Interview with David Huffman, artist

by Patricia Sweetow, Patricia Sweetow Gallery

May 30, 1999

Patricia Sweetow: I would like to start by talking about the first time I saw your body of work that portrayed black-faced minstrels. The paintings on board with distressed surfaces alluded to history, deprivation and racism. I then read your artist's statement about trauma, so tell me a little bit about the minstrels and why they appeared in your work.

David Huffman: Well, the minstrel theme really focused me, almost like a self-portrait. The minstrel embodied my political, psychological, emotional, and unconscious feelings about the world.

PS: How do the minstrels do this?

DH: Historically, the minstrel was a performer. The first black-faced minstrels were mostly whites that painted themselves as black characters. Blacks were also asked to perform in blackface just as whites did in their performances. This is interesting because the idea of putting blackface on when you're black seems redundant and insulting, but socially it made whites more comfortable. Mostly the minstrels made me feel sick and degraded. The image of the minstrel is visually haunting: it's a public display of degradation.

PS: Your figures float on the board, flat and disconnected from the ground. The feeling of time is worn into these paintings. The painted minstrel's smile is repainted on their faces, objects float around them. Their environment is not of this world, but a space where destruction has already occurred.

DH: Well, I've been working rigorously - emotionally and physically - to wear the surface of my paintings: wearing down colors, scratching them up like drawing materials with erasure and ghost lines. I'm very interested in painting in layered images like layered ideas. To me, the minstrel couldn't be painted in a pristine, clean way because it has to reflect the psychology of the subject as well as the entire piece. The surface becomes scratched and worn through, reflecting the experiences that the minstrels went through.

PS: You wrote, "Trauma is the central theme of my work. I chose images which speak of trauma in a variety of forms."

DH: It's more like trauma was the subverted awareness of the trauma of slavery itself - the horrific holocaust that wasn't digested or dealt with in a mature way. So to me it was very traumatic to create characters with big smiles when that had actually occurred for so long. The smile was false, not a simple expression of joy or happiness, but a disguise that covered an internal anguish. Pain was subverted through that smiling face. At the same time, it was healing for me because I could deal with the unconscious pain. Some of the freeing qualities were exciting, to find something painful and give it time and a voice. Getting to know it was like spring for me, that's why the paintings had flowers and light and playfulness. I think I got lost in the freedom to express myself through the minstrel.

PS: You made a stamp that you applied on the surface or the back of the board: "trauma smile, incorporated." Was that also part of this process? Is it a further way of working with internal material, addressing racism?

DH: Yes, I think it's all of that. I got interested in stamps in general, their historical value to this work, and the fact that the first stamping technique was made into a machine. So I like the idea of using the trauma smile incorporated stamp so that it would all fall under the umbrella of my focus. I get my attention back to the concept of trauma.

PS: In the early paintings there was one central figure, the foreground and background were flat. Your current work seems to be telling an evolving story, bringing other characters in the space, with more interaction and dialogue. When did that start to change?

DH: One major thing was that I started getting into the body. I had some stomach problems and was on the verge of getting an ulcer. I wanted to put the digestive tract into the paintings where the minstrel was, to empower him. On some paintings there were magnolia flowers, but in the back was the digestive tract with excrement coming out of it.

PS: Which one was that?

DH: Excelsior. I really loved that painting because it brought a window to my feelings. Before, I had been putting directly what I'd seen of the minstrel on the panel. They were empty, floating like puppets. Now I was going to create a new person - I was thinking about the organs that create a human being. This was an empowered kind of minstrel that can hit you over the head with his crucifix, and yet be introspective about his own beauty. So I painted the digestive tract and organs and they started dominating the spaces. I also liked the idea of the minstrels inhabiting this space. I wanted to get more involved in moving into the painting, into the curves of the small intestine, the colon, and stomach. These things took me back to the painting for the first time since it was flat.

PS: Excelsior was painted in 1997. It is interesting that your own physicality was becoming a subject.

DH: Those early paintings were a release. I wasn't a performer. I was a participant, a part of the process, and I was getting undone. I think that's why I started painting the minstrel subdued to my own image, shrunken down in size and put into a little ship. I did that because space implied travel and some of the body related shapes started manifesting into silhouettes of organs and biological stuff. It became a type of human environment, and to paint a huge minstrel right in front of that would have been obscene. The spaceship became so beautiful, and the idea of putting the minstrel in the ship was the ultimate UFO. This was how I felt growing up in America as a person of color, like an unidentified flying object.

PS: So that's when you introduced the spaceships and the "phenomena" into your paintings?

DH: The minstrels exist in a territory that is organic, literally. But this space is outside their awareness. It is a receptacle that deals with memory, taking in experience and processing it.

PS: Is that how your narrative developed?

DH: The narrative is the place where I try to develop something new out of the historical role of the minstrel. The minstrel was an African-American image made by whites. There was a co-creative process, so in a certain way the narrative has to do with the whole idea of an African-American point of view.

PS: How does that play out?

DH: The idea that the minstrel propaganda was created by whites, and blacks have tried to fit themselves into the role.

PS: Do you mean fitting within society?

DH: Fitting within that context of the minstrel, the half-dark, the painted face. Many of us have played that role but it was given to us by someone else. So the giver is part of it too by saying, "Here is what I prefer you to be so I don't have to deal."

PS: So you will be, because I tell you to be.

DH: You will be because it fits my conscious desires.

PS: Are you saying that the minstrel has come to embody not just the African-American but also the creator/creation?

DH: I think we moved into that stereotype together and the narrative speaks to that. We can talk about where it might go.....

PS: There was the appearance of Luxor DX and Trauma Eve 1.

DH: They are super robots which are operated by the Trauma Smiles: I call them "traumabots."

PS: Trauma Eve 1 looks like a stereotypical Aunt Jemima head with a Viking helmet.

DH: She is total Aunt Jemima, but she's a warrior - not passive by any means. She's strong, an expression of an African-American woman's femininity. She has been projected onto heavily because of her color, and the Biblical stories of Eve, who is responsible for the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. I mean, my god, could you put any worse guilt on anyone? So in a way, she was made to embody the type of oppression that we have heaped upon Eve.

Trauma Eve is loaded with heavy breast rockets, and she's incredibly tall - stands around 200 to 300 feet high. She has a headship which means there is a ship independent of her, with which the trauma smiles fly into her head. The traumabots can't operate by themselves.

PS: Do the minstrels still exist in the work at this point?

DH: Trauma Eve and Luxor DX are the minstrels manifested into their final stage - the robot. The minstrels evolved into a huge civilization of creatures that are the trauma smiles, and they, in turn, built and operate the traumabots.

PS: Describe Luxor DX.

DH: He is similar to Trauma Eve 1 except that he looks more like the minstrel. Luxor DX has rocket fists so he can fire a heavy arsenal in combat.

PS: He also looks like a Japanese toy --

DH: Shogun Warriors. They came out in the 70s. The Shogun Warriors gave me the idea for the height of these figures. They reminded me of something I saw in an African Art History class at CCAC: these big monoliths at Luxor, Egypt - several pharaohs in a row - they were huge and they had stature. There was a name for every pose, each with a symbolic meaning. Everything was very specific, and to me those poses are equally majestic in the robots. There is a similar relationship in confronting the figure.

PS: So the breastplates open up and within is an arsenal?

DH: Yes, they signify body and power for the trauma smiles, who we know are essentially powerless in nature.

PS: Who is the enemy?

DH: The enemy is fear of the enemy, like having a nuclear deterrent to prevent attack. The traumabots (Luxor and Eve) are powered by the trauma smiles, who get inside and become physically connected to them. I like to say it is a neurological connection in that they can feel everything that happens to the robots. They become one. Later on I created another character which I called Mechaman, who embodies the fears of the trauma smiles. He is a robot, but he is not powered through the trauma smiles. He is a robot who functions on his own. He's all machine.

PS: How did he come to be?

DH: He was created before the traumabots - he's a machine gone amok. He began to destroy the trauma smiles who tried to dispose of him, like nuclear waste. He attempted to destroy the organic world in which the trauma smiles exist, and keep them in complete ignorance of themselves.

PS: Tell me about the space that the trauma smiles and traumabots occupy.

DH: It is the outskirts of infinity. They have colonized as far as they can go, until they go back into a biological space. The space is the body itself. Do you see what I'm saying? The limit of infinity is the journey inside.

Now this space is full of body parts, the parts that the trauma smiles didn't know they had. Those spaces are sites of revelation as they become aware of who they are: aware that they have body parts and the organs become a space for healing.

We could talk about specific paintings. That might help with the language. Because it's easy to get distracted by the story. This picture (Untitled, 1998) depicts Luxor DX crying and his head sort of hunched down, to his right are intestinal organs. His chest plate is open - basically it was taken from the idea of the mirror stage, where the child realizes that it has an ego by seeing itself in the mirror, and realizes that it is not itself, but a reflection. That information and psychology lands the entity into knowing that it has a self, and an ego. The situation is the same with Luxor. It is not a mirror, but organs which indicate his machine parts. Before he was unaware of what the machine part really meant. It was a chronology of technology inventing itself. Luxor DX is sad that he is not organic. He feels cheated in some way that he's only an artificial creature. So it's easy for me to site the pain as specific.

This is an early painting (Untitled, 1997) of a trauma smile within a UFO, and this is one that has gone past the outskirts of outer space and is entering the terrain of organs, an encounter with phenomenon.

PS: And the sightseeing ship?

DH: After outposts have been placed within the terrain of organs there are journeys you can go on. Now, the funny thing is that the pilots are the pilots of Trauma Eve 1 and Luxor DX. They take trauma smiles on journeys in the terrain of organs. Through this experience they gain consciousness.

PS: So let's return to the subject of trauma.

DH: Well, trauma is like anything else. It can be assuaged through acts of power. Imagine if you were to take an amazing wilderness walk, you'd get a feeling of awe or wonder no matter how things had been in your life. There is a release though that. This is similar but a thousand fold. In this painting there is smoke coming out of Trauma Eve's arms. She is in the terrain of organs. This is what I call a mother ship down below surveying the space, and they are doing maneuvers with her - testing out her rocket capabilities. She hasn't fired her fists yet, but they're testing to see if she is rocket ready. And this is more about the terrain of organs, trauma smiles are in their UFOs and they are swirling around a site so full of organs that it just amazes them.

PS: The next painting is a panel of spaceships that are moving in and out of the phenomena - it's entwined with circles of color.

DH: This is one of my favorite pieces. I tried to create more atmosphere.

PS: These are all acrylic - washes of acrylic on paper?

DH: Yes, and the early pieces were enamel, acrylic, and even some collage - lots of layers and sanding.

PS: You are developing more feeling of atmosphere with layers of floating phenomena.

DH: The missiles are there, and Trauma Eve 1 has encountered this great abstraction. My paintings are not just about the specifics of the narrative, they bring in a vocabulary of ideas of painting. So to me this works both as abstract motif, idea or notion, but is also the organic abstraction.

PS: You mentioned very early on that there was a shift that had occurred in your work. You started to become a physical participant - your physical being as the connection to the narrative of the painting.

DH: I'm far more connected to this, yes. I started thinking about gases here - about real gases.

PS: What are the gases?

DH: Gases are what created the universe - apparently huge bursts of gas.

PS: How does that relate to you and your body connection?

DH: Gray's Anatomy dissected our bodies and gave us most of the information we know about our corporeal selves. I wanted another experience.

PS: You wanted to go beyond what others have dictated your experience must be?

DH: Yes, I want to be connected to some of the tactile experiences: coming back to the mystery of mixing the emotion with the content. And this is why some of my colors are becoming more bodily colors too. I like to soften the edges.

PS: This painting (Untitled, 1998) depicts Luxor DX, and a mother ship with this ghostly outline of Trauma Eve's head.

DH: This is a UFO base, an outpost of sorts, like a colonized territory where you set up shop. Luxor is standing dormant, his head door open for the ship to enter which will operate the robot itself. I wanted to emphasize the colonies with the terrain - the organic terrain. So there are these cloud formations that are actually clouds of gas and also there is something that can be considered glands. I put Trauma Eve in there because I just wanted to feel her there. Some paintings come from studying Japanese animation. They will use all one color and the main subject will be of a slightly different color. The combination is amazing.

PS: How does Japanese culture influence your work?

DH: When I was a young kid, around six years old, I remember watching Astroboy, which is a Japanese cartoon. I really liked it. I could never get enough of it, and felt bad when it was discontinued. After years I forgot about it, and when I started getting back into the robots I saw Astroboy again. I felt the Japanese were discussing things I am interested in, and I didn't see a lot of those issues discussed anywhere else.

PS: Issues of trauma?

DH: The robots and the mighty atom. The Japanese have experienced the atom in the strongest most direct way; they have that trauma. The funny thing is when you look at Astroboy, he's a really happy character - he's a boy, they call him the Mighty Atom. You'd think after that whole experience they would present the atom in a very different light but they have taken the trauma and created a joyful character out of it. That may not be their intention, but we have done the same thing with the African slaves in this country - made them into happy, darky minstrel characters. The idea of taking trauma and making a new artifact out of it seems like a contradiction. I am curious about that. I am very curious about that.

PS: Your most recent paintings are becoming more atmospheric, a little more open. You've also started to do some actual three-dimensional pieces. Do you consider that to be a natural outgrowth?

DH: Oh yes, totally. I love it!

PS: Do you feel that gives the characters a sense of physicality?

DH: Definitely for me, physicality is very important. I mean I've been around figurine objects my whole life, my mom being an incredible doll collector. I used to go places with her where she would look for the dolls. Now, I wasn't always very excited about it, but it was something she loved. Later on, when I got into Japanese robot toys, I liked the fact they were figures and I could grab onto them. That made me think about my mom and her collecting in the same way.

Many of those early characters were black-faced minstrels made from porcelain, so I thought this was perfect to make a ceramic sculpture along the same lines that would dominate those other characters.

PS: Are you finding your own power within yourself?

DH: Absolutely, that's the reason why I let the minstrel evolve into this narrative. "Owning" an image that is very popular, Mickey Mouse for instance, is really difficult. There is no way I'm going to do it. And in that way the minstrel was equally difficult to own. I needed to create a context in which the minstrel becomes my element. It's not just a historically situated image, it becomes something I can take and do with as I please within my narrative. So taking it out, redigesting it and giving it new breath is important.

PS: At this point, what do you see as their future, and your future with them?

DH: I just see the narrative unfolding further, like meridians or crossroads on a map. It's like there are points where things come together, they are not a chronology of evolution but are happening in different places, for a larger context. What I consider the larger context is a narrative that is living, in which case I can't project the narrative. The narrative is only as creative as its parts.

I want to build a lot of ships, ceramic ships, bronze figures. See, these are all artifacts of the narrative, so you can't talk about the narrative without having artifacts that reference it because it is a signature of the work. It's not like there is a story first, and then you make art based on it. It's more like the art is extending the story as it's made.

PS: Is it necessary for the viewer to know your unfolding story in order to respond and understand the pieces?

DH: No way. Absolutely not. The narrative is an underground setting. It's like a sacred mystery. If you want to know more, you have to go to these other strenuous situations to find out.

PS: It's interesting when people view the work; at first they laugh.

DH: They should!

PS: At first they laugh and then they catch themselves. They realize this is about race. They stop laughing and become uncomfortable, sometimes fearful, because they think they should understand the message.

DH: It's like dipping a cup into a river, then drinking the water in the cup. Whatever water that was in the cup is the water that now exists for you. There is no further connection between the finite cup of water and the flowing river. The only thing that makes the connection is to look at the river and remember you dipped the cup into it. But it's not necessary to remember the river if you need to drink from the cup.

Interview with David Huffman

May 30, 1999

Interviewed by Patricia Sweetow, at the Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA.