artist Archives - The Race Card Project

Hey, you’re good at math, right?

January 18, 2023January 18, 2023 American, animator, artist, Asian, assume, cretive, Houston, Lonestar College-University Park, math, Quoc Du, smart, stereotype, TX

Quoc Du,
Houston, TX

Being Asian American, there are certain expectations placed upon me. I’m expected to be smart, I’m expected to have good grades and excel in all my classes, I’m expected to acquire a career as a doctor or a dentist. I’m expected to do this and that, all because I am Asian. All these expectations mean nothing to me because at the end of the day these expectations placed upon my head are not my own. I’m not smart, I’m of average intelligence, My grades are good at the moment, but they can easily dip just like anyone else could, I failed two of my classes last semester. I don’t wish to pursue a career in the medical field, I’d rather be an artist, an illustrator, an animator, someone who creates things. I’m creative, I think a lot and say little, I am my own person. I am not the expectations placed upon my head by strangers and I never will be. I am Asian American and no, I’m not good at math.

Make art to inform us all.

July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 art, artist, Clare Hilger, enrich, inorm, teacher

Clare Hilger

As an artist and art teacher I believe art can make us consider important issues in our world though visual means impacting us intellectually aesthetically, and emotionally. We enrich our lives through the sharing of art.

“So, what are you?” they ask.

July 6, 2020July 6, 2020 artist, Chinese, class, daughter, gardener, IL, Italy, job, Karen Gephart Altschul, mother, reader, sister, teacher, Vernon Hills, what are you, wife

Karen Gephart Altschul,
Vernon Hills, IL.

I was five, the first time I can remember somebody asking me that question. “What are you? Chinese or something?” Huh? Um, what are you talking about? I’ve been asked this question, “what are you”, on the first day at a job. A girl from China asked me if I’m Chinese, too. I was spending a semester in Florence, Italy, and my teacher stopped in the middle of class to ask me that question. I said I was American. I thought maybe, just maybe, that’s what he meant since there were students from many countries. He couldn’t possibly be asking me about race, when there were Korean kids, Mexican kids, all variety of people in this class. “No, no. What ARE you? You know: what are your origins?”. Well, I was born in Iowa….but I knew what he meant. I am a lot of things: daughter, sister, mother, wife, artist, reader, gardener. I am also a lot of things that make up why I look like I do: English, Welsh, Scottish, German, Mexican, Yaqui. “Ooooooooh. So that’s it,” they say. “You’re an Indian. Or a Native American, if you prefer that. That makes sense.” I’m so glad.

I’m a Bohemian refugee from Negroland.

June 20, 2020June 20, 2020 African Slave, artist, cultural diversity, different, Dummerston, Margot Jefferson's Negroland, middle class, Negroland, Opeyemi Parham, parent, refugee, shadows, tolerance, VT

Opeyemi Parham,
Dummerston, VT.

Both my Middle Class, African slave descent parents were artists. So my life had shadows from Margot Jefferson’s Negroland, but great differences, on tolerance of cultural diversity and expectations.

No Color Leaves The World Plain.

October 30, 2018October 30, 2018 artist, Boston, Color, colorless, diversity, LesleyAnn Moore, MA, painter, palette, plain

LesleyAnn Moore,
Boston, MA.

Race is beautiful. Diversity fills the globe and allows freedom of expression through its inhabitants. We are born already filled with differences. Our color is our culture, ethnicity, and race. The world is a painter’s palette ready to disperse every shade imaginable. Once we recognize and become accepting of other colors, we learn how to blend into many difference shades. No color leaves the world plain and with each step taken to welcoming other races, we allow room for them to do the same. I am proud of my color because I know this world was not meant to exist with people who are exactly the same.

Acceptance – that’s what it’s all about.

July 9, 2018 1960, Acceptance, art, artist, Beatrice Goodman, Becket, David Burliuk, Godfather, immigrant, MA, paint, Russian, that's what it's all about

Beatrice Goodman,
Becket, MA.

!n 1960 my Godfather, the artist David Burliuk once told me that ” soon everybody will be shades of tan – a good thing”. He was a Russian immigrant who painted (and saw) people differently.

I am grace, power and inextinguishable

April 27, 2018August 18, 2020 actor, artist, Brooklyn, civil rights, free, grace, inextinguishable, New York City, NY, Power, Ryan Brooke Taylor, The Brooklyn Museum, witness

Ryan Brooke Taylor,
New York City, NY.
Collected from: WITNESS: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties at The Brooklyn Museum

My experience as a black male artist is directly related to the sacrifices and gains made by those who participated, in any and every way in the civil rights movement. They have made me free.

I’m simply a Black male Actor carving out my life in America.

I believe that who I am as a person; my integrity, my ethics, my humanity, these aspects of self are reflected in Everything I do.

Right now I have the honor of being in a wonderful production of Tracey Letts’s “Superior Donuts”. A play about race, class, and the american dream as played out in the gentrifying neighborhood of north- side Chicago.

To me, living a conscious life today is a revolutionary act. My existence as a Black, Gay, working Artist is in itself a Politic. It’s seems to me that the important questions are: What kind of neighbor am I? What hind of partner am I? What kind of citizen am I? What kind of artist am I? What kind of human being am I?

And the answers lie not in what I think and even less in what I say, but in what I do.

I am not just a Mexican

October 8, 2016 artist, daughter, friend, Mexican, more than, Race, reader, USA, writer

USA.

I am an artist
I am a reader
I am a writer
I am a friend
I am a sister
I am a daughter
I am more than my race.

Growning up as a hispanic in a white community

July 2, 2013 adopted, artist, ct, growing up, Hispanic, James Meyer, Salisbury, white

James Meyer
Salisbury, CT

I was adopted and became an artist, all of my paintings portray white children when my wife asked me why, I realized I never saw anyone that looked like me growing up.

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