Last Updated on June 29, 2022 by BVN
Phyllis Kimber Wilcox |
Charles Bibbs is a renowned artist, an inspiration and a man who likes to laugh.
Widely known for the art he creates for concerts and music festivals as well as his depictions of the African American experience, he is a man who is creating a space for Black culture to be shared and experienced by all.
The Charles Bibbs African American Cultural Center will not only feature his work but also the work of other artists in different mediums. The Black Voice News recently spoke with Bibbs about his work and the hope he holds for his new venture the Charles Bibbs African American Cultural Center.
BVN:
It’s an honor to speak with you. Your work is amazing.
CB:
Thank you for that.
BVN:
BVN is really interested in your process and anxious to learn more about the museum which means more people will have a chance to see your work.
CB:
It’s more than that though, it’s an African American Cultural Center. It’s not a Charles Bibbs gallery, so it comes full service. It’s music, it’s literature, it’s spoken word, it’s sculpture, it’s visual arts. All the art disciplines including singing, instruments, anything associated with art in a cultural center, we glorify.
BVN:
That’s amazing. Tell us more.
CB:
“We glorify the history of [our culture] and we also make sure we apply training and that we apply appreciation in terms of showing off our culture. So, it’s a full service cultural center.
You know cultural centers are like churches, you must remember that. Church is where you go to praise your God. A cultural center is where you go to edify and praise your culture, who you are as a people.
We’re going to have a library. Anything you want [to know] about African American history will be there. It’s a full service edification of African Americans.
BVN:
How did the idea come about to create the cultural center?
CB:
Well, [it took] a little tenacity and a little politics all rolled into one. I was at city hall as usual, complaining about things. The City of Riverside wants to be noted as a destination, not just a drive through city. This makes sense because you drive through Riverside to get to every place. You drive through Riverside to Palm Springs, Disneyland, any other points of interest in southern California. Most of the time you’re going to drive through Riverside County and never stop there for anything.
CB:
I was there at city hall saying you’ve had my art in the Mayor’s office for fourteen years [and] never had an interview, never had a feature. They were just enjoying my art for fourteen years and I guess I just got a little fed up. I said [expletive], I need my art back. This art doesn’t come free.
BVN:
Bibbs chuckled.
CB:
So, I decided to take my art back. But, the next time I went [to city hall] they had an award for me, “Outstanding Citizen in the Arts”.
One of the councilmen came up with a very unique idea, but I know where it came from. We had just experienced an upheaval of attention about the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (The Cheech).
CB:
Cheech had $40 million worth of Chicano art but he didn’t know what to do with it. He got this idea–it was a bright idea. Politically, it was dynamite. $40 million, the largest collection of Chicano art in the world and he offered it to the City of Riverside. And he said, ‘I’m not looking for a desk. I’m not looking for anything other than a home for my collection.’The city of Riverside jumped on that [offer] so fast with six million dollars. ‘Let’s do this.’
BVN:
Bibbs chuckled again, more brightly this time.
CB:
When the state of California found out about it, they threw in another $10 million. These numbers maybe a little off but if it is off, it’s more. I heard those two figures but I believe it could have been more . . . a lot more.
On top of that, the city of Riverside said, ‘We’re going to give you our public library– 19,000 square feet– to house this collection. We’re going to remodel it. Dress it up. Make it look beautiful. And then, on top of that, we’re going to build us an $18 million dollar state-of-the-art library,’which is located downtown. On top of that, they needed someone to run the Cheech so they enlisted the Riverside Art Museum.
Then, somebody came up with an idea, but it wasn’t as profound as the Cheech. I’m going to go on record to say we [Black people] represent maybe six percent or less of the population in the City of Riverside but this one councilman came up with the idea, ‘Why don’t we create an African American Cultural Center and call it the Bibbs?’
BVN:
How did you respond?
CB:
I jumped at that. I understood the politics. I understand very well why The Cheech is in play in Riverside. But when they offered the opportunity for an African American Cultural Center, I started looking at the demographics not just in Riverside but the entire Inland Empire. If Riverside wants to be a destination by bringing an African American Cultural Center to [the city] it is the best thing they can ever do, because now they’ll be getting visitors from all over the Inland Empire where our numbers are significantly higher. They’ll be coming to Riverside to the Cultural Center. See what I’m saying?
Everything makes sense. It makes sense to me because I wouldn’t want an African American Cultural Center in Riverside only to satisfy six percent of the population. I want a hundred percent of the Inland Empire to come to Riverside which satisfies their edict [that] we want to be a destination [city]. The biggest art center in southern California–when they get the Cheech up and running, when they get the Bibbs up and running–will be Riverside. So that’s the name of that tune.”
It’s amazing how things work out. If you look at it politically, the city needs revenue in terms of visitors, hotel occupancy, food, that type of thing. By bringing the Cheech to Riverside . . . bonanza! By bringing the Bibbs to Riverside . . . bonanza!
The center of arts in the Inland Empire will be Riverside, California.
BVN:
And, a part of that will be the Bibbs.
CB:
That’s what I’m talking about. The Bibbs is the African American Cultural Center. The Cheech will be the Chicano American Cultural Center. This idea is so profound.
We just got a call from the Mission Inn, the famous Mission Inn that has been a destination in Riverside for decades. The famous Mission Inn, came to us, the Bibbs committee, and said we want to extend you the opportunity to do a full fledged African American art exhibition in the Mission Inn. Can you imagine that? It’s going to be this November.
It’s going to be a six month exhibition of African American art curated by yours truly, Charles Bibbs. We [also] have a Civil Rights Institute that’s being built right now. I’ve been enlisted to curate an exhibition of African American artists at the Civil Rights Instititute’s grand opening. So, all eyes will be on Riverside for African American art in November 2022.
Two major exhibitions will simultaneously be honoring African American culture at two of the biggest institutions in Riverside–the Mission Inn and the Civil Rights Institute.
BVN:
That sounds really exciting. I would like to interview you again closer to the time of the exhibition.
CB:
I would love to because we want to bring thousands of people in the Inland Empire to Riverside to honor that exhibition leading to the installation and building of the Charles A. Bibbs African American Cultural Center.
BVN:
I would like to ask you about who you want to come to the cultural center and what you hope they take away from the experience?
CB:
I want you to come and people like you. I also want other nationalities to come to learn the dynamics and the greatness of African American culture. What [helps] dispel racism is knowledge. Knowing about people and their culture, their habits, the things they desire and what drives them. So it’s not just for us, African Americans, it’s for all people to come and learn. It’s for us because [although] we already know who we are, it is for us to come and enjoy and possibly learn more even about ourselves. That’s what it’s all about.
BVN:
It is going to be a multimedia experience?
CB:
Yes. It’s going to cover all the arts that identify our culture– music, dance, visual arts, literature, every artistic expression that’s about a people, is culture . . . is educating culture. We practice our culture by being who we are, the things that were passed down from generation to generation–how we [build and sustain] our families, how we raise our kids, how we dress, how we worship, how we act in our daily lives that makes us alike. That’s what we’re celebrating. I left out one very important thing, theater. That’s a very important discipline.
BVN:
I’ve heard you were a lover of music in general, and jazz in particular. How does that inspire your work?
CB:
I’m known for representing in art, lot of the major venues where events happen locally. They come to me and say, ‘We’re giving this event and we need a poster to advertise it.’ I’ve done this for just about every major Jazz and Blues festival in Southern California and I’ve done a lot nationally, as well. I’ve even done Blues cruises and cruises about [other] music. That’s a little side bar I’ve been doing to help support music venues. A lot of that helps support me as an artist as well because we basically give these posters away as mementoes. Most of them end up in men’s, what they call, their man cave. I get a lot of feedback from men who’ve been collecting my posters for years.
BVN:
Do you play music while you work?
CB:
Music is a part of the inspiration. When I sit down, depending on what I’m painting, the music is a part of that experience. It activates the creative juices and allows things to come out that you wouldn’t even imagine.
BVN:
Can you tell me a little bit about your process when you make a work of art.
CB:
It comes [from] deep down in your subconscious mind. Creativity is a fuel, it’s an exhaustible fuel. . . it runs out. That’s how the creative process works. You can’t go on endlessly. When artists, whether its writing or painting, force themselves, that’s when they ask for trouble. That’s when they start falling apart. That’s when some artists really go crazy because they don’t allow themselves to refuel. The creative process is an exhaustible fuel and you can run to the point where you’re empty. So you’ve got to go to the creative gas station and refill.
BVN:
What is your creative gas station. How do you refuel?
CB:
I get out and maybe walk or get out and go to a bar with some friends, or do something that will get me away from what I was creating. That’s the way the human mind works. There’s nothing unusual about that. It doesn’t just apply to me as an artist. It applies to anybody doing anything that is creative. It’s important to take time to rest and then get back to it. That is when all the answers come back to you. When God figured that one out, he figured out a good one.
BVN:
I’ve read that you want the viewer to engage themselves with your work. Looking at your art is like experiencing a conversation between you and the viewer. How would you describe that interaction? Do you imagine what a viewer might see? How does that work for you?
CB:
The creativity is personal. It comes only from the creator but with one slight deviation, and that’s motivation. How do you get motivated– by listening. My wife can come up over my shoulder while I’m creating and say, ‘That’s interesting’. That’s the only thing she needs to say, ‘that’s interesting’, and no more. That lets me know I’m on track. So there is a dialogue that goes on with reality while you’re under some trance creatively. Sometimes when you get so focused on what you’re creating that you’re really in another world, any distraction in that period– when you’re in that groove–it’s easy to break that groove [and] it’s hard to come back to it. It takes a little work to gin that up again.
BVN:
What’s your favorite medium to work in?
CB:
Acrylics because acrylics are so forgiving. You can paint over it, you can take it off. With other mediums the discipline is really tight like with oils. They take a long time to dry where as acrylics dry instantly.
BVN:
Your work to create a narrative around the African American experience has long been noted. With the challenges facing the Black community today, what do you find most difficult about continuing that narrative?
CB:
The thing about painting about who you are [is] you never run out of subjects to paint. Civil Rights is one subject where there are endless things you can paint about, [including the] stories in our daily lives that are associated with [it]. There’s an endless supply of things in our daily lives, our habits, our customs, our churches and how we sing, the different music disciples that are culturally related to our behavior like the Blues, Jazz, Rock and Roll. Even the way we study and the way we educate our kids and all our philosophies about what we do from day to day, are all subjects for an artist like me to paint from.
We have such a rich, rich culture. I think our culture is so rich because we endured much adversity and all that adversity created things.
Coming from slavery [for example when you look at] that adjustment period and consider the lyrics, ‘Papa was a rolling stone, wherever he laid his hat was his home’, you can translate that into reality because that’s what happened in Reconstruction when we were trying to find our way out of slavery. It was considered a survival period but it was an adjustment period. Those things were critical to learning. We learn from our mistakes, we learn from the things that we do good–that equals culture. Everything in our culture is not good, but everything in our culture was necessary. As an artist, I have to translate all that and make it digestible, palatable for you to understand.
BVN:
When you come up with these concepts, when you decide to create a piece using ‘the work’ as a symbol, how do you come up with the faces you paint because they are so rich and so textured? Do you have models?
CB:
I use models from time to time but not a lot. Those faces and those expressions come from deep in my imagination.