Let’s Stand for Something, or We’ll Fall for Anything
In the spring of 2020, a Minneapolis Police officer murdered George Floyd in broad daylight. The act led to worldwide protests and, in the US, violence and rioting. I found myself teaching classes to a large number of students, many of who have been the recipients of police violence and discrimination. During our classes, you could hear the sounds of looting, protests and violence, as it was occurring right outside my students’ doors.
Knowing that we could not ignore the moment, and inspired by a collaborative poem titled American Gun: A Poem by 100 Chicagoans, the students worked together to write a poem in real time during class. One student volunteered to start, and as each student finished their stanza, the next would start writing in response to the previous student's words until all had spoken. There was no specific structure, allowing for a free flow of ideas and emotions. Their words presented here are raw and unedited.
Galvanized by the power of their combined words during such a difficult time, we elected to expand the project to include more collaborative work. Using the 1960s Black Power Movement, Gee’s Bend Quilters, and protest poster art as a visual starting point, then connecting it to contemporary activist artwork, the mediums of collage and quilting became the next collaborative spark. The assignment: to create a collage out of found objects and materials that visually expressed their contribution to the poem.
The final collaboration was between music producer Pierre Allison, a former SAE student himself and all the members of my classes that semester. Students recorded themselves reciting their portion of the poem and Pierre then took these individual sound clips and wove them together to create the moving and powerful sound piece that fills the space.
I believe that art can change the way we think about culture and ourselves within the narrative of the larger world and that a gallery can act as an incubator for this exchange of ideas. My students’ willingness to talk about race in their work, to be vulnerable and brave inspires me. As a curator, my goal is to serve as a catalyst to drive this dialogue about race. The collaboration between the students of SOVA and SAE Institute has proven art’s possibility and has resulted in the advocacy that I work towards with these young artists.
Let’s Stand for Something, or We’ll Fall for Anything provides a space for this complicated dialogue- for answering some of those questions and finding solutions.
A. Morgan Sayers, 2021
“The pandemic created challenges and opportunities. I talked to Morgan often during the long, fractious summer of 2020. Her students at SAE Institute were creating powerful, dynamic work addressing the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests and riots. We hatched a plan. She would curate her student’s art, providing context and intention; my students in Exhibition Design would create an exhibition in the Spring of 2021. Let’s Stand for Something or We’ll Fall for Anything is the result of those hours of conversation.
Work was assembled and shipped; additional artists invited. Pierre Allison created a sound piece from the collaborative poem created by the class, crafting an impactful reflection, an outcry of intention. Daniel Wilson, a muralist in Chicago was asked to create images stemming from an assignment from that summer. The resulting paintings give insight into the students of SAE. The ExDesigners grappled with the ethereal nature of the works, collages, a sound piece, powerful statements, digital images were all a part of the mix. They thoughtfully handled the framing, the placement, the approach to the graphics and the installation necessary to pay attention to these voices.
As the curator of The Armory Gallery of the School of Visual Arts, I have the privilege of presenting art from all perspectives. This show offered the chance to amplify these profound voices, to add the weight of the physical exhibition to their chorus, to their protest. We stand together.”
— Deborah A. Sim, 2021
About the Collaborators:
Daniel Wilson
@daniel0wilson
danielwilsonart.com
I am privileged to be able to represent these young people’s creativity.
The images that Morgan’s students created helped me to better understand my own recent explorations with masks; experimenting with obscuring the eyes of my portraits and also using cartoon character eye masks over portraits.
The masks, and ultimately the images that the students created are so bold and personal and beautifully representative of our unique and wholly individual experience mask making draws out of us, often subconsciously.
These masks are exciting, intelligent, revelatory, and beautifully confrontational to ideas of identity, history, consumerism and society. My paintings attempt to faithfully communicate the creator’s masks and combine with them the equally bold, perhaps primeval human practice of mark making.
The three marks represents ritual scarring that some tribes still perform today. The circle represents the whole; the Earth, the Sun, our world. The X represents the negative as an action; our ability as humans to say no, to reject harmful ideas and practices and embrace positive change.
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Daniel Wilson is an artist specializing in fine and street art painting. Originally from Cambridge in the UK, he moved to the United States in 2019. He has established a practice in Chicago; painting murals, private commissions and showing in gallery exhibitions.
Pierre Allison
D.R.A.A. @damndraa
Pierre, who goes by his artist pseudonym D.R.A.A (pr: “dray”), is a multi-instrumentalist, music producer & sound engineer hailing from the west suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Having had a decade of experience as a musician for various bands and artists, he opted for a shift in life by attending SAE Institute where he earned his Associate’s Degree in Audio Technology. It is at this school where he met his art sensei and comrade, A. Morgan Sayers, who is responsible for his involvement with this very project.
Pierre is not only an active musician, but is an active audio engineer as well. He has worked for film, stage tech, live sound, music production, the list goes. His most recent focus has been on carving out his own sound for future projects that are in-line with his own personal growth as an individual and musician.