FROM 'BLACKBORED ' TO SPRINGBOARD
Controversy over artist's piece could be beginning of improvements, progressive ideas

By Sue Poole
T & D Staff Writer

Controversy has arisen over the meaning of a work of art by North Charleston artist Colin Quashie, whose piece titled "Blackboard" takes on the question of personal responsibility vs. gratuitous violence.

"Blackboard" and a painting titled "Responsibility" are two of Quashie's pieces on display as part of the "Triennial Exhibition" at L. P. Stanback Museum until Dec 18.

Museum Director Leo Twiggs said it's good that the work has generated some discourse, but he is not pleased that someone scribbled words on the bottom of the work of art, creating misunderstanding and controversy.

"The person who did it would take a piece of sculpture and remove something from it. I am not pleased with someone's desecrating a piece of art," he said.

The entire "Triennial Exhibition" is meant to serve as a forum for discussion and as an adventure into raised consciousness, Twiggs.

Quashie's displays ask the viewer to look at issues of personal responsibility. The controversy centers around a work of art consisting of an open-ended question on a blackboard in a classroom whose professor is Rodney King, the black motorist whose brutal beating by Los Angeles police offers led to riots after the lawmen were acquitted by a mostly white jury on charges of police brutality.

The time limit for the essay is 60 minutes. To underscore the urgency of a deadline and the need of rising to the challenge in a brief lifespan, a clock hangs on the wall to the upper right of the chalkboard,

The question is a challenge to every person, black or white, who has ever considered violence as a response to random injustice.

"When we have one hand at the throat of white America and a brick in the other, what shall we demand that we don't already have?" is the question.On the floor to the right of the display is a trashcan full of discarded empty malt liquor cans, implying that too many people are absconding from responsibility to give the challenge much thought. Nor is corporate America contributing to solutions, considering the number of liquor and beer outlets operating poverty-stricken black neighborhoods appealing to black consumers in commercials.

The display says doors are open, access is real, opportunities exist, learning is vital, the basic ingredients for prosperity and productive living are within reach. The trash can full of empties says to many people, enticed by the gods of profit, are wasting time trying to drown their pain and confusion in drugs and alcohol, which naturally lead to crime violence and other tragedies of time misspent.

Two words can change the entire concept of a piece of art. Two simple words can pose the antithesis of what the artist intends, and that has happened to the Quashie display.

The change in context, apparently added to the exhibit by a visitor to the museum, has caused controversy because it implies approval of black-on-white violence.

Twiggs said he never saw written at the bottom the two words at the bottom the two words that made some viewers angry because of the implied incitement to violence. The simple two words were "Answer: Freedom and Justice" and were not part of the original work, Twiggs said.

"I never saw an answer anywhere. It looks like a blackboard, and it invites people to write on it. Whatever the situation is, it's not what the artist intended, it would be the antithesis," Twiggs said.

Curator Frank Martin, who gives regular tours of the museum, said he did indeed see the answer written on the board and got permission to take it off.

Martin said he informed Quashie about the answer written on the board and got permission to take it off.

The artist recently exhibited "Blackboard" at the State Museum in Columbia. But the chalkboard message for that show announced, "African-American Art 101 (has been) cancelled due to lack of interest." The professor for that class was Supreme Court Judge Clarence Thomas, who has been criticized for denouncing the very quota system that enabled him to reach prominence in his law career.

Every time the show is exhibited, Quashie changes the message, Twiggs said. "I have always thought the museum is a kind of forum."

Martin agreed. He said he and Twiggs have received a couple of phone calls about "Blackboard" and one or two other pieces in the exhibit. Nobody who visited the museum, including teachers leading tours of public school students, made inquiries or asked anyone in charge for interpretations, he said.

Martin said Quashie's chalkboard creation is saying: "Who is at fault? Why? If opportunities are available but not taken, is it rational to continue in a pattern of thinking that has lost its usefulness? Quashie's implied answer is that... the individual must take control of his or her own destiny, it is no longer sufficient to look to blame others for all of our social ills."

Martin said he is proud of the cultural diversity represented in the "Triennial Exhibit" at Stanback. Debra Durst, a white Charleston artist, contributed her own controversial piece, "The Messianic Impulse," consisting of a blank chalkboard and a tattered copy of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The White Man's Burden" pinned to a coat hanger.

Durst is saying the imperialist Western European compulsion to conquer and force its own culture on foreign people on their own ground is finished. She is also saying institutionalized racism is still a reality, also dated, destructive and foolish but present and often officially embraced as a part of Anglo-American culture.

"No opposition has been vouchsafed regarding Durst's presentation of Kipling's poem, but citizens are offended by Quashie's image," Martin said.

Tarleton Blackwell, a Manning artist, uses the imagery of pigs to make points about stereotyping.   His images show bright, healthy, cheerful pigs with clever gleams in their eyes. A Blackwell painting helps to fill out the Stanback exhibit, as does the visionary quilt creations of Orangeburg artist Lee Mallerich, who uses eye motifs to depict the presence of a dreamer and the windows of the soul.

In an article for the "Triennial "92" catalogue of the South Carolina Arts Commission, Martin writes, "Cultural diversity is the very foundation of American life, not a potential corruption of it.

Statewide, subcultural groups establish their own aesthetic criteria that infuses us as a whole with a rich mosaic of cultural choices." Twiggs, in one of his many published articles, says, " To be philosophical, perhaps the arts have some kind of humanizing power."

He said he hopes I.P. Stanback Museum and Planetarium on the campus of South Carolina State University can somehow serve as a magnet for people of all races and cultures, give rise to a "mutual respect that may tarnish old clichés and stereotypesl."

The controversy over Quashie's display has generated some fresh considerations, Martin said. He and Twiggs are at the beginning of plans for a lecture series on race and culture and the arts.

"Using art as a springboard for such discussions is a natural," Martin said.

Out of controversy, improvements and progressive ideas often arise. Twiggs and Martin said they are ready to capitalize on the interest Quashie's work and the exhibit in general has stirred.

There are bridges, Martin agreed, and there is common ground, and using art as a springboard for further dialogue is an idea whose time has come.