A CONVERSATION WITH ED WILSON

Ed: Originally I come from Baltimore, Maryland which is the first state beyond the Mason-Dixon line which was the dividing line after the Civil War where segregation took place for blacks. I grew up in a completely segregated city community and went to all- blacks schools and churches; all of which is changed now.

FSM: Can you tell me about stories you were told by say your grandmother or your grandfather about your family?

Ed: Oh! A number of stories! I guess the most interesting story is how my father's side of family started or began. There was a man from Scotland who had a plantation in the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His name was Wilson. He had a wife and he also had an Indian mistress. When old man Wilson's wife died, the Indian mistress moved in with him, with one condition; that all the slaves that he had be set free, which he did do. It was called Freetown and is now Somerset County in the Eastern Shore of Maryland. So what happened is; the first children of that union married blacks. My grandfather who lived until ninety-one had a lot of that Indian features in him. My grandmother had predominantly black/African features. She did not live beyond I think sixty-seven. My grandfather and his brothers built forty-five-foot mast boats.

If you visualize the Eastern Shore of Maryland: on one side is the Atlantic Ocean and the other side is just a big bay shaped something like a heart or triangle. On the other side is Virginia; up north is the southern part of Maryland and there is Washington stuck in there between. My grandfather's brothers built these big sail boats that they used to carry oysters which were plentiful and perhaps crabs, to the port of Baltimore from the low end of the eastern shore of Maryland and some of the counties and bring back coal for the winter. I had an opportunity as a little boy to ride in one of those boats in that big bay.

My grandfather was a lay preacher. Somehow he became part of Methodist Conference and he went all over the United States attending conferences. He got around and saw a lot of things. He and another man, Mr Graham opened up a general store, so he was a businessman. He was also a funeral director and he used to play in horses, all-time horses. I was down there three years ago. The general store doesn't exist any more but I found Mr and Mrs Graham's graves. I talked to an elderly man who as a boy knew my grandfather and he told me that the things I told him that I remember, he said you sure have a keen mind; you remember a lot of things that were going on. My grandfather had a 1931 ford car and motor- hearse. He was also Superintendent of black schools in that area. My father used to take the family from Baltimore down to the Eastern Shore of Maryland and more specifically upper Maryland within Somerset County. We used to go there every summer. From Baltimore you could go either on ferryboat or drive around from Delaware and come down. I can vividly recall my father showing me a tree where a black man had been lynched just before we came down there.

Ed: In the twenties, between 1925 and 1931. I never forgot that and I kept asking questions about this.

Ed: Why did they hang the man? What did he do? It hurt me very much, the hanging. And there were thousands of blacks lynched in the early part of the twentieth century in the south after the Civil War; the so-called slaves escape sometimes. It was very harsh living. I was about five or six years old and I kept asking my father why? Why? Why? Why these people do this?

Ed: Ah! He would offer some kind of generalized answer but anything he said wouldn't satisfy my curiosity about that. I found that with my son born and my first job was in North Carolina. He was sitting in the car seat and we were driving around and I would point out things: You can't go here, you can't go there. He kept asking why? I would try to explain to him how cruel whites were with the system of segregation! I was at a little party here (Binghamton) with faculty and some students. Faculty members were talking about their boyhood and its experiences. They had funny experiences and all that. Finally, one of them, quite well-known asked me; "Ed what did you do growing up in Baltimore?" I answered; "it was absolutely apartheid!" And that broke up the whole thing. And that is what living in Vestal is like. My own personal experiences as a young person is, I cannot talk to whites about my background; they don't understand. So all my story has a strong racial connotation. My father was a registrar at a black college for 42 years; from 1921 to 1963. There are things that he did. For example, there were no black policemen and firemen. My father started the first school to prepare blacks for the tests to become policemen in our basement. I remember the governor, Harry W. Nice coming to our house and congratulating and commending my father for doing this. Harry W. Nice was a pink fat smelly man, but he had some sense of decency. My father was able to get these men who took this course that he offered. There were three policemen one moment; one of them was white and I can't remember whether the two men became policemen; the other one became a detective. Then after that he devised a curriculum for blacks to take tests to become firemen. Every thing was cut and dry; black and white. You pass windows, you look around, "black folks are here"; and that's you. There were very few places for blacks to eat in northwest Baltimore; you ate at home.

FSM: If I may ask, what role has the church played in your life and that of the family?

Ed: In my family the church played a big role for my grandfather and for my father but for me nothing.

Ed: The church was the least active in making social change until Martin Luther King. By that time I had my own sense of rightness and wrongness. I didn't need the church, I needed people who would help me as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement in northern Carolina, who may or may not have been members of the church. We had meetings in the church but I would say that my experience; my observations, my perceptions of things was that, black pressures prior to Martin Luther King tried to placate people, not to lead them out of that morose and to find and seek contentment, spiritual contentment. I questioned this as a kid. My folks didn't encourage or discourage. They wanted my sister and I to go to church. I tried and saw hypocrisy. Just like in World War II, the Catholic Church mainly and the Protestant church turned their backs on the Jews and you had the subsequent Holocaust.

Ed: No; my mother played piano. She is the main one who encouraged me to draw and paint as a little kid. Somewhere between age seven and eight I came down with rheumatic fever so I was in bed for a year. I missed a year and a half to school. So while I was bed-ridden, I drew. I had watercolors; I even had a little weaving-loom. My mother encouraged me in a number of things during that time which had a sort of conscious of fact on my looking at things more than most kids who were active.

Ed: No, they did not have a tradition in the arts and crafts but they had the sense to encourage me to draw, to paint, to express myself when I was not in a position to go to school.

Ed: It is very simple. I went to all-blacks public schools. I re- started out after being ill and finished elementary school with salutatorian; a second highest academic attainment. As I grew older and went to junior high and senior high, I became interested in sports. Because my body had become very weak from rheumatic fever, I wanted to build up the body. So I excelled in track, football, basketball and wrestling.

Ed: From age six to about twelve, then from thirteen on I was in all of the high schools.

Ed: I can work backwards. I finished senior high school in 1943. That took four years. Then I had three years at junior high and six years of elementary school.

Ed: I did a lot of art in school but I lost that interest as I got into senior high school. I played these sports so there was very little time for art making. But I never lost the issues. You have to remember that at this time blacks weren't invited to all of our museums.

Ed: All these years. So I was eighteen and at this time (as soon as I finished high school), I was drafted to go into military service because World War Two was on. I had to go to service; that is a whole lot of story.

Ed: Well, after my three years in military service I went to the University of Iowa and majored in art.

Ed: I finished high school June 1943. September 1943 I was in uniform. I didn't get out of service until in the spring of 1946. Fall of 1946 I went to the University of Iowa. I had been accepted at the University of Iowa when I finished high school to go into civil engineering. But I was drafted to go into the military. So I didn't go to the University of Iowa in 1943. But when I came out from the service in 1946, the University of Iowa was obligated to accept me again as a veteran, so I went in 1946.

FSM: Can you remember anything in connection with your art education during this time, your impressions? I think you mentioned earlier on that you were not allowed to go to museums. Did this happen even when you were at the university?

Ed: No, this happened when I was growing up in Baltimore. But when I was in the military service I went to China, Burma, and India. I had more freedom there than I did back in my so-called home country.

Ed: I could go wherever I wanted when I was off-duty and no problem. I will tell you this; in Calcutta they had a British-built pool called the Victoria swimming pool. The United States armed services also built a swimming pool for its soldiers. But we blacks could not go to that United States' services pool except on Thursday afternoons which is tied with black maids getting Thursday afternoon off. So we went to swim in the English Victoria pool. See wherever I went, there was this problem of race. The United States army or military took their racism with them wherever they went. I can tell you some stories about my military service in the United States and in China, Burma and India.

FSM: Can you remember anything significant while you were at the university in relation to your art training?

Ed: Yes, the University of Iowa, starting around 1943 was the first university or college to develop what I would call a proto-type curriculum for the education of the arts. Virgil Hancher was the president of the University of Iowa. Before he died he was well- known for his belief in the humanities in the university system. He committed Lester Longman who was brought in from Harvard, an art historian, to get real artists out of New York and bring them to Iowa. They never even attended college prior to coming to work in the college. He had bonafide painters like Jim Leshay, sculptor Humberto Albrivio and these people had reputation at that time of some consequence. So this was the first real studio curriculum which was imitated by other universities and colleges later. I thought every place had it but they didn't. I could have gone to a white university in Maryland; you were allowed to. I could have studied art say at the University of Maryland. My father was responsible for getting scholarship money for blacks to go to graduate school in the United States. The State of Maryland used tax- payers' money to fund blacks getting Masters and Ph.D. degrees in other universities outside the State of Maryland; and that's it. I benefited from that too. By the way, the State of Maryland paid for all my graduate money at Iowa.

FSM: Let us turn to your art specialization; what kind of art objects do you make?

Ed: They vary; since I have been to Binghamton University in 1964, I have found a niche in doing sculpture for public spaces. That is a lot different than trying to survive to the gallery system; exhibiting your work hoping that people would buy. Prior to 1964 I taught for 13 years in North Carolina, a black college, which is another story. They had segregated colleges, all under the guise of "separate but equal". There was no such animal. No state would give a black college equal amount of money that they would give to a white state college. Even based on the same Roman factors. The libraries were unequal; you know it was false. That still exists, today, 1994. These black colleges, even though there might be white students attending, are not equal. Specifically in terms of laboratories, studios, equipment, libraries, all the important things, that's not there. I spent 13 years in one, from 1951 to 1964 until I came to Binghamton University.

When they told me how much money I could have here, I cried; not in front of them. But I wished I had a fraction of that money where I taught in North Carolina. For example, when I came to teach in North Carolina, my yearly budget was $437, a year, for God knows how many students were there. I stayed there 13 years and my budget increased by $7 a year. Here (Binghamton) in 1964 there was no department and studio of art, so my job was to develop a curriculum and get some faculty, fight for space and things like that. But I had a secretary; in North Carolina I didn't have a secretary, I did all the typing. I had two courses here while in North Carolina I had six courses. I had to teach summer school twelve weeks and had a family. But I made sculpture and that got me out of there. But here I had two secretaries and a telephone; I didn't have a telephone in North Carolina.

Things like these, some say, "separate but equal", no way! So when I found out that my role was to develop a studio curriculum to get undergraduate degree in studio art, I had a lot of stuff to do and it is very complicated. But I had $46,000 to hang on to. I cried, again not in front of any white person. I made it like I was used to this. Because I was trained at the University of Iowa and I knew what was right, and what was good and what was necessary. I said no problem. For me it was to think back to what I had to work with out there, I wanted to have it here in Binghamton. They had me to come to state the problem of budget. Oh! I defended it; I could defend it in fifteen minutes. "Fine, I said, this is a brand new department, do you mind if we kept these things so we can know what it would be like when another department get started? I said, do you mind it?" But "separate but equal", no way!

Ed: Yes, my own choice; I wanted to be an artist. You have to go into these factors. A black going into the arts in 1943 was just as bad as a black person going into the arts in the 1920s. Who looks at your work, who cares! There was depression; there was segregation in the United States. They had the so-called Harlem Renaissance, which is segregation of black by white. But blacks were interested because they were living on a very marginal level; for them it was survival. It's a big joke. Just a couple of weeks ago TIME magazine had on a cover "Bill T. Jones Black Dancer". Bill T. Jones used to model for me in my classes in Binghamton; nobody even looked at Bill T. Jones! He formed his own dance school and he is now known all over the world. Now they call this "The new Black Renaissance". Every time, it is funny, it is sick! When a collective of blacks begin to form dance companies, they paint, they sculpt, they write, they play musical instruments; it is renaissance. Renaissance my foot! It has been going on all the time as a means of trying to survive, have some kind of fulfillment, expression and taking the edge off the daily life.

Ed: I started as a carver; because I could beat that damned stone and felt good. I could take out my aggression, my feelings, physically; and yet at the same time, make forms that deal with content of my experiences, which was not acceptable by the way!

Ed: Why? Because it did not conform to their concept of content or aesthetics. And this is one of the things that we are going to talk about. To see how difficult it is, how difficult it was, for blacks to work in a society where blacks weren't buying their works. You were not pulled into, accepted to, invited to exhibit in galleries or museums because people who went there were whites and they didn't want to see that content. Why be reminded! All they wanted to hear was Blacks sing spirituals..."Let my people go". So there is this conflict; I ran into this working in Binghamton. Where have you got this experience to teach me aesthetics? I would teach these kids here something and what I did for myself is my business.

Ed: I started out with carving stone then wood and went to modeling using bronze. Now I am mainly in bronze and other metals such as stainless steel.

Ed: I just work in metals; there is durability as well, I don't know! You identify with something; I like the warmth of bronze.

FSM: Some sculptors say they see some images in the material; is it the same with you?

Ed: The figurative images, but mainly shapes; because you have a certain restriction on the size and the shape of the block that you are carving; of a stone or wood. In fact, I found that limiting.

FSM: As a matter of fact, my next question is; how do the materials which you use contribute to your creations? For example, is there any limitation in handling?

Ed: I sense the limitation when carving; this was in the early fifties. By 1960 I was welding and it gave a whole new possibilities for construction and using space.

FSM: Have you done any innovation or experimenting with the materials that you use?

Ed: Yes, this little piece right here is a combination of polished bronze and chrome- plated steel. I was experimenting with jazz theme; it is totally abstract. Back in the sixties I was welding. I did it with what I call space points; it has to do with jazz. I am very much interested in jazz.

Ed: Jazz! And jazz is a black innovation that grew out of the black experience; it is to feel with songs right on up to the modern day.

Ed: That is one of them. I tried to see where I feel. For me it is still elusive. I must tell you right now I feel that the music produced by jazz musicians however humble its origins, has transcended this existence in America and it has been embraced by other cultures. The same thing is going to happen with the so-called African-American visual artists. I think their work has to transcend the specifics of its origins in a racist society that doesn't understand or wouldn't accept it. It has got to transcend this existence into other areas of the world like jazz. Jazz has done very well.

Ed: You have the black writers. Find me a black writer outside of Frank Yerby who wrote about white history. Black writers write about the black experience. There is another thing in America: how they look at black writers.

Ed: They say, "why don't they write about any/something else because they are..." How can they exist in this society without writing about the black experience, about living as a black in this society? And "no one must look at that"; Tony Morrison did, she still do, black experience! Got Nobel Prize! Everybody is looking at her with tongue and cheek. But why aren't they doing this? Do you know the term "Negritude?"

Ed: Diop. Back in the fifties I got into that. American Blacks didn't identify with me or with other black artists. You reach out...Fanon, Senghor, to people that you feel psychically kindred to. This is outside the experience of American whites. They don't bother with this, they have to bother with me.

FSM: Can you relate the sources of your creations with the material that you use?

Ed: Yeah; again, going back to something that I said earlier; work in public spaces, there is a certain amount of durability required. Granite is durable, bronze is durable. I don't want to compromise with content to some material that doesn't have a very long life span. I like the work that I produce to live longer. But all these considerations when you receive a commission you have freedom to determine your subject matter. You have to work the business of the materials. There is a lot of planning taking place. I find that interesting because secretly I have always wanted to be an architect. I said something way back in the interview that I was accepted at the University of Iowa in 1943 to do civil engineering. The plan was, according to my father, "you get into civil engineering and you won't be drafted in the military and once the war was over you switch to architecture". But I found that blacks weren't wanted in architecture in 1943, 1946.

Ed: Yes! I met a man (black) who had studied architecture and was an alcoholic. He told me, "don't waste your time". This was in 1943 and he was working in the post office. You get into the school but no one would hire you. Now young blacks are in architecture firms and so on and probably have no idea of how things were in the 1930s and 1940s. You ask them, "when did you go to school?" And they start talking about the late sixties or early seventies and you know that their memory doesn't exist in terms of what black was like.

FSM: You say blacks were not wanted in architecture; did it have to do with the prestige of being an architect or what?

Ed: Mainly the same inspirations as why blacks created music within social chaos. I want to keep it that simple.

Ed: Yes; I have been influenced by James Bowlen, Ralph Ellison; I met them, I spent time with Ralph Ellison. I did a work for him for the city of Oklahoma where he was born. Very fine Oklahoma, we had three great people in Oklahoma: Ralph Ellison, Maria Tallchief, and a composer Elliot Carter. These three are symbolic of Oklahoma. It is a lot different down there because of Indians; some oil wealth makes for more security. But a lot of jazz musicians came out of the south.

Ed: A number of themes like "Middle Passage", this work is in Brooklyn. It was a subject of a poem by Palmer Hayden, a black poet. It is one of the three facets to Africans coming to the west. The kidnapping, "Middle Passage" is the actual voyage to the Caribbean and the third is slavery. Some of these poems I read as a young man really captured my imagination. I couldn't figure how I would deal with this to the medium of sculpture until I got a commission to do a work at New Boys High in Brooklyn. It just came literally on the way to New York to talk to this architecture firm that was doing the building and I was exploding. The model of that was a little crude cardboard thing that I would work later into concrete, something bigger done in full scale in wood. But I wanted the students to experience what it was like to be compressed into a hollow of boat like Africans were. I went to Nigeria, to a place where "Middle Passage" started. I have been to Charleston, South Carolina where they had a slave market. Now how can I work in three measured forms to convey this idea? How can these three forms get inside of two shapes like the hollow of a boat? When I had students get inside a full-scale model, they all complained the same thing. Even kids who write me from high school in Brooklyn; they feel claustrophobic.

FSM: Did you go to Nigeria and South Carolina as research expedition for this work?

Ed: Between 1973 and 1977. I had been to South Carolina and Nigeria. This project came somewhere in the middle of that. I wanted to do it; I had invented the forms. But as a theme, people threw themselves overboard, committed suicide rather than face slavery. There is a lot of material on middle passage. There is one experience of one woman. Women were segregated from the men in these slave ships. The trip took three months from the average: filth, fever, closeness, unsanitary conditions, you name it. This woman managed over a period of time to pull out a nail out of the wood and punched her head and committed suicide rather than submit to rape on board, to slavery on life. There are themes; there is also slavery, I haven't got to that. It takes a lot of money to do these things. I just can't do them; you have to have a commission to give you freedom. There is also the theme of social isolation in America. Blacks aren't acceptable. There is integration between nine and five. After five you are on your own, you are socially isolated; that is the thing. Whites are unaware of the rage of other black professionals who suffer from social isolation. It's a very powerful thing. Again, how to attack that is the question. Slavery is another thing where there is a lot of material on that subject. I am getting older; there are still things I would like to do thematically.

FSM: Your work "Middle Passage" about Africans into slavery; whoever commissioned you to do it, had they taken that into consideration; did they want you to do it?

Ed: There is a discussion and you have to go through various committees with your model. So far I have been very lucky. One work, "Second Genesis" there was a question but somehow it never came out of the committee. In this building where I did this large sculpture, there were other sculptors working in other parts of the building. One was a Spanish- Canadian whose work was censored. He was making a very strong statement. Mine was questioned because it had to do with features in this society under technocracy and how people can survive in polluted environment.

Ed: Once you have...I will show you my birth certificate. It has "Baby: Black". Once you have that stamp; it is on your birth certificate, on your driver's license, it is on application forms for jobs. Until that was removed, those are your origins. Tied up with origins of colour or race in America was devastating. Today even though they don't have your racial designation on your driver's license and they are not supposed to have it on your applications for jobs, it is done through coding, as you physically appear. From that point on, the code becomes rather clear. So you can be classified as Native American, black, Hispanic, white; they get through it eventually. This is by no means a melting pot. It is a conglomerate of separate groups. You cannot rest; there are very few moments in a day that I can relax with being what I am. Because I am aware all the time of who I am and where I am and the possibility of my actions being suspect.

Ed: No. I have done research on African sculpture. You are an African; do you know anything about the DIA and NIA principles?

Ed: This is something I found in African religion and led to the aesthetics that we find in African art. It is very simple; Africans believe in one way or another, in a Supreme Being and so do westerners. But in Africa they say, that Supreme Being is not visible. So here we have the development of the DIA and NIA principles which have to do with energy and will. Therefore the African did not portray the human figure in an anthropomorphic way as they do in the west. In other words, in the west, God is an image of man. In Africa you don't have that. You have animism and a host of other constructs such as ancestor-worship. That was foreign to me, though I researched this out and made that discovery. I have an unpublished paper on it. I am not a scholar and I haven't done anything with it. But I try to learn about it. You know and I know, and now white scholars know as they have done this (exhibition/documentation) at the Metropolitan Museum in 1968; show the origins of western forms derive from African sculpture. Those artists don't know a damned thing about African life, African aesthetics, and African theology! They just took the form and used it as a way of revolting against traditional imagery in the west. This comes with "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" by Pablo Picasso in 1907 and he had in his presence a Tambwa mask which is visualized in one of the figures in lower right. I had a book with a picture of that Tambwa mask and the association made, and that book was stolen from me, here in Binghamton. Everybody claimed innocence. But everybody in the visual arts in the west has been given the go-ahead to borrow form from anywhere on this planet. Pre-Columbian, Oriental, African and to use it. I can't do that. Black jazz musicians didn't do that.

Ed: I think it has to the capability of making the person aware of their spiritual and perceptive natures. In this society which is technologically oriented, I wonder how far the impact of art would be. The computer, -information is more important; technology is more important than the spiritual. This country is so formative in terms of technology works. They had a whole continent to expand after taking the land from the Indians. The train, the car, the plane, the telephone and all these other things that follow; appliances. People have more taste in appliances than in paintings.

Ed: I may have had a mission but I don't have an audience, except very few people. It is very unfortunate but that is how the society is.

Ed: From being a young man to a mature and older man, experiences of some forty years. Those things that I have seen, all that inhumanity and all of its disguises.

Ed: We go back to themes and content again. You have no choice; one is forced to evaluate and analyze one's experiences. And then that process shapes themes, ideas, and statements. That process is introspective within oneself.

Ed: The sculptor has a smaller audience because few people understand or appreciate sculpture. They are more in tuned to painting even if it is a very amateurish work and that it may jell with a colour-scheme and linear. You gonna think twice before a person say painting is three-dimensional that you can't sit on or light up or turn on like television. Then the other side of this work that is in public spaces is, you don't know who your audience is; you will have to live there.

FSM: Is there a message that you want to give to yourself and to others who look at your work?

Ed: I want people to think. Today most contemporary art doesn't encourage thinking. It is just immediate experiencing, mainly mental; colors, shapes, textures and things like that, without content or content that is brought to it, which is highly personal. But I want people to think about other things like wasted lives, inhumanity as a way of life; brutality of this society. It's past brutality and present brutality. It is a hard society. Maybe for years now is, it's growing abstraction of people into homestead units that are expendable.

Ed: I can't impose my viewpoints on others. In that sense, certain aggressive aspects of this society benefit me as opposed to a proletarian type of society is not going to tell me what to do but think. So when you shake the sheets I fall out too. The computer operator falls out; the technocrat falls out also. In a systematic amount of time, who gets to loose? So I don't impose this view of things on others.

Ed: I don't know that there is a dichotomy. There is work that is pure craft and there is a certain amount of craftsmanship that goes into making art. There is a sensibility of respect for materials and what have you, in making art. I think they can be complementary? We find this, and very few people make studies of this sort; there is a certain look to a society in a given time of that society's existence which might be looked at as it's ascending time. The painting, the sculpture, the architecture, the furniture has a certain cohesiveness to it. A lot of people don't think about it. They want the 1994 car and 1850 painting. They are not complete people in terms of when they are living and developing sensibility to things related in their time. There are so many people who throw back to earlier periods.

Ed: It is everywhere; not in every piece, but there is an awareness of that experience. How can it not be when you are on the underside of the goldfish bowl? You have an opportunity to observe the society. I enjoy observing it. Since I cannot participate fully in it, I enjoy to observe it. I really don't understand people who can live in a society that has all these problems and know about these problems and are so contented and happy. These people interest me. I don't see how they can sit with me, but they can.

Ed: Most of my students had been women. I tell them: "If you are serious, don't get married unless that man has proven to you that you will have the opportunity and the time to do your work. It is important that you don't become the cook, the housekeeper and the mother. You have to make that decision yourself because in this society conditions are such that, it is expected that women perform certain roles though there are movements to change that". I would say that 90% of women fall into the traditional role. I say to them: "Why don't you open your eyes, why don't look and see; why don't you find out who you are; why don't you find out who you want to be; why don't you develop the drive, the interest, the momentum to transport you. It is hard, and 90% of them succumb to, you know...

FSM: Do you see that women occupy their rightful position in the artworld in terms of art production?

Ed: They are beginning to assert themselves. Had they not asserted themselves they would be where they were in the 1950s, the late 1960s and the 1970s.

FSM: How do you see the relation between male and female artists in the home in their artistic production?

Ed: I have found some very beautiful relationships for example, Ralph Ellison, the writer, and his wife; the painter Romare Bearden and his wife; and the painter Jacob Lawrence and his wife. It is hard to describe. I can say I have actually lived with that opportunity to observe how beautifully constructive the relationships were between these people - male and female - and the roles played with a very deep sense of respect for each. I have also seen other couples; these were whites where both people, male and female were artists but with differences in aesthetics, one criticizing the work of the other and this led to a whole kind of problems. But I have also seen white couples who were both artists, where that didn't happen; they complemented each other. It is a problem. I have tried to find a complementary companion and I have found it impossible, living here anyway. Well, it is a complex thing.

Ed: Again I have to go back to this statement that I think I made. The work that I do is called "art in public spaces". So you put something in but you don't know your audience except by letters. I have received letters, people expressing what they felt about what they saw. There have been articles, letters, written in newspapers, some praising, some condemning the work. But it is hard to get to know your audience as your work sits in the community. I can only hope that people to some degree can identify in some way with the work, either in support of it or in lack of support of it. Identification goes either way. It is public art and yet you don't know what public. It is not like the museum where people who go to the museum go on a selective basis to see things that they already know about or that they want to discover. It is another audience.

FSM: Before going to art in public spaces you made other types of sculptures. Did you have an opportunity to exhibit your work?

Ed: When I was younger, I did exhibit work. Somehow or other, found the work that I did, I started getting sculpture commission for work in public spaces. I like sculpture; it has a certain appeal to me. Because it is physically connected to architecture for the most part or it may be somewhat architectural on its own. But I can't do both any more. Since 1978 when I had a heart attack I just had to conserve my energies for art in public spaces and teaching.

Ed: I have no patrons so to speak. There were people who bought my work, but I would say somewhere in the 1970s I exclusively worked in commissions. To answer your question, I guess cities; institutions are patrons because they want some work done.

Ed: No. In some cases they tell you what they want but they don't tell you how to do it. In some cases you are free to come up with your own ideas but it has to go through committees for approval.

Ed: It is a good question. I will not put my work up for auctions; I will not give my work away. I have only done that once. I gave it as some wedding present and I knew the people involved. As a rule, no. I can't think to do that. I will try to find a reason and for a certain reason or other it isn't anything like food, digested and done with, no.

FSM: How did you feel, what did it mean to you when you gave this work away to the couple?

Ed: In this instance the young man had worked with me on a commission. I enjoyed his conversations and he was interested in working with me; his reliability, dependability and things like that. I was also the best man at the wedding; he selected me as his best man. We maintained the friendship ever since. There is a value to your work and to give it away I think diminishes the value unless it is a very special occasion. As I said, it was only once.

Ed: I don't have things to sell. I will construct something for commission now. I only have one work which I refused to sell and I am holding on to it. Why, I don't know?

FSM: Are you planning to form a collection; is that one of the reasons for not selling?

Ed: No; actually the work that I refused to sell to a number of buyers is a special piece for me. I went back to that image a couple of years ago. Perhaps in the future I could sell it but right now I am not interested in selling.

FSM: Have you had opportunity to participate in symposia, workshops and other fora for artists?

Ed: Yeah, here at the University (Binghamton), Howard University, and Brown University that I can remember.

Ed: My approach to solutions and problems encountered in executing my work. There are a lot of things that go on and the public is not aware of, such as Unions. As a sculptor, you are not a Union member and you are attacked by Union people and threatened by Union people. There are a number of experiences that were not pleasant. I guess you are doing certain kinds of work that they claimed as their work. You are working with metal, concrete and so on.

Ed: Yeah. It is not very funny when you are confronted by people with weapons. I had these experiences in Brooklyn, Baltimore; you never know when something is going to happen as you go about doing your work. The intent was to destroy your work. They want you to use Union help and there is nothing in your contract with the City that says you have to. This is where the threatening takes place. You are paid money and sometimes you are forced to hire Union people. Those were very bad experiences.

FSM: Can you say that in some way that is how your work has been received by the public?

Ed: No; that had nothing to do with the public. It all had to do with getting the work ready for the public. This was strictly Union resentment.

FSM: Do you have, through your creations, an educational role for the community?

Ed: I received letters from young people saying that my work has something educational and how they received the work. But someone had to direct their experience with the work. I would like to feel, and I have written about this, that I am their memory. A lot of people don't have memories about the collective experience of being Black- American or being in a technocracy. What that means; we are just beginning to find out that there is a lot of toxic and other polluting elements connected with the rise of technology. Who knows, they are dangerous elements; eventually they may turn out to be. Even some of the materials that we use in art have toxic properties.

Ed: To re-condition my body. I had quadruple heart surgery six months ago and have some side effects from that. I don't feel quite right yet. I am involved in physical therapy and cardiac rehabilitation, all exercises. I have got to get strength, standard; so I feel competitive, I feel strong and ready to go.

Ed: No I have produced something within the last six months but I paid the price to do it. So I thought it would be better to back-up and concentrate on the body. Not to try to spread myself too thin; I had some bad reactions.

FSM: You talked about your work in relation to memory for young people especially African-Americans; can you expand on that?

Ed: Well, for example the piece "Middle Passage" has to do with the bringing of Africans from Africa to the Caribbean and then into either Brazil in slavery or into the United States slavery. Young African-American people and a lot of other older people have no sense of memory about slavery! I wish to be their memory. Therefore, there is a work that young people are exposed to in Brooklyn that deals with middle passage, a facet of the transportation system of slavery. You know, there is one thing I have to say. Jewish people keep their Holocaust alive. I want to keep the memory of all that inhumanity related to Africans and also against African-Americans today. My mind is constantly going to ideas that have addressed this problem and will address this problem of memory.

FSM: What about the work that you had with your students as an art educator for many years (41); can you say something about it?

Ed: Well, I have maintained contact with some students I taught for 41 years. I taught them in black colleges in North Carolina for 13 years; I still maintain contact. In fact, I just got a book the other day from a former student of mine who played professional football, was an art major. He worked with me or I worked with him and he always mentions me. He has had certain amount of success; he has business in California now.

FSM: No, what I meant is, having been teaching for 41 years, what can you say about your work in relation to what you have done to all the students whom you have taught?

Ed: I probably didn't...I don't know, there has been an impact because connections are maintained from students here at Binghamton University and from the colleges in North Carolina. I value these connections.

Ed: I have done the best I could. I just wish; I know this is a waste of time and words but I just wish I had had the opportunity in an integrated society. One, for my own development and two, for helping young people who want to go into art. I don't regret the experiences that I have had. I try to make use of them to gain more maturity about things and to relate this to students that I have come in contact with. Another thing though, directly related to this question is, that most of my students have been women. It bothers me that most of these women haven't caught up quite too well with what they really wanted to do. They end up getting married and having children and putting aside careers for the family. I discussed this with them. They have to make a decision whether they want to tackle for their own development or take the road of what I consider traditional, getting married. It is very difficult to follow certain positions in art with these traditional/social involvements. But that is part of human struggle; people making decisions. Students have always felt free to ask for input for these things; careers, personal matters and I will not tell them what to do. I tell them; these are the things that came out, you make your own decision.

Ed: The broadest possible set of circumstances. It all comes down to what you want to be. I knew what I wanted to be; I just wish I had a level playing field.

FSM: Do you think that today's students don't know what they want to be in life?

Ed: A lot of today's students want a life free of complexity. Life isn't like that. There is something about a lifetime of influence; takes off the edge. I always tell them what I did myself; I dislocated myself in order to feel, in order to experience. You can't live an insulated life by choice and experience things; it is difficult.

FSM: Well, Professor Ed Wilson I thank you very much for sharing your experiences on your work and life. It will be a treasure for students like me and the community in general.


	The interview was conducted at Wilson's home, 405 Main Street, Vestal, NY on October 29 and November 5, 1994. He reviewed and corrected the transcribed conversation for accuracy.

Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World (2000)

ISSN: 1525-447X

A CONVERSATION WITH ED WILSON