(calm music)

- As a child, my parents had reproductions

in their house,

and some of them were really corny.

(hole puncher snipping)

(calm music)

But in the guest room, they hung

a textured painting by Van Gogh.

So I scrambled up on the
chair and I touched it.

That's what stuck to me,

that painting would have
a kind of texture to it.

(calm music)

It's almost a kind of exhilaration.

The process of being an artist

I find very fulfilling.

I feel a sense of freedom.

(calm music)

The templates are on the wall.

That's great, yeah.

- We're decorating the rooms.

- Oh, I like that, I like that.

(Howardena laughing)

- Do you wanna put some
shapes on this one?

- Mm-hm, let's see, that way?

I like that way.
- Yeah.

Or that way?

- I kind of like this.

- [Erin] You kind of like that?

- Yeah, 'cause I'm very,
I love this wiggly thing,

and I'm tempted to put a shape like this,

but without that change there

on this edge, in here.

- [Erin] Oh, okay.

- My intention is that it
would pull over into this.

- Gotcha, yeah, okay.

- And then with this,

I think I would like to put that up.

- [Erin] Okay.

- 'Cause I really want that
dark to come through something.

- [Erin] Okay.

- I see abstraction as
an intuitive expression

of someone's experience,
both good and both bad.

At least you get the general idea.

Let's see.

(calm music)

When you work with abstraction,

you're working with your own
intuitive feelings about space,

color, line, shape.

Its purpose is almost a way of opening up

our thought process,

because you're reading
someone else's language

and you're interpreting it
through your own language.

Did you wanna do a painting
that was a dimensional?

Did you wanna do a painting
that was about numbers?

I felt challenged by that.

The circular format is a
kind of internal gravity.

It's so compact and you can make something

that has a lot of tension in it.

It's an iconic form in nature.

And I could look at
the planets, the stars,

the moon, molecules,

it's all around us.

(calm music)

I'm fascinated by the circle.

(calm music)

And so back in the early seventies,

I started spraying
dots, through templates,

which I made by punching out file folders,

and I would spray through the template.

(calm music)

(paint spraying)

I make the basic drawings
for the spray paintings.

The studio manager, Erin,
handles the spray equipment.

(calm music)

My father was a science math person,

and I don't remember
getting a doll at Christmas,

but I was given a microscope.

I was very curious,

and I used a dropper to put
some drinking water on a slide

and looked under the microscope

and there were all these
microbes swimming around

in the drinking water.

And it was all kind of at
random, they were just all over.

(calm music)

It was like drama 'cause
things would collide

or move around, or they
wouldn't run into each other.

And there was no particular reason

other than they were just in water.

So that microscope made a difference

because I saw things in motion at random.

(calm music)

Oh my Lord.

Oh my God, Virgil.

Here I am with Nancy.

I don't know how old I was.

Oh, this is amazing,
it's my parents' house

on Wayne Avenue in Philadelphia.

That's incredible.

This is my father.

57.

He loved reading.

April 14th, my birthday.

(pictures rustling)

Oh God, it's really interesting, that's,

my grandmother's house.

Oh, this is in Hamilton,
Ohio, which is southern Ohio.

And my grandmother had a
little bit of land and a house,

and she grew her own food.

I didn't know if there were
grocery stores in Hamilton.

(calm music)

I was triggered in terms
of my memory of circles.

My parents and I went to Ohio
to visit my mother's mother.

We drove to Northern Kentucky

and there was a root beer stand,

and my father liked root beer,

and we were given chilled mugs
the same as everyone else,

except there was a big
red circle on the bottom.

And that basically meant that

these were the utensils that
you used for non-whites.

(calm music)

And that kind of shocked me.

For years, I keep noticing circles.

I mean, just the shock of seeing that.

(calm music)

I like drawing numbers, but I have no idea

what meaning they have.

So I call them nonsense numbers.

It came from seeing my
father write numbers

as a mathematician.

I think they're beautiful,
beautiful things to see.

It's an essential part of our life.

It's almost like our heart.

Without our heart, we have no life,

where everything's numbers.

(calm music)

- You feel good with your dot colors?

- Oh yeah, I love it,
I love this pea soup.

(people talking simultaneously)

- Howardena, you used to
handpunch all of your dots.

- With one single hole punch.

(Howardena laughing)

This is my third year at Dieu Donné.

- [Woman] This is your third year?

- Third yeah, yeah.

- [Woman] Over a hundred pieces?

- Hundred pieces, yeah, yeah.

Well, I looked at a sample of colors

and I like this, I call
it like pea soup green.

(everyone laughing)

And then with the purple blue,

and then it goes from like dark to light.

I like the gradation.

- This might be silly question,

but how Howardena, did you ever think

that you would be this big?

- Are you kidding?

I don't even believe it.

I don't believe it now.

You know, when Amy sent that
text to me about Hong Kong.

I was like, oh my God.

(Howardena laughing)

(calm music)

It's almost like it's too late.

It sounds strange, but,

when I would've appreciated it,

I guess when I was younger,

I felt isolated.

At that point I didn't have a dealer.

Some of the rejections would
be from white collectors.

Why should I buy an abstract
work from a Black person

when I can get it from a white person?

This is what Black
artists were running into.

I worked at the Museum of
Modern Art for about 12 years.

It was mainly white and male.

Hostile questions too were coming from

some of the women art historians.

"What did I do to qualify
for my job at the Modern?"

- You know, you really must be paranoid.

Those things never happened to me.

I don't know anyone who's had
those things happen to them.

But then of course, they're
free, white, and 21,

so they wouldn't have
that kind of experience.

- Free, White, and 21 was a
video piece that I did in 1980,

which was around the
time when I had resigned

from my job at the Modern.

- However, she felt that a white student

with lower grades would go further,

therefore she would not put
me in the accelerated course.

- Well, I was kind of annoyed
at the white women's movement,

and I also wanted to deal
with some of the racist stuff

in the art world.

And so I decided to be myself

and then to dress myself up as
a white woman criticizing me.

- You know, I hear your experiences

and I think, well, it's
gotta be in her art.

That's the only way we'll validate you.

And it's gotta be in your art in the way

that we consider valid.

If it isn't in a, you know, used in a way,

if your symbols aren't used in
a way that we use them, then,

we won't acknowledge them.

In fact, you won't exist
until we validate you.

And, you know, if you don't
wanna do what we tell you to do,

then we'll find other tokens.

- And I just did this narrative

and it goes back and
forth, and at the end,

I pull off like I'm pulling off my skin,

but it's almost like I'm
pulling off another layer.

It was first shown in a show Ana Mendieta

that I put together at A.I.R.

It was way in the back and
I had a little metronome

so it would tick as you watch the video,

and the whites freaked out.

They went wild.

They were not happy with it.

It's been shown in Berlin,
Scotland, and Ireland,

and the Modern had it on view for a while,

which is kind of ironic.

(Howardena giggling)

- Well, you ungrateful little,

after all we've done for you.

(calm music)

- Even though early on, my
work faced a lot of rejection,

I just kept going.

I just didn't give up.

You know, I just kept pushing

and the work matured in spite
of a hostile environment.

I was used to the work
being rejected or mocked.

I mean, it's an irony it's
the same work I'm showing now.

Literally, some of them
are the same pieces

and it's the opposite reaction.

(calm music)

I seem to have more inhibiting
physical boundaries,

but the art side of me is still there.

And I can step out of my
own restricted container

and be able to express what I feel,

whether I'm limited physically or not.

It's a life source for me.

It's just, I don't get
tired of being an artist.

I get tired of other things,

but then I feel like I can
come here and make art.

And it's not born of
expecting recognition,

I'm just doing my work.

(calm music)