Fresh Air - Best Of: Jon Batiste's 'Beethoven Blues' / Visual Artist Mickalene Thomas

Episode Date: December 14, 2024

Jon Batiste joins us at the piano to play his reimaginings of Beethoven, and more. His new album is called Beethoven Blues.Also, we hear from visual artist Mickalene Thomas. She puts Black women in the front and center of her work. Her latest exhibition, Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, celebrates the women in her life. Book critic Maureen Corrigan shares her picks for the best books of the year.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. From WHYY in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley. Today John Patisse joins us at the piano to play his reimaginings of music by Beethoven and more.

His new album is called Beethoven Blues. We'll also hear from visual artist, Michalene Thomas. She puts black women in the front and center of her work. We've been supportive characters for far too long, and my art gives black women their flowers and let them know that they are the leading role. Her latest exhibition, Michalene Thomas, All About Love, mostly centers on the women in

her life. It's currently on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. And book critic Maureen Corrigan shares her picks for the best books of the year. That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hands selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world.

Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hand selected for their inherent craft, each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world.

Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. The Indicator is a podcast where daily economic news is about what matters to you. Workers have been feeling the sting of inflation. So as a new administration promises action on the cost of living, taxes, and home prices, the S&P 500 biggest post-election day spike ever, follow all the big changes and what they mean for you. Make America affordable again. Listen to The Indicator, the Daily Economics podcast from NPR. This is Fresh Air Weekend.

I'm Tonya Mosley. Terry has our first interview. I'll let her introduce it. It's always a joy when John Batiste joins us at the piano. And that's how I felt about the session we recorded last week with him at the piano. Batiste was the band leader and music director of the late show with Stephen Colbert, from its premiere in 2015 until 2022.

That same year, his album called We Are received 11 Grammy nominations in seven different categories and won five Grammys, including Album of the Year. He wrote the score for this year's film, Night about the first SNL broadcast. He also appears in the film as musician Billy Preston, the first musical guest. Battiste is a jazz musician who also studied classical music at Juilliard where he got his BA and MA and is now on the board. But his music is more expansive than jazz and classical, as you can tell just by the varied Grammy categories in which he's been nominated for or won awards. Jazz performance, American roots song, contemporary classical

composition, jazz instrumental, R&B album, improvised jazz solo, pop duo or group performance, and original score for the animated film Soul. He currently has two Grammy nominations, Best Music Film and Best Song Written for Visual Media, for the documentary American Symphony. The film is about composing his American Symphony and performing the premiere in Carnegie Hall. The film also developed into something totally unexpected. A document of the period his wife, Sulika Jawad, was diagnosed with a recurrence of leukemia, which had been in remission for over ten years. The occasion for his

appearance today is his new album, Beethoven Blues. It features his reimaginings of Beethoven compositions. Since we're fortunate to have him at the piano, he'll play some of the music from that album and more. John Batiste, welcome back to Fresh Air. I love your new album. The documentary about you and your wife's bone marrow transplant was like really moving. So it's a pleasure to have you back on our show.

And how is she? She is doing great. She's really something else. She's a very special person. She sounds that way from the documentary and I'm very glad to hear that. So I wanna start with some music and you are at the piano so you will be playing it for us.

And the lead track of your Beethoven Blues album is for Elise. And I think anyone who's taken piano lessons with any amount of classical music has had to learn this. And you do some really fascinating things with it. Why is that the lead track of the album? It's something that brings people together around the piano. It's that thing that if you're at a party and you had a piano lesson once or twice in your life and you're having fun that night, you might go and play.

Or somebody plays it and it's just so ubiquitous. It connects to something that is rare for us to have. All of us in our collective memory, a song, a melody, a theme like that. Yeah, and you learned it as a kid? I learned it as a kid. You know, it was one of the first things that I learned. And then I had this habit, which as evidenced by this album,

I still do, of being in conversation with the composer. And once I learned something, changing things, adding themes, adding chords, and really making it my own in that way. So before you play it, I want to ask you, you're going to play it like you played it on the album? Because my understanding is you did a lot of improvising in real time for that recording.

Or are you going to do different things with it now? I like to call it spontaneous composition, which is this difference between improvisation and spontaneous composition. You frame it in your mind first. You map it out, and you create a a form and then you allow for surprise, but you're really just executing on this thing that you composed before sitting at the piano. And it can be different every time.

So this has a bit of a structure that is on the album, but every time I play it, it's going to be different. Okay. Let's hear it. You're at the piano. Can you play it? Of course. So So So I'm sorry. So That was great. That's John Battiste at the piano at the studio of WNYC. And it's also the lead Beethoven tune on his new album, Beethoven Blues. And John, that sounded great. You know, you mentioned in, I think, your official statement

about the album that you think Beethoven is really kind of connected to the blues, even though he's centuries before the blues. Can you just like illustrate what you mean by that, like play some passage of Beethoven that makes you think of the blues? Well, when you think about the blues and Beethoven's music, his music was actually deeply African, you know, rhythmically.

There was this thing that's happening in his music that I really love, where he's playing in two different times at once. He's composing in a two meter, one, two, one, two, which is like a march, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and Waltz's, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, one, two, which is like a march. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And waltzes. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three,

one, two, three. So if you put the march, bop, bop, bop, bop, and the waltz together, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, you get a two against three, a odd against an even, which is the West African rhythm,

the 6-8 rhythm that comes from Africa that leads to the American shuffle rhythm which is the clave of the blues if you will. It's the base rhythm for so many popular styles of music and styles of music since the beginning of rhythm. Play what you mean. This polyrhythm. Even in that short theme, you're hearing the two and the three, short, short, short, long, short, short, short, long. When you put those together, it creates something that is infectious that whether he was referencing

that or not, it's something that's a universal, connective, magnetic truth in music. It's like things that make you cry every time you hear them, things that make you dance every time you hear them. It's just something in the DNA of that sound. Don't you find it interesting that there are certain like harmonies, chords, rhythms that it took centuries to, or millennia to get to? You know like jazz chords, gospel chords, like they weren't quote invented yet in Beethoven's time

Well, that's the beauty of this project that I find the artists of today has this golden opportunity You can connect dots that were never connected before Blues was a feeling since the beginning of time you hear it in the pentonic scale, one of the most ubiquitous scales in music. This scale, five notes. Penta. You hear that in music all across time and something about that sound gives you the feeling of the blues already. Now when Beethoven has this, that right there, that's what we call the blue note. And that hadn't been invented, that hadn't been codified yet. But when I heard that in this piece as a kid, it immediately made me think about the blues that I was learning downtown from my classical lessons. So I would think about, okay well the blues scale that we all learn when with children is the pentatonic scale

with that added blue note. Now that's just one very small example of perhaps the idea that Beethoven, if he were around in the 21st century today, he probably would take these sounds, most likely would incorporate them in the music that he'd be composing today, which is a very exciting proposition. So there's another Beethoven symphony excerpt that I'd like you to play for us, if you will. And it's from a symphony number five, which again is something like everybody knows, it's that one.

Yes, yes. So what do you hear in this that made you want to like reimagine it, improvise on it? The rhythmic underpin of this melody carries so much musical information, it's full of inspiration. And that rhythm, that two and the three, that sound of the polyrhythm that is of the African diaspora that continues through all these different forms of music. I heard it and I just wanted to bring it out. I wanted to take those implications and bring them out further. So it was a beautiful thing to hear it first as and then think about. I'm gonna be a good boy. So Yeah, love it. And so John Battiste's new album is called Beethoven Blues. He's performing for us at the piano from the studio of WNYC in New York.

And everything that he's just played is also on his new album. We'll hear more with John Battiste after a short break. I'm Terry Gross and this is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Lakshmi Singh. Public radio reminds us of our shared humanity, even at our darkest hours. Like with the story of an artist couple who make beautiful spaces for communities to grieve. We found that people will usually stop by and just feel a little bit more open and willing

to talk and share. Help us make room for light in the dark. Give before the end of the year at donate.npr.org. You were the music director and band leader at The Late Night with Stephen Colbert from its inception in 2015 until 2022. Toward the end of that period, which is also the period that you were nominated for a record number of Grammys in different categories and you won five Grammys until including album of the year. Your now wife, Sulika Jouad, was, she was very sick. She had had a recurrence of leukemia that she'd had about 11 years before that and she

needed a bone marrow transplant, her second one because she had one during the first occurrence. And those are just awful. I mean, basically they give you this very, very heavy duty chemo that nearly kills you. It kills your immune system so that you don't fight the transplant. But a lot of people come like within like an inch of death and then have to recover and your immune system shot so you can't be around anything or anybody that might expose you to any kind of germ.

What was it like for you to be living in two worlds at once? You're getting all these accolades, you're performing on the Grammys. You're still at late night with Stephen Colbert. People are seeing you every night. You have a reputation of joy, of bringing joy to where you are. And meanwhile, your wife is really suffering. I'm sure you're suffering just, you know, watching her. What was it like to have two worlds at the same time? There's a deep sense of connectivity that you have with your soulmate. Whether you meet somebody who just gets you, you look them in the eye and they see you and you see them and then you come inches away from the veil.

You almost lose that person. And that's in the back of your mind when you're doing everything, when you're on television, when you're accepting an award that everyone in the world is telling you, you should want more than anything else. And that is a force that it ransacks your psyche in a way that I didn't realize the power of creativity as an antidote until then. And through our shared creativity, there was a lot of light that

we created together and apart from each other. I sent her lullabies she would paint as you see in the documentary. She couldn't write her vision was blurred from all the medication and she's this incredible renowned writer but she couldn't write so she began to paint. And just that practice alone was a form of transformative healing power and light that gave me the motivation to be able to leave her, because I didn't want to leave her aside. Danielle Pletka You mean leave her and go to work. Richard Hicks Exactly, to go. And you know, it's funny to say,

You mean leave her and go to work? Exactly. To go and you know it's funny to say going to a Grammy ceremony where you're nominated 11 times is work. But it puts things in perspective. But for me at that time, creativity was the power that allowed for us to stay connected and for me to have the will to go out and do all the things that you saw me doing at that time Can you play one of the lullabies that you sent her? Oh wow. Yeah, so These were originals and and you know they were

Just as the paper they were daily, you know I would send them and she would have her laptop playing these lullabies that I would send. I would record them on, you know, Logic, which is a software program on a laptop. And I would send them, and she would listen to them on loop as she painted. One of them became a song

that's in the world called Butterfly, but there are dozens of these lullabies. But Butterfly started like this. But can you fly on your own take your place in the world today butterfly flying home cherry plum and chewing gum and chewing gum Mini skirts and cars at home Driving around with your head held high Butterfly flying home

This is a little taste of it. That was beautiful, John. Thank you. You know, the beginning, getting back to Beethoven, the beginning of that reminded me of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. Oh, well, you know, there's something about the themes that Beethoven was able to... Am I crazy for saying that by the way? No, no. It's something about the themes he was able to manifest that are all sitting right there. You know, it's pre-written by the divine source of the creator.

It's just sitting there in the divine stream of consciousness waiting for someone to pull it down and he was a vessel for so many of those things that we all feel and we all want to hear but nobody had played yet. Just that theme of thinking about a minor chord, you know, and the second inversion was just that idea is so simple. The second inversion was... Just that idea is so simple, it seems like it would be right under our nose, but the way he was able to pull it down for all time is what's exciting for me about his music in general. It has all these things that are so universal, so hardwired into our main frame. And when you hear it... Now that to me sounds like blues. That feeling is connected to the human condition. It is the human condition made into sound. It's something about his music that is always reflective of our collective state and how

we deal with our internal world and how we either transcend or how we fall into Despair and how we then come back up again like a phoenix it just is it's connected to something that's very very fundamental in humanity Thank you, it's just been absolutely a pleasure and an honor for me so Be well, and I wish you all good things. Yes, indeed. Thank you and likewise to you and your family. Thank you so much.

John Patisse's new album is called Beethoven Blues. Our book critic, Maureen Corrigan's picks for the best books of the year range from alternative history to suspense to satire to some of the most extraordinary letters ever written. Here's her list. Unprecedented surely was one of the most popular words of 2024. So it's fitting that my best books list begins with an unprecedented occurrence, two novels by authors who happen to be married to each other.

James, by Percival Everett, reimagines Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of Jim, Huck's enslaved companion on that immortal raft ride. Alternating mordant humor with horror, Everett makes readers understand that for Jim, here called James, the Mississippi may offer a temporary haven, but given the odds of him making it to freedom, the river will likely be a vast highway to a scary nowhere. Everett is married to Danzie Senna, whose novel Colored Television is a revelatory satire on race and class. Senna's main character, Jane, is a mixed-race writer and college teacher struggling to finish

her second novel. Desperate for money, Jane cons her way into a meeting with a Hollywood producer who's cooking up a biracial situation comedy. Disaster ensues. Senna's writing is droll and fearless. Listen to Jane's thoughts about teaching. One of the worst parts of teaching was how, like a series of mini-strokes, it ruined you as a writer. A brain could handle only so many undergraduate stories about date rape and eating disorders, dead grandmothers, and mystical dogs.

Two other novels invite readers to catch up with familiar characters. Long Island is Colm Tobin's sequel to his 2009 bestseller, Brooklyn, whose main character, Eilish Lacey, is now trapped in a marriage and a neighborhood as stifling as the Irish town she fled. It's Tobin's omissions and restraint, the words he doesn't write that make him such an astute chronicler of this working-class Catholic world. I've come to dread a new novel by Elizabeth Strout because I usually can't avoid putting it on my best-of-the-year list. Tell Me Everything reunites readers with writer Lucy Barton, lawyer Bob Burgess, and retired teacher Olive Kitteridge, all living in Maine. Nobody nails the soft melancholy of the human condition like Strout, and that's a phrase she would never write because her style is so understated. is so understated. Martyr is Iranian American poet Kaveh Akbar's debut novel about a young man named Cyrus Shams struggling to make sense of the violent

death of his mother and other martyrs, accidental or deliberate, throughout history. Akbar's tone is unexpectedly comic, his story antique, and his vision utterly original. Two literary novels on my best list are indebted to suspense fiction. Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake is an espionage thriller sealed tight in the plastic wrap of noir. Her main character, a young woman, is a former FBI agent turned freelance spy who infiltrates a radical farming collective in France. You don't read Kushner for the relatability of her characters. Instead, it's her dead-on language, an orange threat alert atmosphere that draw readers in. In Cahokia Jazz, Francis Spufford summons up a femme fatale,

crooked cops and politicians, and working class resentment as bitter as bathtub gin. He weds these hard-boiled elements to a story about the actual vanished city of Cahokia, which before the arrival of Columbus was the largest urban center north of Mexico. Spufford's novel is set in an alternative America of 1922, where the peace of Cahokia's indigenous, white, and African American populations is threatened by a grisly murder.

One straightforward suspense novel sits on this list. Liz Moore's The God of the Woods. There's a touch of gothic excess about Moore's story, beginning with the premise that not one but two children from the wealthy Van Lahr family disappear from a camp in the Adirondacks some 14 years apart. Moore's previous book, Long Bright River, was a superb novel about the opioid crisis in Philadelphia. The God of the Woods is something stranger and unforgettable. Nonfiction closes out this list. I've thought about A Wilder Shore, Camille Perry's biography

of the bohemian marriage of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson ever since reading it this summer. In her introduction, Perry says something that's also haunted me. She describes her book as, an intimate window into how the Stephensons lived and loved. A story that is, I hope, an inspiration for anyone seeking a freer, more unconventional life. more unconventional life. That it is. I began this list with the word unprecedented and I'll end it with an unprecedented voice, that of Emily Dickinson. A monumental collection of the letters of Emily Dickinson was published this year. Edited by Dickinson scholars Chris Dan Miller and Donald Mitchell, it's the closest thing we'll probably ever have to an autobiography by the poet. Here's a thank you note Dickinson

wrote in the 1860s to her beloved sister-in-law. Dear Sue, the supper was delicate and strange. I ate it with compunction as I would eat a vision. 1,304 letters are collected here, and still they're not enough. Happy holidays, happy reading. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. Coming up, we hear from Mickalene Thomas. Her paintings and mixed media creations explore race, sexuality, and femininity. I'm Tanya Mosley, and this is Fresh Air Weekend. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tanya Mosley, and our next guest is multi-disciplinary artist Mickalene Thomas. Black women are front and center in her work, and our next guest is multidisciplinary artist Mickalene Thomas.

Black women are front and center in her work, and her subjects are often at leisure, resting on couches and chairs, sometimes clothed, sometimes fully nude, accentuated by rhinestones and rich colorful patterns. The scale of her paintings often make them feel larger than life, with the eyes of her subjects gazing directly at us. Thomas's art made me think about the slew of recent articles in the New York Times,

Associated Press, Teen Vogue, and others that delve into the sentiment many Black women felt after the outcome of the presidential race. One headline read, Disillusioned by the Election, some Black women are deciding to rest. Thomas's art showcases Black women, not in servitude as often depicted in fine art, but at leisure, claiming space. She often recasts scenes from the 19th century French paintings,

centering Black sensuality and power. And she's also collaborated with singer Solange for an album cover, and she painted the first individual portrait of First Lady Michelle Obama, which was displayed at the National Portrait Gallery. Her latest exhibition, All About Love, is midway through an international tour with stops in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and France. It features 50 paintings, collages, and photography spanning over two decades inspired by the women in her life, including her mother who died in 2012.

Mickalene Thomas, welcome to Fresh Air. And I know you're battling a cold, so I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us with this raging cold. Thank you so much for having me. Hopefully I'm not too congested. I want to talk about this latest conversation that many black women are having because as we know, black women sit at this intersection of race and gender, which for better or worse actually means that our existence is political. And I'm just wondering as an artist whose muses are black women, how would you describe your art and the messages that it's conveying?

I think I would describe my art as radically shifting sort of notions of beauty by claiming that has been often not have us on the platform as the leading character. We've been supportive characters for far too long and historical images, and that my art gives black women their flowers and let them know that they are the leading role and validating that. And so there's intersections of using and juxtaposing historical tropes, but also disrupting and breaking sort of down those notions of beauty, of ideation that is hold to what is beauty, right? And so for me, I just look around my community within my world and start it with my mother. You grew up in Camden, New Jersey.

Yes. You grew up in Camden, New Jersey, about 15 minutes from the Barnes in Philadelphia, where your latest exhibit is showing. And for those who don't know, that museum is really steeped in the classics. It prides itself in showing the world's finest artists. So Matisse and Picasso are shown there. Your art has been shown worldwide, but what does it mean for you to have your work shown at a place like the Barnes,

just really not too far from where you grew up? Yeah, I think the Barnes as an institution has always been committed to a particular community engagement. And it always has been about the art and the artists. But for this exhibition to be 15 minutes away from my family, I mean, it was, to be quite honest, like, I was very anxious and nervous about it. Really? Yeah, because most of my family members were going to see my work for the first time in

person. Like my aunts and uncles, my cousins. They had never seen it prior to. Yeah, even my father showed up. My brothers brought my father. So, and a lot of times, you know, people have their own understanding of art. And sometimes, you know, art can be a little elitist, and we kind of go off and do things, and it's conceptual, and you know, visually you might not understand. And some of them were going to see my mother and reposed in the nude.

They would see me reposed, then reclined in a nude. And they may go, why are you doing that? Why are you showing all that? Why are you exposing yourself? Yeah. I think it's so interesting, you know, artists who create work and the world sees it. I mean, the world sees your nude body and your mother and repose. But those who are the closest,

you feel like there's the most anxiety around showing it to them. What has been their reaction? Well, one of my cousins was like, why are you going to go and show your mom that way? And I said, well, my mother loves being mom that way. And I said, well, you know, my mother loves being shown that way. She actually gave me the permission to photograph her exposed. And so, I think for them, they were so proud and excited to just be a part of it. Most of them came to the opening night,

which was a gala event. So, it was extravaganza, you know, it was like very just like colorful and just lots of different types of people, and the music and the energy. So, I think for them to experience that part of my life made them feel special. Because I admit, I haven't always been open to sharing that part of my life. How did it feel for you to have them receive it?

Freeing. It felt freeing and it felt supportive. And just to see the smiles, my brother stood in front of one of the paintings of my mother titled, Dim All the Lights. She's wearing a red and black sweater and her hands are on the side. And it was quite beautiful to watch him engage with the painting. But he stood there just, and I was behind him speaking with other family members,

but I was watching him on the side. And he kept gesturing the same movement as her for a long time. And then he turned around and said, that's her. I know that, Stan. I know that's her. That's what she does. And that just made me feel so, and he had this glow and this light on his face. And I think for him, you know, my mother's birthday was coming up, so it was like this energy. You know, my mother's birthday, October 27th. The opening was October 18th. So, I think it was like this energy, you know, my mother's birthday, October 27th. The opening was October 18th.

So I think it was this energy. She was there, right? And there was this moment that you had to witness that you could see he was connecting to her. For a span of time, you actually had museums that were resistant to showing your work. Yes. And you believe that it had to do not with the subject matter, but how your subject matter was presented, like how you were presenting the black body. Can you say more about that?

Yeah. I think still today, I still believe, based on my experiences as an artist, that institutions are not comfortable with the nude black body if it's not stereotypically presented in ways of, I think I present the nude black body in a way of just like celebrating and honoring and putting forth like all of the strong qualities. I think unless it's about trauma. Trauma or I think you've said like servitude or entertainment. Yeah, yeah, or entertainment. Yeah. And I think the gesturing of like us being performative for an audience is still the notions that they boxes in or compartmentalize some visual artists.

I found this to be like an interesting idea when you brought this up because it was something that I hadn't thought about when you said this. I thought, well, I've seen lots of art where there are black bodies, nude black bodies. But what's different about yours, once I reflected on what you're saying, is that, so for instance, there's a painting of a black woman who's nude, and she's leaning back in a chair. People can interpret that as sexual,

but it's not sexual. No, but it's not. It's just a body leaning back on a chair. And it's also not performative, but it's not. It's just a body leaning back on a chair. And it's also not performative in the entertainment sense either. It just is. It just is. And it's the state of resting, the state of being, the state of existing and rooted and

grounded in that space, I think, is somewhat threatening to people of the ownership of it, taking accountability for their own space. I think when that is exuded, that sense of strength is oftentimes kind of felt with aggression or a threat. I've had people say, oh, your images or the women are very confronting. And I said, their gaze is very confronting. Because you're right, because many of your subjects are looking right at you.

At you, yes. Like straight out at you. They're looking straight out at their demanding the space. They're not demanding to be validated. They're just letting you at their demanding the space. They're not demanding to be validated. They're just letting you know that they're there. But with all that, too, there's still, you know, the other side is vulnerability and sensitivity. And I think it's just one-sided if you're going to look at it as that the women are confronting you. But that's, I think that comes from their understanding. Like, if you approach an image, I can't control

what you bring to it because you're bringing these ideas of what you think of black women when they're sort of seated in the position of all-knowingness. There's, you know, but we have been, we sat on thrones before, and I think, you know, we've been queens and kings. And you know, I think more of those images are now being put forth and celebrated, which is incredible. I love seeing that. Your work is so layered. You use the collage, as we talked about, but sequins and rhinestones. And at first, you were using those materials because you didn't have the money for paint.

But you've continued to use them. Yeah. So when I was in Pratt, I couldn't afford oil paint. I would rummage often through the recycled stretcher bends and gather my materials from that. All I could afford was craft materials because they were cheaper than oil paint, like felt and different fabrics and glitter. It was

cheaper than tubes of oil paint. I gravitated towards those materials because they were accessible and affordable for me. But what they did was open up a way of expressing myself. But then when I also, to note that during that time, it was the Sensation Show at Brooklyn Museum. So you had all of these Great Britain artists that were showing at the Sensation Show. And they were using all kinds of materials from like Chris O'Feely, Elephant Dung, and you know, you had Tracy Emin, Personally Tell a Story, you know, making a tent out of like felt and canvas and all kind of material. And so I think seeing exhibitions like that really were paramount.

But yeah, there was a struggle completing some assignments, because some you had to use oil paint, or some you had to use the traditional materials to make the art. And what would you do to get those? I would borrow, or some of my peers were, they were good. They were like, oh yeah, he used some of this. People weren't too stingy or trying to keep you away from them. But I think we all were working and they saw that I was definitely in my studio all the time. And so sometimes people throw away tubes of paint because they think it's not good and you just cut it open and it's still painted there.

Right, right. There's still so much paint when you open that up inside. It's kind of like your, you know, like, you know, toothpaste, you know. So I would, you know, take an Xacto knife and cut it down the middle and just open it up. And it's kind of like with some of the turp medium, just use some of what I had. Is it true that you're near the age that your mother was when you started photographing her? Yes, I am. And I feel like she's definitely always around me. I know that for sure. Like, the other day is like I sat down in a certain way and I felt like I was sitting like my mother. I was like, oh, my mother sits like that. Like, I felt her.

Do you see her in the mirror when you look at yourself? Oh, yes. And I love it now. Before, I grew up as a kid not looking like her and always covet the fact that I was like, why don't I look like my mother? And I had a cousin who looked like her, and they used to always mistake my cousin for my mother's daughter, which really messed me up as a child. Yeah. But now when I look in the mirror, I was just like, there you are. Your mom got to see a lot of your art before she passed.

Yeah. She's got to see it, experience it, celebrate it. She was celebrated for it. She loved the fact that she was a part of my art. She loved coming to the openings. She loved coming to my friend's openings. She never, when I decided I wanted to be an artist, she never looked at it as like,

now why are you wanting to go and do that? Some of those things were in my head, but she never vocalized that. She was a supportive dance and music and all things, theater, I mean, that's one of the things we shared. Mickalene Thomas, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you. McEleen Thomas is a multidisciplinary visual artist.

Her latest exhibition, All About Love, is on view at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Fresh Air Weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Baldonado, Sam Brigger, Lauren Krenzel, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Ngocundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly C.B. Nesper. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.

This message comes from Grammarly. 231. That's the average number of apps used by many companies. This leads to a lot of context and tab switching which can drain employee focus costing your company. Grammarly can help because it uses AI that works in over 500,000 apps and websites. Join over 70,000 teams who save an average of $500,000 per employee per year using Grammarly. Go to Grammarly.com slash enterprise to learn more.