Conversation with Nekisha Durrett

On August 17, 2007 I had the pleasure of sitting down with graphic artist, Nekisha Durrett. She met with me at a café in downtown Washington, D.C. and spoke with me about her work, her process, and where she thinks she will go from here.

Our conversation began with a look at Durrett’s current piece inspired by recent photographs taken of her niece. She used this “in progress” piece to take me through her process from start to finish.

Jaime Lowe: It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me today. I suppose I should start off by asking you to tell me about your work so I can get some insight into your process.

Nekisha Durrett: Well, the process usually begins with a subject. I usually choose a friend, or in this case, a family member and take full snapshots of them. Before I begin photographing, I kind of have an idea in mind of what I want. I watch a lot of anime and stuff like that and I kind of get… just kind of piece things together. The inspiration kind of comes from different places. But in this case, I wanted to catch [my niece] in mid action---the whole animation is kind of important [to me], so I can feel like there is some kind of movement. So that’s kind of where I started. I may go back to some of those [action] shots but I ended up using one of these tighter shots of her face. It was a challenge trying to get her not to smile. I like for the expression to be as neutral as possible. I don’t really like for [the smile] to add too much to the reading.

JL: I imagine trying to control a child’s expressions for the sake of a piece can be a bit of a challenge. Is this the first child you’ve had as a subject or are you accustomed to working with children?

ND: No. Actually, about two out of five of my subjects have been children. This is actually a new way of working for me. I actually was doing a lot of photography before this work and I feel like I am going back to my roots. I always drew as a kid and as I got older I wanted to be a children’s book illustrator. When I went to college, I started doing a lot of painting. The school I went to, Cooper-Union, didn’t have an illustration program or anything so I just did a lot of drawing, painting, graphic design, and then eventually started getting away from the children’s book illustration and then ended up majoring in photography in graduate school. So, I was doing photography quite a bit all through grad school and when I got out of school, I missed drawing a lot. When I went back to it, I wound up falling in love with it all over again. So this new way of working is a great way for me to combine everything---the drawing, the painting, the photography, the graphic element---everything is kind of culminated here.

JL: That’s wonderful. It sounds as though it all just happened organically---it just sort of meshed and this [pointing to an image of her work] is how it turned out. So, once the subject is selected, the photographs are taken, what happens next?

ND: Okay. Well, the whole building process---the drawing, happens in Illustrator. I start with a dark field and kind of reference the photograph, stylize the characteristics of the photograph. Once the drawing is completed, the file is sent to a large format printer and they print the work onto the backside of a large piece of plexiglass. The ink goes directly onto the plexiglass so you are kind of looking right through the plexiglass. The plexiglass is about 3/8 inches thick and are held up to the wall with little brackets.

JL: Who actually cuts out the image on the plexiglass? Is that the responsibility of the printer?

ND: Yes. The drawing starts out on that black field and embedded in the file, once I make the drawing, is an outline about an inch away from the drawing itself and is placed all the way around the drawing. The first thing that happens, the printer takes that outline and uses it for a router. The router is basically a blade that reads that outline and cuts out the shape on the plexiglass. So you have a clear sheet of plexiglass cut into the shape of the drawing. Then the drawing is printed out with the black background and everything but there is no plexiglass [outside of the outline] so all the rest of [the drawing] just sort of falls off. Its better to print it out with all the black background than to try to register the [drawings intentional] black outline with [the outline intended for the printer].

JL: So you’ve shown me your process using an upcoming work. Can you tell me about your previous work?

ND: My previous pieces were all portraits of my friend Nailah, her son Jabulani, and his dad JuJu. So I kind of saw that as sort of a trinity---man, woman, and child. And I actually did a piece with their second son, their oldest son, Kwakou. That’s the latest piece which is actually showing down in Atlanta. This image of Kwakou is the first piece that I have done that’s more of a landscape so I actually want to do some more work like this.

JL: In this particular piece I notice you’ve kept the figures as more of a silhouette, did you do that so you could focus more on the landscape, not having the figures overshadow the landscape?

ND: I did sort of. I was really trying something new. In the other pieces their faces were so prominent I just wanted to rely on these other cues to tell the story. I just wanted to experiment with how that would work. I’m pretty happy with it.

JL: It’s interesting because it reminds me of a Kara Walker piece.

ND: Actually a friend of mine said something similar. [Laughing] She said people would say that. There is actually quite a bit of detail [in the faces] when you see it closer up but from afar it does appear to be a silhouette.

So, these initial four pieces are their family. What I want to do is have these recurring characters so I think I have a good set---four good characters that I can kind of build up.

JL: So tell me, how is your work received?

ND: Pretty well. A lot of people tell me they haven’t seen anything like it before. It’s something that is sort of novel so I think it’s received pretty well.

JL: Who do you find to be your supporters? Who is buying your work?

ND: Collectors, other artists, which I find to be really flattering. Other artists seem to be interested in the work which is awesome. The collectors, as far as what they collect, I think it’s a range. One collector who is interested in my work right now, I’ve seen her collection and it’s a lot of contemporary African American artists but she also has a very large international collection. She collects work from contemporary Japanese artists and South American artists, it really ranges.

JL: How do you feel about your work?

ND: Well, I actually have trouble talking about my work. It’s a little difficult. For one thing, I think a lot of people expect you to work in this linear way---that everything has to have this very specific narrative, “what does this mean?” and “why did you…what are you trying to say here?” I don’t make the work that way so it’s hard for me to answer questions around that kind of framework. But I guess its also practice too. I haven’t done [interviews] a lot.

JL: Are you critical of your work? A perfectionist? Do you get to a point where you know a piece is done or do you just finally “have to let it go”?

ND: Oh my gosh, yes. I just had to let [the Kwakou and Wellington piece] go. I think I worked on this piece for two months or something crazy like that. Finally I just said, “That’s a wrap---it’s got to go up”. I just had to put it down. I think you get fussy and persnickety about the little things. I remember I added this little “swoosh” to the piece thinking it had to be all…but at the end of the day, no one is going to see all that…just fussing over little stuff like that. I don’t think I get crazy critical, of course you can ask someone else and they’ll say, “yeah”, but I don’t think I’m as bad as other people. I mean, when I see the Jabulani piece, as soon as I look at it I’m like “Wow, I really love that piece”. I think it’s a great piece and I don’t really have a problem saying that about it, about any of my work.

JL: So, when a work is complete you’ve come to terms with it? There’s no desire to go back and change something?

ND: Yeah, I look at it and am like, “Eh…” but it just kind of fuels me for the next piece to address that issue. I would never go back to that piece and try to fix it. Once these files are finished, I close the file. It’s in a folder on a disk and I don’t go back to it. I go back and look at them again but I don’t touch them.

JL: Given that, what is your biggest challenge when creating a work---especially one you do not intend to specifically improve upon?

ND: Well, it’s kind of difficult once you’ve created this work that has been received well and everything, it’s kind of hard to…you know before you make something to show everyone you just kind of do it. You know, you’re like “I don’t know what’s going to come out of this, I’m going to do what I want to do” and you’re kind of just feeling it. Then you put it up there and you never know what you’re going to get and everyone is like “Wow, that’s really great. When are you going to make more of this?” So then there is this expectation. It has to be good, if not better [than the previous work]. You asked me earlier if I’m hard on myself and now the truth is coming out [laughing]. I remember when I did this piece here [the Kwakou and Wellington piece] I was asking people “Is this as good as Jabulani?” and they would say, “It’s just different. I can’t say if it’s better or…” and I would say, “Oh, that means you don’t like it” [laughing].

JL: [laughing] Well, I can understand what they mean, it is ‘just different’.

ND: See, you don’t like it. [both laughing]. Yeah, but that’s the most difficult thing. That and balancing it with everything else you have going on in your life. That’s really hard. Because the ideas come, it’s the time that comes and goes. I would say that’s the most challenging. Because when I get into it, there’s no stopping it just kind of goes and goes.

JL: So, that’s what I was going to ask. I imagine you don’t work on [your pieces] full time. You do have a full time job, right? That might be the best part of working in this type of medium is that it’s portable. Essentially you can take it with you to work and work on it here and there.

ND: Actually I found that I can’t. I need more than…I need at least an hour just to sit back and look at it. That might be the most that I do with it at work is sit and look at it and make some decisions about it. When I get home, then I’ll tackle it. Then on the weekends I’m up at like 7 a.m. and am just sort of cranking all day just trying to make the best of the little bit of time that I have.

JL: So with the photography to this what is next for you? Where do you think this is going to go? Do you think its still sort of evolving?

ND: Yeah, I don’t know. My mind is sort of all over the place about this. At one time I was thinking about actually making some anime. I know nothing about computer animation at all. As far as actually producing it. But I was going to take a class or something. I actually met with a friend to try to figure some things out to see if this is the direction I want to go in. And right now, I don’t have the time to try to learn it but maybe a little later down the line. I’d actually like to try to do a little short. And then the other thing was make 3D models of some of my characters. Like big, large scale. About as tall as the ceiling [pointing to the café ceiling]. Maybe small to start [both laughing]. I like doing everything big. So, I thought about that. I thought that would be a lot of fun. I also like finding out about new materials, just figuring about how to get these things fabricated. Yeah, I think that would be cool, to go into a gallery [and see that]. It just makes me think of Takashi Murakami who makes these anime paintings but makes these giant 3D sculptures. But then I feel like, “Dang, it’s already been done”. I mean, I can do whatever I want but I would just have to figure out a way to make it my own. And then there are other things about this process that I would like to perfect as well. It’s a little delicate the way the ink is applied to the plexiglass. It can easily be scratched which is a problem when you have work traveling, you have art handlers hanging it, and hanging the brackets its all kind of precarious. There is so much opportunity for things to get damaged because that ink on the back is so exposed that there’s really no way to cover it. Aside from the 3D and the anime, I do see doing installations. Like doing this whole environment, covering all the walls with [the plexiglass paintings]. See, that’s where the 3D models would be great because you would have these paintings around the wall and then these 3D models [displayed on the floor].

JL: Well, there you go. The ideas are just coming. [laughing]

ND: [laughing] Yeah, I just don’t want to move away from this too fast. But there’s nothing that says I can’t work on more than one thing at a time.

JL: Well, It sounds like you are on your way. I have to thank you so much for your time. I’ve enjoyed speaking with you and look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.

Jaime Lowe currently resides in Washington, D.C. where she works as a Program Specialist for a Federal criminal justice agency. She is currently tasked to collaborate with art therapists in the D.C. Metro area to implement an arts treatment program for D.C.’s offender population. Jaime received her B.A. in Art History with a focus on African American Art History and received her M.A. in Museum Studies.