Seitu Jones: The Artist as a Community Agent for Change

I want to share some of my journey as a traveler on this planet. I describe myself as a visual artist, but names and titles are all contextual. Two people in this world call me Daddy. Another couple call me Grampa. I am also a son, a brother, a husband, an uncle, a friend. I am a visual artist, an African American artist, I am a St. Paul artist, a con artist, a craftperson. I do scenic design. I used to compartmentalize all those activities until I realized that all the hats are going on the same head. I am also a voter and taxpayer. All those different things make up myself and have affected my work in some way. Similarly, you are more than visual artists, more than photographers. You have the capacity to change your own life by the choices you make, and you have the opportunity to help change the world by changing your community where you live. That is what I want to leave you with today.

I work in a variety of mediums and mix them together, primarily in three forms. In my studio in Frogtown, where I make objects that go on display, sometimes the objects go into a craft show. Some folks know me as a furniture maker. Some know me as a muralist. A second form is my work in which I design for theater, creating sets and props for theater companies and other performers. Another is creating public and private commissions, some of which are funded by Percent for Art programs, by corporations, or by myself. Today I want to talk about my work by showing you some work in process to transform some vacant lots into pocket parks. Our latest adventure is to try to create a working farm in Frogtown. Frogtown got its name from the fact that it was built on a swamp. As some of the houses come down, they can't be built on again, so the land is open. Cities across the country are setting up programs to turn vacant land over to private developers. In New York, the mayor is about to turn over 700 parcels of land that were under the control of Project Green Thumb, which is a city organization set up to provide services to community gardens. The parcels are being turned over to the housing department to be developed into housing. That pressure exists in Frogtown as well.

First, a few facts about Frogtown. Frogtown is one of the oldest neighborhoods in St. Paul, built between 1870 and 1890. By 1900, it was developed with small, working class cottages. Most of the people who were employed in Frogtown walked to work at the Great Northern Railroad lines. Frogtown was founded by German, Swedish, Irish and Scandinavian immigrants. It is now a diverse community of about 15,000 people. It has always accepted new immigrants. Most recently it has accepted immigrants from Southeast Asia, who are now about 30% of the population. About 20% of the population is African American. There is a constant inflow of new immigrants to Frogtown. About 5% are of Hispanic origin. About 3% is Native American. Nearly half the community is white. Frogtown has the highest concentration of children under the age of ten, and of homes headed by single mothers. Over half the population is underneath the poverty line. Frogtown is filled with pressures and tensions, and with vitality, because the population is all mixed together.

Those are the challenges in Frogtown. I began working in Frogtown in the late eighties. In the last seven years, I have worked with a variety of organizations in transforming trash-filled vacant lots into public spaces. Most of the pocket parks have been spaces for quiet meditation and for families to gather. Most recently, we have begun to create a working farm, as a result of people suggesting that we should be growing food. This year and last, we have taken a 10,000 square foot lot to create a vegetable garden with thirty ten-by-ten plots. I have learned various gardening techniques as I have worked with folks to facilitate this garden. In Frogtown, we don't have access to good quality vegetables, and this is a way to put people back in touch with the land. I farm myself. I love to garden.

These are in-process slides. We have taken the lots, put in fencing, created structures. And we are doing sustainable perennial gardens using native plants, as well as regular perennial gardens. We use cast off materials from the city. We recycle materials whenever we can. We learn from people who have gardened for years.

I am a child of the sixties and seventies, and it is evident in the things I continue to do. Like others who grew up then, I carry many of the values from that time. Do politics and art mix? After being part of those debates, I say, yes, they mix. Every act we do is political. Even if you chose to do work that is completely abstracted, it is still based on your world view and opinion, which is very political. We built structures that mimic the vernacular architecture. These stones came from bridge piers and are now in a public works yard.

What brought me to this point, and how do I reconcile projects like this, where I spend more time gardening than actually making what we would define as art? Where does this come from? It comes from sources like this. After twenty seven years on the railroad, Maurice Carlton became an artist. Nobody in the neighborhood called him that. He called himself a toy inventor. He would scour old dumpsters for old televisions, tennis racquets, a wide range of things that he would combine into marvelous works of art. He created weather vanes that could tell which way the political winds were blowing. This weather vane was inside the community center, and could tell you if the winds were blowing right or left. Maurice created from a deep well of passion. He made telescopes that could see into the future and the past at the same time. His work dealt with the collective condition of this largely African American community.

What I don't have slides of are Maurice's large public works. Today, we might call him a naive, or a visionary. But what he did was make the first community garden I know of, in the mid-sixties. His work was so ubiquitous in my neighborhood that I took it for granted. I knew him. We would talk, fight, have fun. The philosophical underpinning of his work was based on an idealism that was shaped in the context of the twenties, thirties and forties. He was a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The UNIA was based in New York, in Harlem, and was founded by Marcus Garvey. It was a self-help and self-empowerment organization set up to improve the economic and social conditions of African Americans across the globe. One of the things Maurice did was use the UNIA's colors throughout much of his work. I thought my generation came up with the red, black and green colors for liberation. Red for the blood of the people, black for the people, and green for land. Those are the colors of the UNIA. He passed on knowledge and culture to us in ways we didn't realize. Maurice was our neighborhood pan-African. He also helped organize the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which was the first black union recognized by the AFL/CIO. He worked with A. Phillip Randolph, who had the vision that resulted in the march on Washington in 1963. This was a time of great migration of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers, when Harlem was king, when black shops, churches, and social clubs were created. Maurice was part of that. I was reintroduced to his work about five years ago when I worked for an art organization in Selby/dale. Some of his work was still in the back room. He would show up at events with this case full of stuff–magic, hoodoo, even seeds–all in this case. But Maurice wasn't the only artist whose work I saw when I was growing up.

This is the yard art of Derek Webster, sculptures that some historians have said have a direct link to African antecedents. They were everywhere when I was growing up. As I grew older, I began to search for spaces and this impulse that drove these artists to create this work. I began to look at sacred spaces, at shrines. I visited shrines in Africa. I have used this work to inform my own work. A few years ago I got a grant to visit a series of Ashanti shrines that surround one of the capitals of the Ashanti kingdom in West Africa. These pieces are houses for spirits. I have been interested in how people use spaces, how they interact in space, how they create space. What do we take from our minds and put in the street? How do those values help shape space? I am also interested in how space is transformed by festivals. Wherever I have gone, I also have ended up hanging out with fishermen and boat builders. I spent a lot of time fishing with my father on a lake every weekend, rowing from place to place. All of this has led me to try to recreate sacred space. I started trying to replicate sacred space in installations in a gallery whenever I could, with an altar or shrine. I created a shrine for Martin Luther King at a college. At the end of this tunnel I made a portrait of Martin Luther King. In a museum in Minnesota I created a house for storytellers, where children could come hear stories around the kitchen table.

I also have done larger-scale public pieces, individual pieces. I did this in collaboration with students from Minneapolis College of Art and Design and from the studio arts department of the University of Minnesota. It is a memorial to Dred Scott, who was a slave who sued for his freedom, claiming he had lived in free territory and therefore was free. The free territory in question was Minnesota. Where he lived is now near an airport, and there is no marker that notes the significant black presence of Dred Scott and other blacks who lived at Fort Snelling. We created images and texts that were cast in concrete and put into pavers outside the fort. It is in the middle of a restored prairie outside the fort.

This piece tried to tell the stories of the people who built this country, and whose stories are not told. There were nine different bronze pieces with poems, set in concrete, along a mall. At different times of the year, your shadow will line up with these bronze shadows.

A boat shape has been turning up a lot in my work recently. I just created a sundial for a corporation in St. Paul. They only wanted a temporary piece. I agreed to do it, if the piece could go to Frogtown later. They agreed, so I created this sundial, working with kids from the neighborhood, and cast their poems about their place and their families into the stones that mark the hours.

All of that leads to some of my most recent work. This is the old chapel at Lionel Lakes correctional facility in Minnesota. It was poured concrete, with an ugly orange carpet and plastic chairs. It was my task to create a nondenominational chapel in the space. I spent a year working with inmates, visiting their different religious services. I was expected to come in, create the chapel, and leave. I wanted to embrace all the different religions and also empower some of the inmates by helping me create the design and by becoming my crew. I found painters, contractors and artists who were in prison because of drugs, and they became my crew. We also designed, built and upholstered the chairs.

I have also been doing some boat building and have helped start a group called Urban Boat Builders. We have been making boats with young people, most recently a solar powered boat, with kids from an alternative high school. Every year, there is a solar boat regatta for high school students in St. Paul, usually won by well-heeled kids sponsored by marinas. This year, these kids won. This is one way these kids can claim ownership of something. This high school is the last stop for many kids who have been expelled from other schools. There is no sports program.

So, in conclusion, my wife and I live and work in Frogtown, trying to live out some of the tenets of the sixties, trying to make our neighborhoods more beautiful than we found them.

Audience: It is really interesting that you brought up the values of the sixties, because a lot of the other artists who spoke came up through that time. Those values have turned into practices and the practices have turned into a movement.

Jones: Exactly. You have had the opportunity to talk to so many good people. Those tenets have confounded contemporary museums. They don't know what to do with it. I used to work in the Walker Arts Center education department. I helped start the community program department there, and more and more artists my age were coming in to do stuff outside the museum. Everything in a museum is focused on the collection. When artists wanted to work outside the museum, I put them in touch with folks, but it confounded the museum then and still does.

Audience: I was interested in the prison project. To what extent have you maintained contact with the prisoners? How did the chapel ultimately impact the prison population?

Jones: I worked with folks on this project who were there for minor offenses and some for rape or murder. People who were working with me wanted to leave something behind that was positive, and to transform themselves. Religion played a big part. The space is used now for concerts and lectures and education, as well as the religious services. They are talking about adding a multipurpose room, because they have seen how a space can be used in these ways. The room is booked all the time. The Million Man March asked people to commit themselves to a person who might be behind bars, to work with them in some way. I still maintain contact with some of the folks.

Audience: I think it is cool that this project shows what prisoners can do, and their sense of humanity.

Jones: I have also been working with the Washington State Arts Commission helping develop and refine a Percent for the Arts program in the Department of Corrections there. It has given me an insight into Percent for Art programs in prisons across the country. I have grown to feel uncomfortable with those programs, primarily because the fastest growing part of state government is prisons. We are imprisoning more and more people. The U.S. now houses more people in prisons than anyone else in the "free world." That means there is money available for public art as prisons are built. So some artists are specializing on these prison projects. I am uncomfortable with people benefiting from this growth industry.

Audience: You bring up some important questions about the ownership of art, not only in its final manifestation, but in the production of the piece. Do you see the need to continue the production aspect of art?

Jones: If I understand your question, what I have tried to do in community settings is give up ownership of the work. I was taught some lessons when I was younger after I created work in community settings, that you have to let the work go. One mural I did was constantly vandalized. Knowing that it was going to elicit that kind of response, the people who organized it posted guards. Finally it was painted over, because the wall wasn't prepared right. Also, I did a piece once working with high school students, seating elements on the top of a hill. We talked to everyone, and tried to integrate their comments and ideas, but the group we didn't talk to were the people who used the park at night. One night, the piece was burned. It taught me that you have to give up ownership of the piece. I make art because I am passionate about making the stuff. I care about what happens to it afterwards, but I have learned to let go. I also learned that we should have talked to the folks who used the park at night.

Audience: My question was more along the lines of how do you make sure the job is never done, that the need to make art continues?

Jones: That is one of the issues I am going to be talking about. I have kept up a relationship with some of the folks who are still there, because that is something I personally want to do. As far as trying to ensure it continues, would mean I would have to make myself a part of prison administration. In Frogtown, the master gardener I work with and I are trying to meet with all the folks who have the thirty plots, twice during the summer, to find people to lead the initiative. There are some who are real farmers, and hopefully they will take ownership of this project and continue it. I try to work myself out of the loop, give up ownership and have other people take on the ownership.

Audience: I think you raised an interesting question with the Percent for Art Program in prisons. In all the different seminars we've had, it seems you need the cooperation of a bureaucracy. Who is really benefiting? Is the institution getting more than the people? Who ends up looking good?

Jones: That raises two issues. One is that everything you do is guided by values, mores and morals. These are ethical decisions. Everything you do is shaped by your code of ethics. I can't remember the second issue.

Audience: My question is how do you define art in your work? And what part of your work is more social work? Both parts, social work and making art, are very close, but in many cases we are talking about politics and other issues, and not about art. How do you define art in your work.

Jones: I don't have a definition. I don't know. I stopped thinking about that when I stopped compartmentalizing my life. It is all a part of what I do. A life is a creation, a piece of art. Politics is part of every decision you make. I can't separate it.

Audience: Your work is so inspirational. How can we find it in publications and stuff?

Jones: You have two articles in the reading list. I have been in catalogues.

Synopsis by Brian Truglio

With a seemingly perpetual smile and genuine optimism, Seitu Jones presented his work and philosophy of life. He was not merely presenting his work, he was passing on his wisdom or, as he said, "sharing his personal journeys as a traveler." "The greatest thing you ever know is to be loved and give love in return," he quoted Nat King Cole. Early on, Jones tried to compartmentalize his life until he realized that he was a father, a son, a husband, a coworker, and many other things to many other people. He discovered that he was more than just an artist, he had the possibility of changing his whole life and even the world if he could just change the community where he lived.

Jones divides his work into three areas. First, there is his studio work that is the individual objects that are made to go in museums or craft shows. Second, there is the work he does for theater. He designs sets and props for theaters and performance artists in St. Paul and Minneapolis. And third, there are his public and private commissions from Percent for Art programs, corporations, grants and, of course, self-endowments. But more important is the setting where this work takes place: Frogtown, Minnesota.

Frogtown is one of the oldest and most diverse neighborhoods in St. Paul. It is filled with all the pressures and tensions of an urban environment but it remains a vital community. Jones's work has focused on turning empty and abandoned lots into "pocket parks," places for meditation, gardening and even farming. He employs the rich mix of Frogtown's inhabitants and, using recycled material (brick, stone, wood) from the neighborhood, they are slowly building a network of sustainable perennial gardens. Jones was influenced by Maurice Caulton and Derek Webster, both men from Selbyville, the community where he grew up. Caulton tied together the philosophies of Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. DuBois. In addition to helping to organize the first black unions, Caulton was a great collector and maker of magical stuff. Derek Webster made an art out of decorating his yard. His yard was a sacred space and it later persuaded Jones to search for the origins of sacred spaces in Africa. This search resulted in the shrines and spaces Jones created on his return.

These spaces included a shrine for Martin Luther King, a giant house for storytellers, a memorial to Dred Scott: bronze shadows inscribed with his wife's poetry, and a small memorial to a stream that had been redirected for the construction of a building. All of these spaces culminated in his most recent project to rebuild a prison chapel. In order to create a nondenominational, sacred space, Jones attended religious services of every variety. He employed the help of the inmates who had sheet rock, painting, carpentry and contractor skills. In the end, they built a wall relief, a "river of life" out of wood that surrounded the entire room. They also built an altar and other inmates made an entire set of chairs for the room. In addition, Jones explained projects for which he had no slides. His current work with boat builders resulted in the creation of a group called Urban Boat Builders. They work on various community projects and competitions. Together with the children of Frogtown, they recently won a boat building and racing competition. Jones feels the UBB is one way to help children claim ownership in the community and its future. Ultimately, the most important goal in his life is to leave his community in better shape than he found it.

Analysis by Julie En-Hui An

Seitu Jones is a visual artist who works in a variety of media dealing with issues of community. He describes himself as a visual artist who has successfully reconciled and embraced the multiple aspects and responsibilities in his life (e.g. father, husband, brother, artist, activist, etc.) into the artistic projects that he does today. Jones said that the main objective of his talk was to communicate that artists have the "ability to change the world by actively engaging in the community in which one lives." He wanted to show other artists that it is possible to find a balance between daily life and creative ambitions and that these two impulses need not conflict.

Jones lives in Frogtown, a community of 15,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He described it as a racially diverse community and a place of tremendous vitality. He showed the progress of several ongoing projects, all of which are meant to create "spaces for meditation and gathering." For the last seven years, he has worked with a variety of organizations in transforming vacant trash-filled lots into public spaces. Currently, he is organizing the construction of an active and operable farm in Frogtown's urban environment. Jones also designed and built a non-denominational chapel for the inmates at Lino Lakes Correctional Facility with the active help and participation of the inmates there. This spiritual gathering space was meant to "embrace the talents of the inmates and to empower" them.

Jones is a community builder who actively engages in the community in which he lives in order to affect positive change in the world around him. He said he believes that there is an inseparable relationship between art and politics. His values are shaped by the 1960's and 1970's ethic which blurred the lines between the citizen and the artist, and defied the traditional Modernist notion of the artist figure who is isolated from the social and political realm around him. The eradication of this myth of the alienated artist is a positive move. However, the impulse to "change the world through art" does raise complicated questions as to how one defines art, and if it is necessary at all to attempt to define it. For himself, Jones said he "stopped thinking about this question... it's all art...your entire life is art."