Today we’d like to introduce you to Marvin Tate.
Marvin, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
My senses where awakened during the early age of nine and ten. At the age of nine, I was shy and a chronic-stutterer. It wasn’t until my sister gave me a poem by the Poet Gwendolyn Brooks, “We Really Cool” would the stuttering subside. I eventually memorized the poem verbatim. And then one-day on the school-yard, a friend encouraged me to recite the poem for no other reason than to show the rest of our classmates that I could talk without being shy or stuttering. Eventually, I recited poem, smack-dead in the center of the schoolyard, classmates, frenemies and teachers stood in a circle and watched me throw-down. It didn’t end my stutter but it did empower me and embark me on my journey and love for words, sounds and o’yeah attentive crowds. My second encounter of the senses, came when my oldest brother, made me and my siblings toys out of aluminum foil and bobby-pins, so the story goes: he made them for us during Xmas day- raised in a single-parent-household; times were difficult and holiday-celebrations (occasionally) were delayed. They were the best-toys/gifts ever because they came from my “ev’day” environment. NOTE: We were one of those families who never left the hood unless you were going to visit nearby relatives, church, funerals or school. Art was something that “Other-People, always white” seemed to pull-off”. Nevertheless, it made an immense-impression on me. Finding the beauty-in the ev’day and found-objects, the rest as they-say, “is history”.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I make sculptures and dioramas out of mostly found-objects. Inspired by the “ev-day”, The local junk-collector who collected cans and other debris,-folks thought of him as crazy but not me. I marveled at his Sanford & Son type truck with loads of junk. e.g. dolls, shoes, tables and clothing spilling out from its side as he drove through the alleys of the late 60’s and early 70’s community of North- Lawndale. We were working-class and poor. If your parents had the monies for temperas you were considered “rich” otherwise, you were stuck with cheap water-colors from the local ma and pa stores.
I’m inspired by the common art of people who have little to no access .This is why I teach: poetry, art and theater in low-income communities. I believe that If you have made art for over a period of time, it then becomes a science and you, as its creator should be able to share and teach that skill to others so that too can find their voice. Art is not valued in these communities as much as it is in more affluent ones. On a more deeper-level, I think that the ability to express via art has been oppressed psychologically in some poor communities, at least put on the back-burner because it is not deemed as important or something that can lead to instant stability. And truthfully, it ain’t. No one wants to be an individual, taking the road-less traveled. You really have to navigate time and creation. It’s a journey of ups’ and downs’ but what you get “personally” out of it is a sense of accomplishment. A world of ideas and critical observations, growth and conversations that are not so easily put in a box and discarded for the next, hot-topics.
The use of “ev-day” objects keeps me connected to the soul of the common-person. Again (even in this day in age) some people still cannot afford paints or partake in an insulated-institution like the SAIC. It’s just not in the cards. Thus, it’s the environment, the Player magazines your neighbor has thrown-out after their basement flood, the propellers falling from trees, the found grocery-list that mysteriously sits at your feet while waiting on the bus-these are the things that make my art. That give me the incentive to create assemblages and sculptures that provoke the viewer to smirk, to travel back and forth through time, to ponder, “How and why”.
You cannot be what you cannot see and you cannot see what cannot believe; might sound like pot-jargon to some but for me it’s the need to create my own reality. A truth among many. Art is a magnificent and powerful voice. I think everyone should have access to its many processes and what better way to start, then with the things that surround you that you don’t have to travel to distant lands-neighborhoods to obtain?
Years ago, I worked in a down-town upscale shoe-store. They distinguished themselves by selling one-of-a-kind shoes bought from shoe-parlors around the world. The people that worked their called themselves, “Shoe-dawgs”. There were days when shoes sold like hot-cakes and then there were the slow days. On one particular day, I noticed that garbage-can was inundated with card-board shoe-inserts that looked like a bunch of elongated faces. And so instead of throwing them out(which they did at the end of the work-day) I started to taking bag-loads of them home and thus made various sculptures out of them and up to this day, they’ve become some of my biggest selling works of art. Again, may I remind you…it’s the environment that inspires my art, my time being in a place and in this world. Art is very meditative, it’s my spirituality, the scream and stored-histories in my subconscious. A collection of backstories, fleeing truisms (real and imagine) of personal narratives for all to see, hear and feel if connected with the “ev-days” of common-folk.
What would you recommend to an artist new to the city, or to art, in terms of meeting and connecting with other artists and creatives?
Collaborating and visiting other artist workplaces have always alleviated the lonely part of being an artist. It also helps (in my case) being a multidisciplinary artist. I’m always exchanging ideas or working some kind of angle to create opportunity for myself- it don’t always work but it beats being alone. I’ll also find a reason to bring people together, e.g… birthdays, a new body of work, ideas, yard-sale, etc., to get out my head
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
Artist Marvin Tate
https://www.artistmarvintate.com/
Updates coming soon. Always looking for interesting collaborations that take me out of my comfort zone and result in new dialogues about race, class and gender. Erasing hierarchies and building new bridges.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.artistmarvintate.com/
- Phone: 7739881066
- Email: tatemarvin@rocketmail.com
- Instagram: ivyrae1995 marvin tate/https://www.instagram.com/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marvin.tate1
Image Credit:
Yvette Marie Dastatini, Lucy E. Mueller, Tiphanie Spencer
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