SNP Episode 97 - The Value of Self w/ painter Kat Wiese
SNP Episode 97 - The Value of Self w/ painter Kat Wiese
Studio Noize welcomes Katharen Wiese to the fam! Kat is a young, super talented artist working in Lincoln, Nebraska. Her art deals with issues of multicultural identity and representation. She is a phenomenal painter and printmaker. Kat and Jamaal talk about her life experience being multiracial and growing up in predominantly white spaces. The conversation is reflected in her amazing artwork. We talk about the ways people identify, the sometimes problematic world of academia, and how black artists make their way. Kat is very thoughtful and insightful about her experience. It’s another great artist that you need to know.
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JBarber: All right, all right, is this your boy, JBarber, back with more Studio Noize. Got another special guest reporting live from Lincoln, Nebraska. It's like a fly over state. I don't even know it Black people out there, but we found one. A passionate, talented one too. So its Kat Wiese on the show, You can find her work at katwiese.com. How are you doing girl?
Kat Wiese: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Thanks for having me.
JBarber: Oh, for sure. You know, I'm always on the lookout for new people to talk to. I'm like a creativity vampire. Like, I'd like to just take people stuff and talk to them, see how they do it. And so I found your work on IG. I thought it was tremendous. And, you know, now you're here right now, you part of the fam.
Kat Wiese: That's the beauty of the gram. Thank you, Gram,
JBarber: For sure. You might be one of the youngest people we've had on the show, too, so.
Kat Wiese: Yeah,
JBarber: Yeah. And that's good because we like to get all kind of perspectives on the show. So, you know, I'm a little jealous, you know I'm saying. That you're so good at such a young age. But, you know, that's how it go, you know? I mean, old man,
Kat Wiese: God bless you.
JBarber: You keep working. You got to keep working hard to keep up. But yeah. So tell us a little bit about.. Well, you know, actually, I want to start somewhere strong. I hate to jump right into it right off the bat, but you had to add a video on .IG where you were talking about tokenism and colorism. So I looked at that video and then thought about your work and thought about how aligned that is and how much of a personal statement to me it appeared to be like when you were saying, so talk about that a little bit.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, I'm really glad that you pointed that out, because there's a real connection between my work and my experience as a person, I'm talking in my work about navigating the black identity as somebody who maybe is it on first assumption black and what that feels like and what other people assume about you and how other people might tokenized you or put you on a pedestal above other black people. And if you're not cognizant of it, it is a real problem systemically and organizationally. I work for a nonprofit in addition to my artistic practice. And so sort of seeing us navigate these issues of including diverse voices while also ensuring that we're not just reaching out and finding like the next brown person, but finding the right people because they exist. And so saying off the hat that just the next brown person is the right person is this it's another form of prejudice and discrimination. Rather than saying we are looking for a specific person, I hope that.. I don't know if that makes sense, but.
JBarber: It makes perfect sense. So tell people what and what exactly is your background that you dealing with.
Kat Wiese: So racially? Yeah. So like my ethnic background, I'm African-American, my mom is black and my dad is white. And my mom is, comes from like generations of multiracial black people. And a lot of that is because of rape and slavery. So that is a specific experience to my mom and my mom's family came from Alabama during the second wave of the Great Migration in the sixties. So they came to Lincoln from Vernon, Alabama, when my mom was four. So she's grown up. We've been in the Midwest for however long that is. And yeah, just kind of navigating like my grandma is, who's really light-skinned. She almost looks like myself. And then her husband was darker skinned and sort of seeing the way the choices that they had to make in order to survive in this predominantly white state and city. Yeah.
JBarber: Oh, yeah. That's mad interesting. So how young were you when you started to really notice, like, the difference between the different shades of black people and how they were treated?
Kat Wiese: That's such a great question. That is such a great question. So I'm gonna blow up my young self. Who was it wise enough to really, like, see what it meant for me to feel or act this way? When I was four or five, I would like look around and I thought, well, my mom doesn't look like me. Because my mom's much darker than me. She has afro. It's Beautiful. She wore an afro till I was like seventeen or eighteen, which was so good for me.
JBarber: Oh yeah. Alright mama.
Kat Wiese: I know she's, she's so cute. It's stupid but so like comparing myself to my mom and thinking, well I can't be my mom because I look different. And when I look at commercials and I look at these different places, there are no interracial couples. And that's not what I'm thinking. I'm like four or five, but I think we don't look alike. You're not my mom. So when I was four or five, I was like going into different places with my mom thinking like, oh, that person looks more like me. Is that my mom? And my mom was like, no, baby, this what are you talking about? So I was I had like an identity crisis probably from the age of four or five. Wow. So I think I've always had a weird kind of consciousness. And I didn't realize until later in my life like what even that experience that I, I didn't realize I was maybe like twenty. I was like, that's odd. That's odd. And yeah, I think later on when I was maybe seven or eight, me and my mom would go to like Dillard's or something. And my mom mentioned, I remember I was maybe eight or nine and my mom mentioned, this woman isn't, this woman at Dillard's like isn't giving me service. We were in the shoe department and she was talking about how this woman was like ignoring her. And she was like, I think it's because I'm black. That was like, no way. That did not happen. And I was so just like shocked and confused and sort of in disbelief that that had happened. And of course, I was like eight or nine and my my, like, impulse was to say it wasn't real or that it wasn't happening. And like that was me at eight or nine kind of internalizing colorism because I didn't experience what my mom was experiencing. It must have meant her experience wasn't real. And yeah, I started and I think that's how it functions. If you don't have a critical racial consciousness, that's how it functions even into adulthood, you think, well, I don't experience that and I'm black. I don't experience that and I share that. So there's no way it's happening. Racism. Yeah, yeah.
JBarber: Yeah, man, that's. That's crazy, but it's crazy, but it is very interesting, so in terms of who you related to, in terms of the two sides of the family, so I'm assuming that your dad had an all white family.
Kat Wiese: And so my dad's white.very white. OK, anyway,
JBarber: So your mom had all black family, so the two different sides. Who did you relate to more.
Kat Wiese: Hmm, that's a good question. So, um. I think even my mom's family is more complex, so she yes, she comes from an all-black background, but her biological father, who is darker-skinned and African-American, he was like one of the first black professors at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, and he was in computer engineering, like deep, deeply brilliant human being. But he left the family when she was like four or five. He was actually homosexual. And he wasn't able to, like, express that because they were in the south. And so it was like this whole complex sort of cover up. His family its crazy. It's a whole crazy family situation. And so my mom's the man in my mom's life that you grew up with was white because my my grandmother, like, remarried. And so that's my mom's side of the family. And so I didn't really have a deep connection with my biological grandfather. I never met him. I've only really spent time with my grandmother, my mom's mom's lighter-skinned. And I do think that that's relevant for my grandma as well. But that's like it's own other topic sort of. And then my dad's side of the family, like my grandmother on my dad's side, was German from Russia. And so she brought a lot of that immigrant experience with her. And so she worked at a German from Russia Museum in the South Bottoms here in Lincoln. She was really, really cool and she was a very talented artist. So I really identified, I think, with my mom because my dad was a truck driver. So I really identified with my mother more because I spent the most time with her. But I also admired my dad because he's cool and he was like really supportive of my art. He brought me spraypaint when I was 12.
JBarber: All right. Yeah.
Kat Wiese: Yeah.
JBarber: Nah that's what's up. So this is a complex thing. So what was your experience around other people in school, like when you were in school? Did you hang more with the black kids or did you kind of mix in or is in Lincoln, What is the kind of racial attitudes that idea that you experience?
Kat Wiese: Yeah, that's a good question. So Lincoln is predominantly white. We do have like a small black community. It's less than I think it's less than like eight percent or less than seven percent like it's very, very small. And then we have a larger Hispanic community that's growing. And we also have like a lot of refugees and immigrants per capita. We actually have one of the largest populations of immigrants and refugees in the country. So we do have like a diverse community, but it's still predominantly white. And then, of course, like the state as a whole, very white. And I think we're kind of uncomfortable, I guess, as a state and as a city with that, with the changing demographics. I think it's new for people that have lived here for a long time to see that change. And growing up, I like my elementary school I went to when I was in fourth grade, I started going to public school after being homeschooled and then going to a church school, which was its own very weird experience. But when I was in elementary school, I went to a predominantly white school. And so I sort of had a lot of formative years in white and white spaces and sort of navigating this way that I, I had internalized some of what I was seeing or some of what I was not seeing. So like I, I remember very vividly, there was a girl who was in my second-grade class before I went to a public school who was blonde in her hair, would swing like a pendulum because it was so straight. And I remember I just wanted to look like that. And so I kind of spent a lot of time like worshipping whiteness and internalizing some of that self-hatred and having other young kids in my elementary school and middle school commenting on, like, the texture of my hair and things like that. And so that was very, very challenging in these white spaces. And then in middle school, I was so refreshed because I went to Park Middle School, which is a really diverse middle school in Lincoln, is one of the most diverse middle schools in the city. And that was one of the first opportunities I even had to like, make friends with kids that looked like me. So that was wonderful and it was great. And so I made friends with a lot of other black girls who were, I remember I had a friend. Her name is Morgan Liddie, and we were best friends for years and years and years. And her mom was white, but her dad was black. And she looked a lot more like my mom than she even looked like me. So she didn't even really look mixed. But I remember we were both kind of navigating our mixness together, kind of on opposite ends of what that looks like visually. And I remember one day she asked me, like, do you think of yourself more as white or more is black? So it's the same question you're asking me now. And so, yeah, it was really interesting the way that she explained how she how she felt more white, even even despite the fact that she didn't look at all visibly white when. Yeah.
JBarber: Wow, that's something, that's something. Yeah, you know, and is interesting, you know, no, I'm going to ask you this. So as you were existing in these spaces, did you yourself notice that you were treated different too? As compared to like any other black person that you were hanging out with that was darker. Like, did you get did you feel preferential treatment or do you feel like a different gaze or do you feel like a different level of acceptance?
Kat Wiese: I definitely think like entering and going to park middle school and being, like, newly immersed in this diverse group of people, like finally having folks that I could identify with. It was really wonderful. And I met a lot of very excellent people like. I had a friend who is in track and she was like a phenomenal student, a phenomenal athlete. AndMorgan was really brilliant. And so I was hanging out with really there was like tiers. It was screwed up. It was like within the within this group of black girls that I was friends with. I definitely noticed, like some of us were treated differently than others, even by school administrators and thinking about like what it took for some of us to be treated as well as we were. Like for me, it took my lightness. For my friend Kitiana. I think it took her like absolute excellence that everything. And I think for Morgan it was just like she was her manner of speech and these like different things that sort of like protected her. And so I definitely think within that context, I discovered things about what things privilege you in in your community and within the black community. There is definitely like a division between the girls who'd grown up in the hood and had brothers in jail that were struggling with that stuff. And in the girls that weren't. The girls that had the privilege to not have that right. So, yeah, I definitely, definitely noticed it, I think at that point in particular.
JBarber: Wow, that's interesting. So this is this it sounds like you were navigating like a really complex racial structure, and how did you feel like you internalized that? I'm going to your work and as we talk about this and bring it up. So you have the piece, the piece that the first piece of yours that I saw that made me connect what you were saying about tokenism to your art was the piece, it has a long title. If a black woman is afraid of the dark, is she afraid of a shadow of herself? And so.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, or herself.
JBarber: Or herself. I'm sorry. So you have a black woman sitting on a pink stool and behind her on an easel is a painting of a much darker girl with the same shirt, same hair and everything. So explain kind of this idea of how you internalize it and how it starts to manifest in that piece in particular.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, yeah. That was that was a big piece for me to make, both physically at seven feet and then also as a.
JBarber: Oh yeah, this was a huge piece . It was what six ana. half by seven feet. Like, wow,girl you did that.
Kat Wiese: It was a big baby. You should have seen me try to get into my apartment and out of my apartment. That was anxiety inducing. Oh yeah. So I think that piece really it was the first time that I managed to tell my story, to tell my story in my work and also to like to.. It's like a culmination of so many years of thinking about this content and finally, like it was like in a summary or something. It was like finding the perfect sentence to tell this story. I've been trying to tell you year after year. So that work is a representative self-portrait. My friend Sydney is posing in the in the painting, and she's a model in Chicago who I went to, I believe middle school with, and her mom is also black and her dad is white. And and for multiracial people, that is a specific experience like where you have the same same race parent. Even statistically people who have a parent of the same race tend to identify with whatever race is correlated with their same gendered parent. I don't know if I'm saying that, right?
JBarber: Yeah, yeah I know what you're saying. Just like girls relate to their moms stuff like that.
Kat Wiese: Yeah. Right, right. Right. Super basic. Right. But of course it was like really interesting. I was like, oh that's a thing. So Sydney and me like we had that same shared experience of kind of growing up in white spaces and the middle school coming into these more like more diverse space and exploring our identities. And so I just felt I felt this connection to her. And I was like, if someone's going to stand in for myself, like, I want it to be Sydney. So Sydney is the person in the painting. And she, like I said, is a professional model. My sister also who I'm very close with, she modeled professionally since she was like 16 or something. And so watching my sister navigate the racism and the prejudice and the misogyny of the modeling industry was very traumatic just to even witness. It was crazy. And I and so this piece is in many ways about representation and the modeling industry and about colorism and beauty and the intersection of all those things. So one thing that you that's hard to see on Instagram is the far right portion of that painting is a collection of images of women are darker than than a brown bag. And the magazines were the images from the magazines were collected between nineteen ninety five and twenty nineteen. So like the years of my life and my time looking at images and magazines and the reason all these women are darker than the brown bag just relates to that. The Brown bag test, which I think a lot of people in the black community know about, but most white people don't know about.
JBarber: Yeah,
Kat Wiese: But like in the between nineteen twenty, the nineteen twenties and the nineteen seventies, for my understanding, in certain spaces in the black community, they would put a brown bag on the door and if you were darker than this bad you couldn't enter these spaces. So it's this way of policing the black body within black spaces that it's a form of like even further prejudice within the black community in addition to the racism being perpetuated by white people. And so, of course, that's something I benefit from because it's still happening. And so this work was a way of exploring the relationship between my privilege and between that way in which darker skinned women, my mother included, have been pushed to the background, literally in the painting and then in life. And then finally about this choice that lighter skinned people have the privilege of making about how they're going to exist and present themselves in the world. And there's pressure to pass. There's pressure to present in certain ways, and so the way that you choose to present yourself can be a form of like pushing against oppressive systems that tell you the things that are black about you are not beautiful. And so the choice to make the figure hyper black, a nod to Kerry James Marshall. Right. Is a way of celebrating that blackness, of literally highlighting it when it has been historically pushed to the backdrop to the background.
JBarber: Yeah, that's a pretty strong, that's a real strong explanation. I like this.
Kat Wiese: Thanks. Thanks for asking me and I feel like I'm giving such long responses. But you're asking jsuch good questions.
JBarber: No, no, no. It's good because, you know, most of all, especially with this podcast and in creating a space where people can exist in their blackness in whatever form they they choose to write. And so, you know, on this platform like this is your time to say as much or as little about what you want to say as possible. Right. And we accept it all because we understand the black experience is going to be different and varied. But we want it like because me understanding what your experience has been helps me with my artwork, you know what I'm saying. And so on and so forth. I'm sure like somebody listen to his podcast will feel the exact same way, you know, I'm saying so. Yeah, don't don't feel like they like, you know, this be open. You talk as much as you want. Like I'm loving it.
Kat Wiese: Yeah. I love that you guys exist.
JBarber: That's awesome. So what I look at is where there was something and tell me if is a little bit of this inside of the concept of it. It was something about. How I want to say this, it's a conversation that goes on about emojis. Have you seen us where people see themselves or or use the dark skin emoji when they're doing stuff, when they're light skinned, do you understand what I'm saying. Like it's a way for them to visually want to identify themselves as more black than they quote unquote, blacker than they are. You know what I'm saying is, is it a little bit of that involved in it where you do you feel darker or do you feel like you mindstate hints at more of how they would treat a dark skinned person and you identify with that more. Does it make sense?
Kat Wiese: I I think I think I sort of understand what you're saying. It's sort of about this like cultural.. Culturally identifying where you can be really light skinned and just be, like, steeped in black culture and just be dripping in it. Right. I, I wish I could claim that, like, I wish I could claim that, but I don't think that is true of me. But I also think black culture is what I make.. Black culture. You make black culture. We're making black culture right now. Like this is a whole concoction of blackness. So the whole idea of being steeped in black culture is a question of who is black. And so I would never dismiss my own blackness because that is like violence against my own body. But at the same time, I also would never diminish the fact that blackness means something and it has roots in the south and it has a voice and it has, you know what I mean? So I don't think that my my work is a way of like claiming more blackness than I have is just claiming that blackness is and it's there and I can own it. It's like claiming my ability to own it, because I think so often if you're multiracial, even other multiracial, even my own siblings have kind of they diminish their own blackness and then diminish my blackness and then later on are like, oh, I see you owning it. Now, that gives me permission to own it. So there's this whole, like, process of giving yourself permission to be that which you are.
JBarber: Right,
Kat Wiese: Of giving yourself permission to take up the space that you exist in. And like, for instance, maybe two weeks ago or three weeks ago, I went to like a black girl talking circle. And I was just.. I mean, with all the protests and with all of the like all the violence that I'm seeing, I just needed to be with my people. And it was hard for me for a moment to decide if I was allowed to be there. And when I got there and I actually said that because we were all just being very vulnerable. One of the women started crying and she was like, of course, like, you belong here. And so that permission I first had to give myself. And I think that permission to just to just see yourself as other people see you in the way that you actually navigate the world. Like that's that's that's what that piece is about. In some ways, not not so much like claiming more blackness than you had, but just claiming what you do have and who you are.
JBarber: Right. Right. So was there ever a point where you wanted to be like present as darker?
Kat Wiese: Like, are you asking me if I personally wanted my actual skin to be darker?
JBarber: Yeah, yeah.
Kat Wiese: That's an interesting question. I think I'm going to be completely transparent because that's what we're doing. I think it is hard. It is hard being kind of like at certain times of the year. I'm very ambiguous. Like I haven't been in the sun and I'm like not even sure what I am at this point. So I think sometimes like that, that is that's weird when I'm navigating spaces and I'm not sure what other people are assuming of me.
JBarber: Right.
Kat Wiese: I'm not sure. I think that can be kind of hard because like I said, I was raised by my mom. My mom is a black woman. And so that really is like my my my familial context and a lot of the identity I called cultural identity that I sit with. So I'm comfortable with who I am and with my skin color. And I think it was it was hard navigating from sort of idolizing whiteness is a really, really young person and wanting to be that like Barbie with the pendulum hair to like to finally like celebrating myself. And then for a moment, like like wanting to be that super curly headed girl. But, you know, I can never be that. I can only be myself and sort of just trying to trying to live into that as much as I can. More and more now.
JBarber: And that's really that's really good. And please excuse me if you like, take any offense at my questions. I'm just kind of like, you know, asking these kind of like as we started dissect it, I just want to establish like a baseline understanding of of where you are inside of it, you know what I'm saying? Like, you're very mature and thoughtful about it. So that's why I feel like asking you these kind of questions would be like, all right, but excuse me if you might get offended or anybody else listening gets offended.
Kat Wiese: No, I wasn't offended. I was offended because I think it is it is an interesting question for some is an interesting question, because everybody experiences and navigates their identity and comes to to wherever they are at a different rate. And so, yeah, I didn't feel no I didn't feel any type of way.
JBarber: Ok, good. Because because I would think like and I'm, I'm sort of light skinned and like caramel color. And so I'm not I've never had like this super like my cousin was was really dark. And so I believe the interaction that we had were different because of his tone was several shades darker to me, but I'm also. I'm also not light. Like I couldn't pass like I'm obviously like a black man when I present myself. So I would think from from my vantage point in my skin tone that I've always existed. So my experience, I would think that it would be alluring for the possibility to not have to deal with race for a particular day or particular period, just like I'm just not and is not feeling this like right now. You know what I'm saying.
Kat Wiese: yeah.
JBarber: Do you do you ever feel like that? Or do you always enforce or reinforce your blackness as you go? Do you understand what I'm saying?
Kat Wiese: That's such a good question. So I don't think I can opt out of being a person of color. Right. I do think I could opt out of being black if I wanted to. As far as the way people perceive me. It's not something I want to do, but that's something that I could do and I know I could do because people have told me, like, you look Middle Eastern, smaboyd told me you look Asian, which I just don't see, like all all kinds of things. Like I've heard, like, almost everything.
JBarber: Everything but black.
Kat Wiese: Yeah. Just like if I'm wearing braids, you're black. If I'm do it like it's like becomes like my race and my identity is circumstantial.
JBarber: Right.
Kat Wiese: So I can never opt out.
JBarber: That's a good word.
Kat Wiese: Yeah. Yeah. I can never opt out of being a person of color. But I remember and I remember that experience of when I realized like I would never be able to pass. Like I'm not somebody who could pass for white. I remember I was maybe 17 and I was I was with the friend and we went to like Village Inn to go to like a Bible study. We were going to get pie after a Bible study. And I went and I sat down and the first thing this girl said to me is, what are you.
JBarber: Wow.
Kat Wiese: And that's sort of dehumanizing, that it's dehumanizing to be asked, what are you as if, like, I'm a fucking person, like, what are you? You know what I'm saying? And I remember feeling instantly like, oh, oh, no. Like she's there like the other white girls at the table that were like, girl, you can't just say that. And she was like, oh, no. And I remember feeling bad, like I needed to comfort her or something. Like what a weird impulse. But I also realized, like, I can never people are always asking that even if they're not saying it, they're asking, like, what are you. People are like wondering. And I think that was uncomfortable to realize that people are always like wondering what am I. And I think there was definitely a period in time like, so that happened in late high school and early in college, I was over performing my blackness. I like this absolutely because I was like,
JBarber: You showed up with the dashiki
Kat Wiese: Yeah, I had like a button vest. Covered in buttons. Just like but is black is beautiful. I was like braiding my hair every night, like I don't know. I was just I was overdoing it. And then like I remember my mom told me, I want to say something like you don't have to like, wear yourself like that. Like, I can't remember what she said. She just brought me to the ground in a good way, like grounded me. It was like, you don't have to do that, just like yours to just be herself. And that was a more of ownership than like that button vest could have given me. Some people are like, you have so much flair on. Wow. But yeah.
JBarber: yeah you're an artist.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, yeah.
JBarber: In college, how many black people were in the room with you?
Kat Wiese: Oh, I'm in college was hard. College was hard as far as, like, representation and demographics and stuff. It was predominantly white, undoubtedly. And like, if I had gone to school with someone like you or if you were in graduate school or I went to school, that would have I we would have been like such good friends. I would have been, like, creeping on you. But there wasn't a lot of other black students. And in addition to that, the black students that I was going to school with weren't they were making work about. Actually, I take that back. I can never forget my friend Shari Haney. And also there's a graduate student in where he was a graduate student. I was in school. He's been in like The New York Times. It's just like killing it with his photography is brilliant, really a brilliant artist who's making really important work. So I can never say that I didn't go to school with some really great black artist because I absolutely did. On the other hand, like, that's two people. So there wasn't like a ton of people that were African-American. That were making work about race. So when I would come into a critique and we were talking about my work and all my professors are white or predominantly white and my fellow students, like, there's not a lot of other people that are African-American and there's some people of color like some diversity. But again, it's like minimal. So I think it's UNL. It's predominantly Asian exchange students or not exchange students, Asian international students. We have a lot of Chinese students that go to UNL, you know, and then a lot of white students that come from all over the state to go to, you know, so that's like the major demographic. Like at a glance, But we do have a really we have a really active BCU who's doing amazing work right now. But I'm going to we're talking about the critique. I'm going to jump back jump back to where I was. So during critiques, I don't think people, even the professors were always super comfortable, like jumping into the content of my work because they weren't comfortable talking about race or they weren't comfortable acknowledging race or furthermore, my work is as much about privilege and colorism, which as you know, like that's something that white people can kind of be like, well, oh, I benefit from that, you know? So I think that was uncomfortable for people to engage with. I'd have critiques where I would have worked on something for like hours and hours and hours. And it was clearly like a huge labor. And the only thing people could say is like, I like it or like, oh, it's good. Or like that's that's nicely rendered. But it's like no one. There is very few people, there's a handful of students that we're willing to really engage with. Like what I was saying.
JBarber: Right.
Kat Wiese: Yeah.
JBarber: That does not stop. I have the same experience.
Kat Wiese: I was I was wondering.
JBarber: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have the same experience too because I'm..no Shanequa was there before me. But it is hard to get people to engage with the idea in the same way, in the same way they engage for instance about um climate change. Right.
Kat Wiese: Yeah.
JBarber: You can go and have your work is about climate change guarantee we're talking for an hour, an hour and a half about all the different things in different ways. You can put it in and in different materials. Um, but I was doing a show, the 400 show. I was in college in my second year grad school the whole year I spent working on a show. And, you know, the conversation was was very tight. You know, people today, they never really know what to say and they always looking for permission almost to be able to say some things and not be called a racist, like I think that's at the top of their mind. You know the worst thing you can do is tell them that they're ignorant to the experience of other people. And, you know, they because most for the most part, they're all liberal, like people like artist most are very liberal, progressive people. So, you know, they don't want to say the wrong thing, but I think it freezes them and it stops them from, like you say, a truly engaging in the work because they asked because in my work, you know, needs to be critiqued. There is commentary that goes along with it because I'm making such strong statements. You're doing the same thing. You're making such statements. It deserves the proper engagement from in its own right. You know, it's almost you almost have to have a conversation beforehand to let them know it's all right.
Kat Wiese: Yeah.
JBarber: And that can be very tiring and especially. Well, me, I was I was already a full time artist making a living before I came to school. So that felt to me I was frustrated with it because it felt like I was devolving right. I'm going backwards and having a conversation I've already passed long ago and I stop apologizing for my blackness. You know what I'm saying?
Kat Wiese: Right. Right. Yeah. And I found when in critiques like the older students that had like had had more time, just like in life and didn't go straight from high school to college, like some of those people were able to talk about my work and to ask questions and just just to have the humility to be like, I don't know. But I would love to like I feel this way. And I think, yeah, that was definitely there was there's a definitely a moment where I spent all that time on this piece and I don't think anyone could say I like it. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's it. Even in Atlanta is there actually no know I just start interviewing you, but yeah. What's it like in Atlanta in academia it's the demographics. Like are the art you have and like black instructors that are mentoring you and that kind of thing.
JBarber: No. No, there and there, there no way. Yeah, but don't let this put you off now. This is just my experience because I've interviewed some other people. If you listen to past episodes, go listen to my man He went to Iowa, I think ceramicist, he had a very different experience because he had to Tamika Norris was one of his professors. And she's like, she's incredible. You should look up her work. She does perform assist. So, you know, if you get her and you can kind of match up with one of the professors, then he can work out like, you know, I've seen people go to other places in it, still work out. So, you know, the particular experience that people are going to have in these institutions can be as much as you get out of it and as much as you are looking to get out of it. Right. Because when I show up and I know, OK, none of these professors are really black, I don't expect a certain level of engagement in the first place. But because of my contacts in Atlanta, I get that engagement from every other professional artist outside of the institution that I know. So I'm never wanting for it either. Like, I can always go and find some person that I don't have to necessarily explain it to. But can still talk to me on an academic level about what I'm doing and have those discussion. So for me, it's not necessarily avoid is just more of something that something I have to do, you know, to get my MFA so that and that's for better or worse. And a lot of places that you go are going to be like that because especially like in printmaking, I don't know, what would you go for? Because you're so good at both things, but especially in printmaking and printmaking has a there's a big lack of diversity in the institutions, in printmaking, but they are also open enough to engage with conversation. I think most of the time, I don't know. It just depends.
Kat Wiese: Yes, yeah, that's a that's a great point, is like that's kind of what I have had to do here in Lincoln, is find that that community outside of the institution to provide some of that critical eye and that shared experience. So I hope I have a friend here who you should interview him next. I don't know. Do what you need, but his name is Nathan Murray, and he makes ceramic sculptures and like busts and he's making a whole series of larger than life busts right now of folks in Nebraska, like leaders, like black leaders in Nebraska. Malcolm X was born in Omaha. Ernie Chambers is the, I think, the one and only, the first black senator in the state. And he kills it. He's just yeah, we're very proud of our Ernie Chambers. So just these different, these different folks. But I've reached out to him for critiques. And so he'll come to my studio and sort of like talk with me about what I'm doing. And having those people has been really vital for sure.
JBarber: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I think for me, you almost have to look at it in two ways. By what one, what way do I have to exist to survive this institution. Right. Like, how much of the game do I have to play? How much of the people don't have to know when they only a thesis committee? When you talk and have a conversation with faculty, like, what do I have to do to perform here? I mean, it's sort of like. What do they call it when you code switching? It's kind of like code switching. And then secondly, what do you think your work needs and how do I get that? And who can give it to me, like from somewhere else? So especially when you're dealing with black artists. I mean, we know that we understand the struggles that we all are going through. And by far, by far, most people are going to be willing to have the conversation with you because they know that's what you need. You know, I'm saying especially if you recognize the talent and passion that somebody has, like that's easy conversation for you to call me or like, you know, or Dante Hayes that's his name, the guy from the ceramicist, he's he's brilliant. So to call us or contact us and have that conversation, we're more than willing to do it because we know we needed it when we were in the same situation. You know, I'm saying so it's like it's like a collective thinking that we all just understand a lot of these institutions don't necessarily have everything that we need.
Kat Wiese: Yeah,
JBarber: And we don't we we're not going to go without it. None of that is like is not just not going to have a void in my studio practice because like yall, I'm not trying to bring no black professors in. That's ridiculous. Like so you know, just like all black people, you'll make a way to get what we need to develop and grow.
Kat Wiese: Mm hmm. That's good. Now, I want to tell you a story. You didn't ask me any questions. You didn't ask me about this. But I want to tell you about a FUBU that changed my life when I was in college.
JBarber: Ok
Kat Wiese: And this this was the most beneficial thing that happened to me in college. And it wasn't in the university. I have a I have a friend. Her name is Vernay Norman, and she had graduated from Union College in the Seventh Day Adventists, like Private School and Lincoln. That's really popular. And so she'd graduate from there and she was studying photography and she started a space called Parallel Visions in order to like practice her photo work and just like have places to shoot. And then she started doing second Friday shows and she invited me to, like, help direct the shows. And at the time I was in a gallery management class, I was learning like how to how to hang work, how to ship work, how to curate a show and all these different skills that directly applied to this experience being offered to me. And I was like, yes. And the space was specifically for artists of color and created by artists of color. And so is me, Virnay Norman and my friend Talia Rogers, who's a super talented painter, really brilliant. She had a solo show like twenty four at the Union for Contemporary Art in Omaha, which is a pretty beautiful space and I'm just deeply proud of her. And so we were running this space and we were curating shows with only black artists or only Hispanic artists or LatinX artists and about of course, like the twenty sixteen election and like all these different experiences. And that was not at all something that was generated by the university in terms of content. Like no one went out and told us to do that. But we we had to make space for ourselves in Lincoln and in the art community where so often the work being shown and the people putting up the shows don't look like us. And so we were like, we're going to do this like for ourselves and carve out this space. There's a really great article in Vice magazine about what we did there for like it was it was nine months of shows how nice the impact that it had on us. And just to have that experience to like make space for ourselves and to tell the stories that we were interested in and that we wanted to share was really wonderful that we had we had a show that featured some photos that were based on lemonade. We had like a lemonade screening. We were doing like clothing exchanges and like all this stuff in addition to just like the regular art shows. So, yeah, it was that was a blast.
JBarber: Not that's dope. That's superdope. So that space no longer exists? or y'all stopped doing it?
Kat Wiese: It was a shit ton of work. So like we were all like she was trying to figure out her student debt and I was like in school full time and like working twenty hours just doing parallel vision stuff like volunteering to do it, just volunteering. No one, no one was getting paid. We were just doing because we wanted to do it
JBarber: Yeah.
Kat Wiese: And I was working part time. So it was just not sustainable for us. So we fundraised to keep it going so that a Virnay wouldn't have to pay out of pocket to to pay for rent.
JBarber: Yeah.
Kat Wiese: And we, we didn't get to like the eight thousand dollars we needed to keep it going, but we raised like thirty five hundred dollars and that went to.. Part of it, went to paying for the space and then the rest of it like paying off what was due for the rest of the rent. And then the rest of it went to a project that me and another friend was also an amazing black woman. Her name's Jewel Rogers, and we did a project at Park Middle School, where I went and it was called the Dream Project, so we did this whole thing with young people that essentially led into the work I'm doing now with South of Downtown. So that was definitely like a huge.. It's like it is the reason that I'm that I'm doing the work I'm doing now in the community. Yeah.
JBarber: So, yeah, no, that's dope. You know, that's kind of a of experience, especially at your age that that can. Can show you what you need to do from now on, you know what I'm saying, right? That initiative that you took to, you know, go spend your own money, you know, do the shows for representation for your own sake. Like that kind of attitude is the attitude that people succeed with. Like, ultimately, that's what I find. Like when I talk to other people like this truly like and I'm sure people I've said it before, what would you do for free? Like, you know, I'm saying if nobody was paying you, what would you do? And that's the type of work and passion that you know, you can't you can't replace that kind of experience, like even with grad school, as great as it is, like, you know, that kind of real world, real life running shows the connections that you made with all those different artists. Like, I mean, that's that's remarkable. You know, I'm saying big, big shout out to both of you for getting that done.
Kat Wiese: Thank you. Thank you. Virnay is dope. She's cool. She's in New York now, like working on the set of Queer Eye. Not in New York right now they're in Philly. Philly shooting that. But yeah, she's cool.
JBarber: Yeah, that's dope. Yeah. So we just been talking the talk. Let's bring up the piece about. What piece was inspired by Barkley Hendricks? I saw you are making.
Kat Wiese: All the work,
JBarber: All of it?
Kat Wiese: It's all Barkley. No, I'm just saying I do love Barkley Hendriks like I love Barkley Hendriks. I've read Barkley's catalog. Kerry James Marshall is somebody else I study. But so there's a really huge, wonderful painting in the Sheldon Museum, which is like a university museum at UNL, and they have an eight foot painting called Bitterman Slave of Barkley's friend Angie, and she's so cool she's like a pink backdrop. And then she has her arms folded over her chest and the words slave on her shirt and she and she could could not be in more ownership of herself. And so this image was so powerful to me. So in maybe two years ago, I made a painting sort of nodding at that painting that was about the power of objects to sort of empower and affirm you. So it was a series of objects that that were a part of my formation, really, as I was coming to like a racial consciousness and just like just owning what.
JBarber: Was the piece with the shower cap?
Kat Wiese: That's the one with the shower cap. Yes.
JBarber: OK, OK,
JBarber: So that's kind of what that piece is about. And that sort of ties in with what I was saying about like having this flare jacket of like stuff I was I was wearing. And one of the little paintings I made of the objects was that button that says Black is beautiful and like an Afro pick and like all these different things. And so instead of like instead of sort of worshiping the objects and like wearing them and like, you know, just overcompensating for my lack of melanin, I was like, I'm going to I'm going to just make this painting that speaks to the power of these objects and sort of let let it go, like let go of that part of myself. That's it's trying to perform anything. And so that's kind of what that painting is about.
JBarber: Yeah, no, no, that's dope. How long have you been painting? You're very good at it. So, you know, obviously you've been you've been doing it for a little while.
Kat Wiese: Thank you.
JBarber: You what would you what did you start? This is I think the new pieces are oil like. Did you start in oil or do you start somewhere else?
Kat Wiese: Yeah, so I started painting in acrylics when I was it like maybe 12, so I've been painting for a minute and drawing forever and I always really wanted to be an artist or like an archaeologist, mostly just because I liked the drawings of rocks in a boyscout book. But I've always been interested in art. So I started oil painting when I was in college, and that was very, very vital for me, the medium of oil paint, because when I was in my final year of high school, I was like applying to all these different colleges and shows and things. And I read I reeled in some awards and stuff and that was really exciting. But I always felt really frustrated because what I was trying to do in acrylic was really only achieved in oil paint. But I didn't know that
JBarber: right.
Kat Wiese: And I wasn't allowed to use oil paint at school, which was where I was making what I was making at the time. So I was doing a lot of blending and rendering and like thinking about light and doing all this like technical type stuff. My very last year in high school and then I got to college and I was using oil paint and all these things I was trying to achieve in acrylic were suddenly so easy because it wasn't drying instantly. So that was a huge turning point. And yeah, I was like, oh, well, this is how people are doing this. I had no idea that I was. Yeah.
JBarber: So I would jump to another piece, of the boxes we filled our favorite was yellow. Talk about this one.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, that so that's the most recent thing I've finished. If we're not talking about rolling more work through the press and making a bunch of random stuff. So that's like the most recent painting I've finished. And it's of my husband and I and my husband and I grew up together and we literally have baby photos together.
JBarber: Do you really?
Kat Wiese: Yeah, it's gross. It's so cute. It's adorable.
JBarber: So hold on. Did your parents know each other or something?
Kat Wiese: Yeah. So our moms were like best friends for the longest time,
JBarber: It's like a movie.
Kat Wiese: It would be. So it'd be so cute if they got married one day. And so my mom always likes to take partial credit, which is cute. We did all the work but yeah. So there's that. So we grew up together and the even the title sort of nods at like the our romance. That's that's like maybe that's maybe a more personal piece. It's quite literally like a self-portrait which I haven't done in a while. And it's a portrait of my husband. And it's about like the way so often our identities and experiences are truncated. I remember when I was in elementary school, like I said, I went to a virtually like an all white school and was one of like 10 kids out of like over a thousand that were students of color. And so all the teachers were white. And I remember filling out a demographic form, and I'm Native American, white and African-American. And my teacher, I was like, I'm all these things and I can only pick one, like, what am I supposed to do? She was like Just like just pick black. I was like, OK, I went along with it. But I was also thinking like, well, like, why can't I claim all that I am right? And and so this this is about that experience. So there's literally like a census form pasted onto the painting and I'm like filling out the boxes and so you can see my identity and then Scott's like building holding my hand. And it's sort of roughly based off of a photograph of the Lovings who were, I believe, the first couple.
JBarber: The interracial couples that sued and went to Supreme Court.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, yeah. And so that's like why people are legally allowed to get married from different races. And I was like, I think in in the nineteen sixties, like, I don't it wasn't that long ago. It's crazy that one hundred years ago, like my marriage would be illegal. And so it's, it's about it's so the photo that I took of me and my husband is based off of a photo of them at a press conference where he's like holding her hand on top of this table. And so I'm in this pink box and Scott's in this blue box and he's super white and I'm super black. And then our hands are in this like yellow space, which I think of as this like non gendered color. And that was actually both of our favorite colors when we were little. And so it's sort of referencing some of that like personal history and then American history and then thinking about. Yeah, like boxes. That's what that works about.
JBarber: Now, that's interesting. You so you have the same dark skin pigment showing up in this one, too, by. Well, what was the revelance of bringing in that part of it?
Kat Wiese: Yeah. So I definitely think the way that this is functioning, in contrast to the last one, where I used like this sort of Kerry James Marshall, hyper black, like literally almost only using like variations of the color black, like I have a whole like little spread out so I can compare the different shades that are manufactured. Yeah. So in the last painting it. Was a representative self-portrait, so I was feeling like I really need to make an actual image of myself and my experience, because even presenting myself through Sydney was, I think, controversial in that she is. She's less ambiguous than I am because my hair is like this.. My hair is very weird. Like the top of it is wavy or straight, and then the underside of it is like very coilly curls. I don't know what's happening. It's always been like that. I adore it. And so in the picture you see this like portrait of me and I'm like hyper black. But you might not even think of me as black had you seen me outside of this way that I presented myself. And so, yeah, that's I'm still processing what I was doing there. That's a more recent thing. So I don't have maybe as quite articulated reflections on that. I'm actually going to be.. I want to remake that piece because I want to make it bigger because that one's not to scale. And then I'm thinking about making major changes to it. But it was it was an experiment in some ways of exploring that content.
JBarber: I think that's good. I think that's a good working process to have, like even if you once you do get it out, now you can see more things that you would redo about it. You know, that's kind of that's what artists do, you know? And so even even I was still like that. You did it and you didn't quite know what you were doing yet.
Kat Wiese: Yeah.
JBarber: And it's like, yeah, that's what artists do like a lot. I do that. Yeah. I just make stuff and I'm like, what is it about. I don't know. I got it.
Kat Wiese: Right.
JBarber: I'll figure it out, I'll figure out what it's about and a little bit.
Kat Wiese: Yes. Yeah. That's definitely part of my part of my process is making the work and I do do a lot of writing and a lot of like processing and I'll make little thumbnail sketches and I'll try and figure out what I'm saying before I say it so I can be as intentional as possible. But it's still there's something that happens as you're making it that that we're it evolves and sometimes it gets like so much different than you want it. And so in a good way or in a bad way. And so that's definitely part of what I do. What I did in this piece and in the last painting I did. If a black woman is afraid of the dark, is she afraid of a shadow herself? There's the collage pieces in the back of that one. And of course, the brown bags on. If a black woman is afraid of the dark, that's the brown. Those are all literally brown bags that pasted on there. And I didn't know exactly how I was going to put the bags on there. So that was really fun and experimental just to put them on there. In addition to like the magazines, there's a term for what I did. And I know it's when you rub paper off the back of magazines with clear gesso on the front that they're transparent. So it's all these layers of like there's like four faces.
JBarber: it's like a transfer
Kat Wiese: Yeah, yes, yes. It's a gel gel, medium transfer. Thank you. Um, and on this new one of the boxes, we filled our favorite with yellow. The background on mine is like all pink paper that I collage from magazines where women were next to the color pink. So I did the same thing, but with blue for Scott. So it's this sort of hyper gendered color in this hyper gendered space that our figures exist in. And I didn't plan on doing that from the beginning. But it was a it was I was just thinking about like, how can I how can I make this work as vocal as it is trying to be? And so I had all this paper from the last piece I did. And that's that's how some of that evolved.
JBarber: Oh, nah, that's amazing, because you as you're way ahead of like most people in terms of thinking about materiality. Like adding different context to your piece is based on inclusions, you know, some other things that you would put into it. You know, you're on it, you're on it, you're going to be alright yo. And I don't think you're going to have no problem getting in grad school. I don't think you had no problem making it through yo because, uh.
Kat Wiese: Well, bless you.
JBarber: Yeah.
Kat Wiese: Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm trying my vision is to go to Yale because that's where Barkley Hendricks went.
JBarber: ah man that's where everybody go.
Kat Wiese: Yeah that's where everyone goes. Like so many dope black artists have come out of that program at the same time. I'm like, I'm just going to go the streets of Chicago and like learn from street artists, make a bunch of friends. So yeah, I'm probably just going to go to graduate school where it's like free.
JBarber: That's right. That's a No. One, I can tell you that right now, because if I had to spend a dime to go to grad school, I would not have went at all. Yeah. So definitely do that, you know, I think you'll be all right. Good work is good. We even talk about your printmaker. We already an hour in.
Kat Wiese: Yeah. We've been talking for a minute. I'm a chatty Kathy literally.
JBarber: Oh no this is great. This is great. You know you the fam. Yo this has been, is, has been a good thing to find you. Like even in the way that I did because you know I don't oftentimes most of the artists, just because of my age, I don't talk to like a young a lot of younger artists. So. So get to talk to you is like a revelation, like a breath of fresh air, like, you know, the the kids is going to be all right. I kind of thing the coolest thing.
Kat Wiese: I'm humble. Yeah. For sure. For sure.
JBarber: And so go ahead and wrap it up. People can find you at katwiese.com And Instagram. Your full name. @katharenwiese.
Kat Wiese: That's right,
JBarber: Yeah, and that's what I could find you. Look, I'm definitely looking forward to more stuff to do to do, you know, definitely keep in touch and keep following you.
Kat Wiese: Thank you. Thank you. Back to back at 100 percent studio noize all the way. Listen to the podcast on the weekly, you know.
JBarber: Oh yeah, you the fam now. You find we're going to get a shout out. So. So it's all good. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely appreciate you.
Kat Wiese: Thank you so much. It's been it's been a pleasure. And I appreciate your very insightful question.