows itself in the endless practice of finding and appreciating art in all the ways its offered up to us.
Why does arts education matter to you?
It was a rude and dismissive English teacher who refused to allow me into her advanced class, who could’ve changed the trajectory of my relationship with words. Were it not for my mother - a full-t0-the-bone Mushatt, who took the school to task, and several teachers throughout my school years who were steadfast in their desire to thrust me into the literary light. My huge relationship with the arts, in music, ceramics, dance, journalism, and direct access to it as an observer and a participant, planted my lifelong connection to the arts. That, along with room to create without boundaries was life-affirming. I’d want that experience for anyone, where story shows up in a painting, a dance, a poem, a sculpture that speaks life and transforms you.
As a leader in Arts Education, what are your priorities for the coming year?
Many believe we’re in the midst of a paradigm shift. It’s not lost on us that in the throes of this global health crisis, we turn to the arts. It soothes us, reassures us, nurtures us and reminds us of the fragility of this thing called life, and our increasing vulnerability. How many of us have turned to song or hold tight those stories that speak to our resilience and acts of kindness that remind us of the intrinsic value of belonging. While we grieve - and yes, it feels very much like grief, we’re also reminded of our innate will to survive in spite of, because of, instead of and for some of us that means to place our stamp on this world. I’m resolved to do more art, and to find ways artists and arts organizations can be supported during this troublesome and unparalleled time. I’m invested in holding onto the fact that in light of a changed world, we have an opportunity to get it right and to rediscover what’s important to us, don’t we?
Share a recommendation of a book, artist, event, or piece of work that inspires you!
These days I’m dipping into a few unique books like What is … What If ? by Con Christeson, and looking for meaningful ways to stay hopeful. Since our 17th CityLit Festival was postponed, and we planned to celebrate an array of women writers, I’m reading Nikky Finney’s Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry, Furious Flower: seeding the future of african american poetry - a new poetry anthology, listening to podcasts like On Being, and standing by the well known quote by Toni Morrison. “This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.” Let the healing begin.
Carla Du Pree Executive Director, CityLit Project citylitproject.org
@darkndifferent on Instagram and Twitter
… And because you asked a writer …
The Art Yet to Come
Can you imagine the art that will come out of this historical moment that will shape us for years to come? When we are forced to live with the uncertainty of our present and our future, and the choices we made pre-corona defined our circumstances - where we sheltered in place - who our ‘families’ through this crisis would be;
-when we are left to confront our inner selves and make peace with who we are and who we become;
-when that unseeable threat demands we pay attention in a singular but different way;
-when we aren’t allowed to touch, and how that very word morphs into so many layers of how we love - through screens and Zoom and FaceTime and the detriment of not having clear access to something as simple as WiFi and healthcare, bears it’s own ugly truths;
-when it wrecks havoc on our work lives, as we scramble to make do and are forced to confront our vulnerabilities, how close we are to poverty
-when that check in the next two weeks may be our last;
-when our privilege shows up glaringly on how we ride this out;
-when we frequent - on the daily - what we’re running out of: milk, toilet paper, food and time;
-when we have to see to our elders through window panes, and how the young must bury the old and the wisdom lost too soon and too often becomes too much;
-when some see the armed National Guards - in place to assist us, become an unnamed triple threat for brown people;
-when our nursing homes where we planted our loved ones become death traps, our cruise ships death sentences, our prisons where a virus takes root from a visitor to an inmate and spreads like an untamed flame, lands on the bars of a cell then runs rampant;
-when we can’t attend funerals to properly bury our dead and the mourning becomes delayed and unbearable;
-when we exercise tolerance with our confined loved ones who awaken to fears, after sleepless nights of what’s next and that circle of who has it, encroaches;
-when we find we’re at peace with simple things, a roof above our heads and our loved ones around us and how we will touch differently or touch not at all after this;
-when, along our walks, the comfort of a stranger’s wide girth and similar smile lifts you because you know your commonality is your shared fear of this uncontainable thing;
-when we lay bear our internal conflicts of not being able to see a grandchild who might do you harm in a hug and by way of a kiss;
-when the open hand of racism charges at our Asian citizens and we are still struck at how quickly it arrives, realizing it was there, lurking all along;
-when we were late to the reckoning with just what this beast of a global health crisis actually was;
-when disbelief that it could happen to you and yours stood at the lid of your understanding;
-when you wrestle with how this unseen thing ruled us this # of days, this # of minutes, and threw you off the course of your well lived life only you didn’t know it then;
-when the despair of confinement and loneliness and living with and in fear of an unseeable threat reminds us once again of how we are brutally, undeniably connected;
-when we all learn in increments what was before may never be again
So yes, I suspect when we resurface from all of this, emotionally battered, newly awakened, the art created will be a whole ‘nother thing, and may show itself in ways we may not be able to name, though certain it will not look like what it was before. Some of us will return whipped and defeated, scarred but determined, misshapen and unaligned. Some of us will return like we’re back from a war we didn’t create, armed with a new way of being.
The undertaking of being without those seemingly simple pleasures of pedicures and hair stylists, dry cleaned clothes and barbers awakens us to an appreciation on a whole other level. And we’ll ask ourselves and tell ourselves through art - How did COVID-19 change you?
~ Carla Du Pree ARTSLEADERSPOTLIGHT2020
Carla Du Pree
Executive Director - CityLit Project
120 W North Avenue, Suite 201, Baltimore, MD 21201
410.271.8793
Board Member - Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance
https://www.baltimoreculture.org/
120 W. North Avenue, Ste. 305, Baltimore, MD 21201
Councilor - Maryland State Arts Council
www.msac.org
Maryland Department of Commerce
175 W. Ostend Street, Ste. E, Baltimore, MD 21230
Trustee - Maryland Citizens for the Arts
120 W. North Avenue, Ste. 302, Baltimore, MD 21201
Board Member - National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
NASAA's mission is to strengthen state arts agencies.
National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
Another huge congratulations to Carla! …And Maryland Fine Arts Office followers can get ready for Maryland’s “The Year of the Woman” with an all year, all women, Arts Leader Spotlight!