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A fern of mine brought some of their students

0:46

by my studio. One

0:48

kid was saying how he liked

0:50

the work. But then before they left, he said, but

0:52

do you know what's solow While you're painting,

0:54

the sculptures show what's happening

0:56

in our communities. We don't need to be

0:58

told what's happening. We know what's happening. If

1:01

artists are created, why can't they create a solution?

1:03

And I just went, whoa wait a minute.

1:07

That's Rick low and artist

1:09

MacArthur Genius fellow and community

1:12

organizer who lives and works

1:14

in Houston. His work

1:16

engages and transforms communities

1:19

through social practice and collaboration.

1:22

And nearly three decades ago, the

1:25

question that student asks changed

1:28

the course of Lowe's career. I

1:31

mean, this student just pulled the rug

1:33

from under me of like you know. I mean, by

1:35

that time, I had been practicing as an artist

1:38

for almost ten years. You know, I'm like, it

1:40

took me aback, and that's when I closed

1:42

my studio down and started researching

1:47

artists that actually did art that

1:49

was both poetic and symbolic

1:52

but also had a practical application, and

1:54

so that led me to this journey. Lowe

1:57

started out as a landscape painter,

2:00

but soon took up the practice of social

2:02

sculpture, using creativity

2:05

to shape communities. He

2:08

uses space, architecture, and

2:10

opportunity as mediums

2:12

like clay or paint to shape

2:15

society itself. For

2:17

the past twenty five years, Lowe has crafted

2:20

one particular social sculpture in

2:22

Houston's Third Ward. It's

2:25

called Project Row Houses,

2:28

and it's an artist led community

2:30

space that's dedicated to the

2:32

creation of art, education

2:35

and housing. In the initial stages,

2:37

we thought maybe we were just gonna,

2:40

you know, take these twenty two shotgun

2:42

houses and we were going to do a few art shows

2:44

in it and you know, bring artists in. We

2:46

didn't have this idea that was going to be this thing,

2:49

but then it just kept growing. I'm

2:56

Anita Hill. This is Getting

2:58

Even my podcast about

3:00

equality and what it takes to get there. On

3:04

Getting Even, I speak with people

3:06

who are improving are perfect

3:09

world people who

3:11

took risk and broke the rules.

3:14

In this episode, Rick Lowe and I discuss

3:16

how he views his art and the role

3:19

it plays in his Houston community.

3:22

Low is represented by the prestigious

3:25

Cogosian Gallery and has won numerous

3:27

awards for his paintings, sculptures,

3:30

and installations. Low

3:32

and I speak about how he developed his

3:34

social art practice, the importance

3:37

of space to equality,

3:40

and the impact that artistic

3:42

investment can have on underserved

3:45

communities. So

3:48

you started out your career as

3:50

a landscape painter. You

3:52

went to a school that specialized

3:55

in landscape painting, but also

3:57

there was something else that drew you to it.

4:00

Well, first of all, I went there to play

4:02

basketball. That was my main focus

4:04

at the time. Where I grew up in

4:07

rural Alabama, there were based five

4:10

ways your life would go after high

4:13

school. The big one was really

4:15

people were joining the military. If you

4:17

were lucky and talented enough of something, you could

4:19

get some kind of sports scholarship or something

4:21

like that, or you become a factory worker

4:24

or a drug dealer, or you just stayed at

4:26

home. It was very limited options, and

4:28

so I took the root of sports

4:31

and went to school thinking that sports

4:33

was going to be my way of elevating myself

4:36

to a point that I could actually do

4:38

things for other people, I could live a purposeful

4:40

life. But it was there that I

4:42

ended up taking art classes and made a

4:45

shift. So it was

4:47

so interesting

4:49

for me because I had spent so much time

4:51

just sucking in the red color

4:54

of the soil, in the green pine

4:56

trees and rural Alabama,

4:58

even the white clay. So this combination

5:00

of red and white and green was

5:02

always something that it had a huge

5:05

imprint on my psyche. You know, that kind of

5:07

earth. So you've

5:09

seen spaces in a number of ways,

5:11

I mean the physical sense, but also in

5:14

the legal and cultural sense. You've seen segregated

5:17

spaces, and Nope, what that feels

5:19

like. Absolutely.

5:22

I was trained as a painter, and

5:26

I always had this mission of doing work

5:28

that would contribute to transforming

5:30

the conditions of people that are in disadvantaged

5:33

situations. And so as an early

5:35

painter, I painted things about

5:38

police brutality, about poverty

5:40

and all those kinds of things. And then

5:42

I end up switching over to something that was

5:44

inspired by the German artist Joseph

5:46

Boy's concept of social sculpture. Joseph

5:49

Boy's definition of

5:51

social sculpture was basically the way that we shape

5:54

and mold the world around us, and that everybody

5:56

is participating as artists. I

5:59

went from landscape paintings realizing

6:01

that, Okay, the landscape's great and all that stuff,

6:03

but I want to do stuff that talks about issues

6:05

that people that come from backgrounds

6:08

like I came from, are all about. I want

6:10

to speak to those issues. And so I

6:13

switched from landscape to doing figurative work,

6:15

and I went through this whole thing of trying

6:17

to make sure that it wasn't work that would just fit

6:19

in galleries and that kind of stuff, and wasn't

6:22

just for sale, that it connected

6:24

with things, and so I started doing

6:26

these very clunky, large

6:28

scale things in conjunction with political

6:30

groups like anders international human

6:33

rights weak or activism

6:35

and stuff. Let's talk about some

6:37

of your very specific work

6:40

project Rowhouses in Houston,

6:43

which has been a big part

6:46

of your artistic work for the last thirty

6:48

years. This isn't I

6:50

think nineteen ninety there

6:52

were two people killed by the police here

6:55

in the Third Ward neighborhood. Activists

6:57

had been working on this thing

6:59

for like a year, trying to call attention

7:02

to the injustices and get get the police

7:04

charged. But after a year or so, the

7:06

media got a little tired of it and kind of dissipate

7:09

a little bit, and so I was just an artist

7:11

around among the crew, right,

7:13

passing out flyers and doing stuff for the

7:16

community leaders. But then one

7:18

day I at a meeting. They were trying to figure out how could they

7:20

get media attention, and I said, oh,

7:22

well, I could create an installation, you know, an

7:24

art installation, and they kind of looked at me

7:26

like, okay, whatever. So I

7:28

went out and I went to this little handball

7:31

court in a park and I built this giant,

7:33

giant, giant installation with all these

7:36

big giant paintings and cutout

7:38

sculptures and all this stuff dealing with police brutality

7:40

and all. And they saw me out there doing it, and as

7:43

it got closer to finish, they went like, whoa,

7:45

we should have a press conference here, and so they

7:47

did. So they had this press conference

7:49

with all the activists, you know, they were

7:51

sitting in the table in the middle of this

7:53

big installation, all the media

7:55

from all over there, and I was

7:58

like, that was so meaningful for me to

8:00

be of service that way. After

8:03

the press conference, it was on the

8:05

cover of all the local newspapers and all

8:07

the television shows. So my work was out

8:09

there and I was feeling like I'm really

8:12

doing exactly it, you know, I'm being

8:14

an artist and activist, until

8:17

a friend of mine a year later brought

8:20

some of their students by my studio

8:22

where I had disassembled all this stuff, and it was just

8:24

all, you know, sitting around, and this one

8:27

kid was saying how he liked the work.

8:29

But then before they left, he said, but do you

8:31

know, miss Lowe, why you're painting The sculptures

8:33

show what's happening in our communities.

8:36

We don't need to be told what's happening. We know what's

8:38

happening. If artists are created, why can't

8:40

they create a solution? And I just went, whoa

8:43

wait a minute, I

8:45

mean this hold, are you right?

8:48

I mean this student just pulled

8:50

the rug from under me of like you know, I

8:52

mean, by that time, I had been practicing

8:55

as an artist for almost ten years, you know, I'm

8:57

like yeah, So it was very

8:59

shocking, and it just it took me

9:01

aback, and that's when I closed my studio

9:04

down and started researching

9:08

artists that actually did art that

9:10

was both poetic and symbolic

9:13

but also had a practical application. And

9:15

so that led me to this journey that started

9:18

project to Our Houses. Can you describe

9:20

that project for us? I've

9:22

found these little houses that reminded

9:25

me of John Biggers. He

9:27

was an artist that had come to Houston and

9:29

he started the art department at Texas

9:31

Southern University here in Houston, and

9:33

he did a lot of paintings about shotgun houses

9:36

and stuff. And he had gone to West Africa

9:38

and he saw the relationship between the

9:41

shotgun houses in the West African

9:43

villages that he visited, and he

9:45

just he dove in and he did all this research

9:48

and he came up with this whole kind of mythology

9:51

around it about how the shotgun

9:53

house was a product of the slave

9:55

trade, slaves moving from West

9:58

Africa and to the West Indies and having

10:00

opportunities to build their own structures.

10:03

Sometimes they were just built in the way that they were

10:05

accustomed to. And then from the West

10:07

Indies into New Orleans

10:10

was the kind of the first location of these

10:12

little shotgun style houses

10:14

that were expanded with a Western influence,

10:18

a European influence, and so it was like a narrow,

10:20

skinny little thing, and you walk

10:22

into the middle of the house and you can look

10:24

to the left and you'll see it goes straight out to a

10:26

window there and you look to the right. So there were

10:29

things about it that spoke to the

10:32

brilliance of people that

10:34

brought that with them, and then it just kind of

10:36

moved out. So he wroped all that history

10:38

in that gave me a foundation through

10:41

which I could actually pursue social

10:43

sculpture to generate interests

10:45

of people in sculpting with me a community

10:48

that had such a rich history. And

10:50

when you found those houses,

10:52

they were shattered right. Yes,

10:55

yes, in fact I found

10:57

the houses because at

10:59

that time, after the student had

11:01

pulled the rug from under me about my painting

11:03

practice, I just was spending a lot

11:05

of time volunteering in the community and working

11:08

with the act of this that were in

11:10

this neighborhood. And one day they

11:12

were organizing a tour

11:15

of dangerous places

11:17

within the community, and they

11:19

had representatives from the city and the

11:21

county on a bus and they were driving around

11:24

saying, this is a place for harboring drug

11:26

activities, this is a place for prostitution.

11:28

They were asking them to be torn down.

11:32

On the bus going back to the center, they stopped

11:34

at this little block and a half of Shotgun

11:37

House. This was twenty two of them, and they

11:39

said, and this is the absolute worst place

11:41

in the entire neighborhood. And they

11:44

said it just needed to go. And

11:46

I was just sitting there on the bus with them. I had no thoughts

11:48

about it until later going

11:51

back looking at those houses and then

11:54

thinking about John Bigger's glorification

11:56

of the shotgun house or shotgun

11:59

communities. Then it just kind of hit

12:01

me. I was like, well, wait a minute, this could be

12:03

an ideal place for social sculpture because

12:05

it had a deep level of

12:07

history and it could symbolically

12:09

mean something and also address

12:12

some practical elements. You

12:15

know. And where I'm from, when I've

12:17

heard the term shotgun house, it's

12:20

usually said disparagingly. And

12:23

so it's amazing

12:26

to me that with the right history,

12:28

with the right amount of knowledge that you

12:30

got from Professor Biggers, you

12:33

were able to see the beauty and

12:35

the worth and value

12:37

in them. Oh yeah, absolutely,

12:40

So now you take

12:42

possession of these twenty two houses,

12:45

correct, That was the initial concepts.

12:48

We're going to take these houses and then you

12:50

have to figure out what you're going to do with

12:52

this space. How

12:55

was that process? Well,

12:57

identifying those houses and saying these

13:00

houses mean something and we should

13:02

do something. Not a clue about

13:04

really how to manage that and stuff, but it was

13:07

just really taking that first step,

13:09

knowing that there's meaning and there's value

13:11

there, and with a trust

13:13

that somehow it will end fold.

13:16

And I think that to me also became

13:18

the point when I learned really and

13:21

truly the value of social sculpture is

13:23

that if

13:25

you're sculpting in society, you can't

13:27

do it alone. You must do it

13:29

in a way that rely on the gifts

13:32

and strengths of other people. And

13:34

so for me, I didn't

13:36

even know the first thing about real estate. I had

13:38

never purchased any real estate anything in my

13:40

life. So immediately,

13:42

all of a sudden, it was like, oh, I had to find

13:44

people that knew something about real estate. And then

13:46

it was like, oh, well, the houses

13:48

they were all falling down. I was

13:50

like, okay, so now we have to find

13:52

somebody it knows something about construction. It's

13:54

interesting because the six other

13:58

artists that I was working with, you know, they

14:00

were all behind me.

14:02

They were interested in this. They believed

14:04

in it, I guess because I had. When

14:06

people have that energy and that thing in their eye,

14:08

and people okay, well, you know, you might as well

14:10

get with this person because you

14:12

know you're gonna not gonna stop,

14:15

right, That's right. Yeah, so you and

14:18

once I was able to get a least purchase

14:20

agreement on these twenty two houses, we

14:23

just started cleaning up. In fact, there

14:25

was an elder lady who had lived behind

14:28

this particular property. She was the only

14:31

person that was still living

14:33

and basically a four block area, and

14:35

she had lived there. She had bought her house in nineteen

14:37

forty nine, and in the midst

14:39

of all that chaos around her,

14:42

she still had her picket fence, white

14:44

house flowers in her she you

14:46

know, she was The community just died

14:48

around her, but she didn't, and she

14:51

was very tough to be there. She would

14:53

walk outside with her pistol and ask

14:56

us what we're doing and says, if you're not, you know,

14:58

if you're playing around, I'm gonna shoot. You know. We're

15:00

like, okay, but we're not. We're gonna And

15:02

then I remember her saying that she says,

15:04

if you want to do something in this place, clean this

15:06

mess up and that was our first

15:09

Q. It's like, okay, we've got the houses,

15:11

let's call people out and

15:13

say, let's clean up this block. Let's clean up

15:15

this block, these two blocks here, And so that's

15:18

kind of how we started. Was just people

15:20

with shovels and rakes and

15:23

trash bags and it was almost like

15:25

excavating because so much had overgrown.

15:29

Yeah, we were just having fun cleaning up

15:31

a place. After

15:33

the break. Rick low and I discussed the

15:35

far reaching impact of his social

15:38

sculpture work, particularly

15:40

Project Rowhouses. You're

15:51

listening to getting even. I'm

15:53

Anita Hill. I'm speaking with artists

15:55

Rick Lowe about Project Rowhouses,

15:58

a social sculpture in Houston's

16:01

Third Ward that he started over

16:03

two decades ago. Isaac

16:05

Rowhouses currently includes thirty

16:07

nine houses and covers five

16:09

city blocks and provides transitional

16:12

housing, gallery and residency

16:15

spaces for artists and storefronts

16:18

for entrepreneurs. I've

16:21

seen photos of the

16:24

houses, but for those who haven't,

16:27

can you describe where they are now

16:29

and who's in them? Yeah?

16:31

Well, when we start cleaning them up, just

16:34

a handful of us artists, all

16:36

of a sudden, children from the neighborhood

16:39

started coming. They were curious

16:41

about, you know, what are they doing over there? And little

16:43

kids, the ones that are five to ten

16:46

twelve years old, they would just come and hang out and

16:48

we would buy lunch and stuff and hang

16:50

out with them and kind of mentor them. And

16:53

so that was our first unofficial

16:55

program, was a youth

16:58

program, just being older

17:00

adults there to talk

17:02

to children about what are you doing with your life

17:04

and what do you want to do, what are you dreaming about it,

17:06

you know, and giving them meaningful things to do. And

17:09

so what we decided at that point

17:12

was that we needed an education

17:14

program for young people because the

17:16

thing that we observed was that yesteryear,

17:21

the grandparents and

17:24

aunts and uncles were the people that took

17:27

care of and looked after children

17:29

when their parents were at work or

17:31

so on and so forth. But after

17:34

I guess the eighties, you know, I mean, we lost

17:37

so many of those grandparents and uncles and

17:39

aunts to drugs, and

17:41

so they were not able to provide those

17:43

good, wholesome places that we remember,

17:45

you know, where there was always somebody on the block that

17:47

looked after all, you know, made sure everybody is okay.

17:50

So we kind of called ourselves to uncles,

17:52

the uncles and aunts of the community, because

17:55

we were the place where the kids could come and be safe,

17:57

and so we developed an education program

17:59

that would work with them after school

18:02

and during the summer so that they would have safe

18:04

places to go that were productive. So

18:06

that was our first programmatic thing.

18:08

But then, of course then we said we wanted to

18:11

make sure that artists were at the forefront. So

18:14

instead of having an education

18:16

coordinator, we just said we will allow artists.

18:18

We give artists stipends and let them

18:21

do what they do and educate people in the process.

18:24

So then we started this art program that at

18:26

eight houses where artists could do art projects,

18:29

and we had the five houses in the back like

18:31

little school houses and stuff. That

18:34

was like the first year or so,

18:37

and I remember we were talking

18:39

about the other houses. What should

18:41

we do with the other houses. The logical thinking

18:43

was that, oh, we should, we should

18:45

have artists and residents to live here. That

18:48

was a logical thing, and then

18:50

we ended up with those seven houses being

18:52

used as a transitional housing

18:54

for single mothers. Why

18:57

did you choose the single mothers, Well,

19:00

Deb Grolsfeldt, who was working with us at the time.

19:02

She was doing research and she just

19:04

she went to the local high school and she just

19:07

thought, oh my god, she was at a They

19:10

had like a whole special class

19:12

for pregnant girls at the school,

19:15

and she was like, there's so many. It was

19:17

just a Yeah. It was an eye opening

19:19

thing for all of us that that was such

19:22

an issue in the community. But then it became

19:24

pretty obvious once we started a program. There

19:27

are lots of young girls that are

19:29

out here in this community and they're preyed

19:32

upon and all kinds of things, and they're

19:34

ending up being parents of

19:36

babies that they don't really know how to manage

19:38

and deal with. So maybe we could help

19:40

with that. What did you expect

19:44

these young mothers to get

19:46

from the project? Well,

19:49

first of all, we were really trying

19:51

to figure out how we could root this project

19:54

deeply in the community, and so

19:56

selecting single mothers

19:59

at that time, the majority were from this neighborhood

20:02

that we thought that would be a real way for us

20:04

to show that we're really serious about connecting

20:07

with this community. So that was our initial thinking.

20:09

Because I mean, as as an art

20:12

project, I mean, we didn't say that we were

20:14

social service providers. We didn't know what

20:16

we were doing, but we just we

20:18

had our heart and our intention

20:20

was to do something that was going to be meaningful for

20:23

people. You know, we didn't know the rules,

20:25

and sometimes not knowing the rules and limitations

20:27

of things that open things up for you.

20:30

And with these young mothers, you could actually influence

20:32

two generations. I mean, you were really looking

20:34

into the future. Absolutely.

20:37

I have to tell you this one. I

20:39

talk about her all the time because she

20:41

was one of the first young mothers

20:44

in the program. But this one I love

20:46

to tell her story because she was amazing.

20:48

But I remember when we were first

20:51

talking about the program, they

20:54

brought together a group of

20:57

people that had applied and they said,

20:59

you know, so this is our list of women that are

21:01

interested. And I

21:03

saw this woman's name, her name

21:05

as Asada Richards, and I

21:08

went, no,

21:11

no way, because I knew her from this community

21:13

center that I had been doing volunteer work with. And

21:16

Asado was just she

21:19

was a handful. I mean, she was

21:22

so she was so angry,

21:25

you know, and she was a part of the black nationalist

21:27

movement that all white people of the devil

21:30

and all this stuff, and the reason it was it

21:32

was odd for me and I was just saying, I

21:34

don't know if we can do this because a lot of our supporters

21:37

were not black. We made

21:40

sure that we centered all of our programming and everything

21:42

we were doing around this community. But our support network

21:45

was very broad. And I was

21:47

like, she's not gonna make it here because

21:49

we have people on committees that she's going to be,

21:52

you know. And it was interesting that

21:55

the person who was coordinating said, well, we're

21:57

going to take a chance on her. When

21:59

she signed up for the program, I

22:01

saw her and I spoke to her,

22:04

and it was the first time I had seen

22:06

her like in a position

22:09

was a little bit reserved, because

22:11

she was always on the proactive,

22:13

you know, and always aggressively challenging

22:15

everything, but she was observing. And

22:18

then I just noticed for the next year how

22:20

she was just she was just a calm

22:22

person. She had been on academic probation

22:24

at University of Houston, but while

22:27

she was there, and she had this support network

22:29

of basically she had a home that

22:32

was secure for her, all of her utilities

22:34

were paid, We had the childcare

22:37

situation taken care of. They had group

22:39

counseling, individual counseling, and

22:41

all these different things right, and

22:43

all of a sudden, like she

22:46

was in her junior year that year, and all of a sudden

22:48

she was doing really good. And

22:50

then she ended up doing so well that by the time she

22:52

graduated, one of her professors

22:54

basically recommended that she applied

22:57

to graduate school. We encouraged

22:59

her. She applied to Penn State and she got

23:01

in, and she was like, it

23:04

was the hardest thing in the world to get her mind

23:06

around the fact that she was gonna leave. I

23:09

remember she and her little son, you know, we all packed

23:11

stuff up and like a family, you

23:13

know, we sent her on away and she went

23:15

there and she worked, and it was it was a struggle

23:18

for her, though, And I mean, she's just she's

23:20

become amazing and she's a major

23:22

leader here in this community, and I'm just

23:25

one of those stories. And she also helped

23:27

me understand the social sculpture aspect

23:29

of it. I remember

23:31

her saying at some point

23:33

doing that program, she was like, you

23:36

know, I finally figured out why I'm

23:38

here and why this is valuable. And I was

23:40

like, what do you mean. She goes, we are you always

23:42

talking about social sculpture? And she said,

23:45

I understand it now. Our

23:48

lives as young mothers, we're already

23:50

and we're sculpting ourselves, and you're all helping

23:53

us, you know, you're helping us figure out how

23:56

to sculpt ourselves. I

23:59

have a question about the community,

24:01

and I wondered if you could

24:03

tell me how the community responded

24:06

to the project once it got out, once

24:08

it going and they saw what she were doing.

24:11

I'm sure there were probably some skeptics initially,

24:14

And I'm going to ask you to answer that question

24:16

through the eyes of the woman

24:19

who had been there all along. Was

24:22

she there to see the

24:25

project developed to fruition.

24:27

Yes. Her name was Ernestine

24:30

Courtney, and she was She

24:32

became a big champion

24:35

of ours in the process. I mean early

24:37

on it was so interesting, like I said, when we were

24:39

first kind of milling around looking at the site

24:42

and trying to assess what could

24:44

be done. And she came out in a very

24:46

protective way of her homestead, right,

24:48

and she watched this and I think it was like after

24:51

the first month or so of her seeing us showing

24:54

up every weekend with people out there

24:56

just cleaning up, then all of a sudden

24:58

she started like fixing iced

25:00

tea. She'd just lemonade. I mean

25:02

she'd just bring it out and like sit it around,

25:05

you know, and she would see us like doing

25:07

things like we would have to get bucket it's of water to clean.

25:10

She unraveled her hosepipe and

25:13

extended across the street so we could actually

25:15

you know, have running water. And yeah,

25:17

so she lived into her nineties and

25:20

so she got a chance to see all of these

25:22

things happening. I mean, she was there to speak

25:24

to the young mothers, you know, about

25:27

how it was in the old days. And many

25:29

of the people in the community knew her because they

25:31

knew her as with her maiden name,

25:33

Miss Davis, and they go, oh, yes, miss Davis.

25:36

She used to keep she used to keep street clean, you

25:38

know, because you know, everybody knew Miss

25:40

Davis. You didn't want to cross her. So

25:43

she was a living example of the big

25:45

Mama, the grandmothers and grandfathers

25:48

and uncles and aunts you know that looked after people.

25:50

Every community had him. And

25:53

once you had her approval, I'm sure you knew you

25:55

were in Oh yeah, but then

25:58

of course, yes, there were people that that

26:00

were skeptics, you know, and there were people that

26:02

are you know, when they say, oh, it's art

26:04

thing, you know, they don't know what to do. You know, they're

26:07

like, I don't, we don't. I don't do art, you know, whatever,

26:09

and so they would just watch and one

26:12

day we had some kind of even maybe

26:14

it was I think it was at the time when

26:16

Destiny's Child was performing at our

26:18

little festival. That was Beyonce's group.

26:21

Yeah, in the early days, and so

26:23

of course they all came over to experience

26:26

that. And that's when he got connected with

26:28

us, and I started talking to him. He was like, oh, well,

26:31

you know, we should see all over there cleaning up. And I

26:33

said, there's some crazy people over there. We don't know what

26:35

they're doing, but they're they're completely crazy.

26:37

They're just they weren't accustomed to that kind

26:39

of stuff happening. And I'm sure they

26:42

were skeptical too, because they were thinking, with a

26:44

bunch of artists, Yeah, that's

26:46

right, what do they know about housing? What

26:48

do they know about construction? It's at urban

26:51

planning, Yep, that's right, that's

26:53

right. And actually we had a local

26:56

politician who was you know, in the early

26:59

days, he was he felt like we

27:01

were stepping on his turf. He had

27:04

tough challenges with us, until finally, after

27:06

eight years he realized, well, you know, these

27:09

these kinds, you know, they're they're doing stuff,

27:11

and then all of a sudden he became the biggest supporter

27:14

from a government standpoint. You know, he's

27:16

been huge supporter. So now,

27:19

other than the revitalization

27:21

of these houses that you bought over the years,

27:23

have you seen the neighborhood change in other

27:26

ways? Well, that's

27:28

that's a big talent because

27:31

artists generally look for places

27:33

that are affordable. You know, the best way to

27:35

maintain your freedom as an artist is to be able to

27:37

control your spending, right, so you have to be

27:39

able to situate yourself in a place where you're not

27:42

having to work two jobs

27:44

and stuff. You have time to do your second job, which

27:46

is your art. But in general,

27:49

when places are affordable,

27:51

particularly if they're located

27:55

in areas as close to the center of

27:57

town, at some point those places

27:59

will change. And so very

28:01

early on, probably as early

28:04

as nineteen ninety seven

28:06

ninety eight, just working

28:08

on that block and a half the twenty two little shotgun

28:11

how this and paying attention

28:13

to what was happening in neighborhoods around, I

28:15

just kind of realized this neighborhood

28:18

is going to change, and we

28:20

could either work toward being

28:22

the force that's moving the change, or

28:25

we could have change kind of change around us

28:27

and force us to adapt to that. And we

28:30

just intuitively started buying

28:33

land. And land was very,

28:35

very inexpensive at that time, so we just

28:38

kept buying plots and plots, and then all of a sudden,

28:40

we start we start doing planning,

28:43

you know, land planning. What's going to

28:45

happen with this land and how can we influence that?

28:47

And as we would talk to people about it and people

28:49

would come and visit us, folks

28:51

would just volunteer to donate land

28:54

because they liked what we were doing. They liked

28:56

the idea of this preservation, historic

28:59

preservation and trying to hold some

29:01

aspect of the culture of this community together.

29:04

And so we just started accumulating more and more land

29:07

and started a community development

29:09

corporation that could actually focus on housing

29:12

development. It seems to me that being

29:15

out of this guardian of history

29:18

and culture in this neighborhood

29:22

would be kind of scary

29:24

and pretty daunting. You

29:27

seem to really have flourished,

29:29

though, and I hear you talk about it. It

29:32

doesn't sound like you're easily

29:34

challenged. But is there anything

29:36

at all that sort of wakes you up

29:39

in the middle of the night that you worry about

29:41

with in terms of this project, how

29:44

it could possibly go wrong. Yes,

29:49

there are actually as an artist

29:52

and one who aspires

29:54

his social sculpture and understanding

29:57

that things like the

29:59

civil rights movement could be

30:01

described as a social sculpture.

30:04

Right, so the scale could be huge.

30:08

But for me, as

30:11

the scale of project row Houses started

30:13

to shift, I started to feel less

30:16

comfortable because,

30:19

you know, the stakes are high, the stakes

30:21

are much higher. I mean, I've had to kind

30:23

of watch this baby that I've birth

30:26

and grew, you know, to a certain point, take

30:29

on a personality that's separate

30:31

than mine. And it's been

30:33

really interesting. It's been very very interesting,

30:36

and I'm having nightmares and other times I'm looking

30:38

at it and I'm looking objectively and thinking about

30:40

it in the context of social

30:43

sculpture in that you have to have faith, confidence

30:46

and belief in everybody's

30:48

ability to contribute, and it may not be exactly

30:50

like you want, you know. I think at one point when

30:52

we were doing planning, we were saying, you know, we should be able

30:55

to do like at least ten thousand

30:57

affordable housing, you know in this area. You

31:00

know, I can't do that, you know, it

31:02

has to be someone else, you know, that's gonna do

31:04

that. So it's been interesting

31:06

watching how watching this transform.

31:10

And I'm still here in the community and

31:13

I'm one of the people that watch it and

31:15

try not to step

31:17

in too much, but to be supportive

31:20

because what I found was

31:23

that doing socially

31:25

engaged work, social sculpture work is so

31:27

demanding of your person. And

31:30

I started realizing how much I enjoyed

31:33

time reflective, reflective

31:35

time and being alone. And so

31:37

now it's it's the way that I balance

31:40

things out, you know. I mean, I can go

31:42

out and do the work that's working

31:44

with communities, but then I also have a place

31:47

that I can go inward and just kind

31:49

of work on myself. And as

31:52

it turns out, yes, I started

31:54

painting again based on a

31:57

practice that kind of carried

31:59

me through the whole Project Rowhouses experience,

32:01

which was playing dominoes. I

32:03

mean, that was my way

32:06

of being a part of the community

32:08

and connecting with community and educating

32:11

myself about community was all there at the

32:13

domino table, and so I you

32:15

know, I just kind of devised this way after looking

32:18

out so many domino games and playing

32:20

so many domino games and start drawing

32:22

patterns and they turn out it look like maps and all

32:24

that stuff. And then just last

32:27

year things kind of like took

32:29

off in that direction. And so would

32:32

have never been my dream that I would be a part of the

32:34

Cogosian Gallery group

32:36

of artists, which I'm doing that now

32:39

and they're placing work in collections

32:41

and museums around the country.

32:43

So it's been really it's been a real interesting

32:46

kind of journey to go

32:50

from studio painting kinds

32:52

of things into social sculpture

32:55

and then back into painting with

32:58

a sense that painting

33:01

is part of the process for

33:03

me, it's a necessary part

33:05

of the process of me to continue to do social

33:07

sculpture. And

33:09

you know, it's so funny. I always feel

33:12

like everything that I have done

33:14

has been to help me get to the

33:18

next thing, and this is the

33:20

next thing for me to hear

33:22

from other people, because all of this work,

33:26

whether we're doing art or whether we're

33:29

doing law, or whether we're doing policy

33:31

or advocacy, all of

33:33

this work really comes

33:36

together. It's connected, it

33:38

should be connected. It really

33:41

is a part of the social sculpture. I mean, we don't

33:43

have to call it that. But that's what it is. We're

33:45

weaving. I'm weaving from one side, you're

33:47

weaving from another. Rick

33:54

Lowe is breaking the rules

33:56

of the art world and looking at creativity

33:59

differently. It's work

34:01

embodies Joseph Boy's idea

34:04

of social sculpture, inviting community

34:06

members to develop the world around

34:09

and shows us that organizing

34:12

can be a creative endeavor.

34:15

Rick Low's project Rowhouses

34:17

is a direct investment in his community's

34:20

future that demonstrates

34:22

the impact and collaborative nature

34:25

of social sculpture. Art

34:27

and community can be connected

34:30

in a way that improves and uplifts

34:33

both. His

34:35

work connects past and future generations

34:38

through a shared sense of place, history,

34:40

and cooperation, and creates

34:43

space for a better tomorrow.

34:47

In the next episode, I

34:49

speak with venture capitalists Arlin Hamilton,

34:53

who is pushing for greater inclusion

34:55

in Silicon Valley and

34:58

democratizing it. I was

35:00

also revealing it because

35:03

they had worked so hard to make

35:05

it opaque and mysterious

35:07

and like nobody, only a few select

35:10

people could get in. And I was

35:12

over here given the blueprint,

35:14

you know, with the with the flashlight

35:16

in between my teeth and showing people like

35:19

here, okay, let me open up the blueprint for you. This

35:21

is where you go, this is who you talk to, this is

35:23

what this means. And if

35:26

I'm able to do that without a college education,

35:28

without any money, without any connections, homeless

35:32

coming from nowhere, it must

35:34

mean that they they're not as

35:36

special as they've made themselves out to be. Getting

35:42

Even is a production of Pushkin Industries

35:45

and it's written and hosted by me Anita

35:47

Hill. It is produced by Mola

35:49

Board and Brittany Brown. Our

35:52

editor is Sarah Kramer, our engineer

35:54

is Amanda kay Wang, and our showrunner

35:57

is Sasha Matthias. Luis

36:01

Gara composed original music for

36:03

the show. Our executive producers

36:05

are Mia Lobell and

36:08

Lee Taal Malaud. Our director

36:10

of Development is Justine Lane.

36:14

At Pushkin thanks to

36:16

Heather Fane, Carly Migliori,

36:19

Jason Gambrel, Julia

36:21

Barton, John Schnars, and Jacob

36:24

Weisberg. You can find me

36:26

on Twitter at Anita

36:28

Hill and on Facebook

36:31

at Anita Hill. You

36:33

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