Preparing to Interview John Outterbridge
You don’t know John Outterbridge? You probably are younger than me and I’m going to do a little something about you getting to know him. You might be with strong African features and you might have exclaimed something like, “Why can’t we just get together and do something constructive?” When ‘we’ say things like that, it is often based on the assumption that Black people have been permanently and eternally dysfunctional instead of being collectively on crack for the last 35 years.
A man like John Outterbridge and his creative constructiveness may be unexpected for you.
Anyway… the people who went to King/Drew Medical Magnet High School, since the day it first opened in the 1980s, should know John Outterbridge. This is because John Outterbridge was the director of Watts Towers Arts Center. I remember going to Jazz festivals and other events long before these events (like The African Market Place hit the West Side).
And, speaking of the West Side, it was my error to confuse John Outterbridge with a guy like Ben Caldwell. This essentially means that I would have to go through way too many explanations as to why I would want to conduct an interview—especially when someone ‘else’ (who probably lives in Santa Monica) is expected to do it.
So here are a few sketches of questions for Mr. Outterbridge while I work up the powers to phone his sprawling studio off Slauson:
- I have read his 1973 Smithsonian interview where he repeatedly and deliberately questions the definition of “art” itself. It should be interesting to ask him about the fact that there are no words for “art” in many, many pre-colonial/pre-Islamic African languages—yet the peoples who speak these languages seem to have produced copious amounts of what “we” call “art.”
- I would like to show him some stills from The Wiz (1978)—especially the scenes with Nipsey Russell and see whether he sees some of his work in there. Other movies should be included here as well.
- Back that 1973 Smithsonian interview, Outterbridge proposed a community project that would be outlandish and considered impossible by the “standards” of my generation of artists. It may be informative to find out whether Mr. Outterbridge notices a marked difference in community activity and self-starting in my age group and younger (the crack and post-crack generations).