Organized Fashion, Sesame Street & Free Skilled: An Interview With Zulma Brooks
Zulma Brooks is an American multidisciplinary artist and designer known for her textured and tactile art.
Her work explores and uses African cultural themes that reflect and showcase her heritage.
Read on to gain insight into the creative process of our featured artist. She discusses her greatest influences, from Picasso to Kehinde Wiley & Aramis O Hamer — and why Free Skilled works for her.
Zulma BrooksSAH: Where do you get your inspiration from?
ZB: From my personal life to nature, images online to my imagination, works from artists, what I'm feeling at the moment and music. I'm also inspired by my faith and culture in whatever form beauty presents itself.
SAH: Can you use 3 words to describe your work?
ZBEnergetic, Vibrant, Emotional
SAH: What are you working on at the moment?
ZB: Cataloging my collection work from 1995 until recently, producing an online virtual exhibit of my very first pieces, searching ways to finally market and sell my originals and fine art prints of selected pieces.
SAH: How do you go about transforming an idea into a physical piece?
ZB: I think like any other creative (Filmmakers, fashion designers, musicians, dancers etc) you have to have a mood board of sorts.
Shapes, colors, themes, materials, it all has to come together in an organized fashion. For me, it comes from whatever is inspiring me for the moment, day or week. For example, I'll take a photo from something online or a magazine, choose the supplies I need and take my time piecing it together.
I'll sketch the subject, then do an underpainting on canvas then directly paint. Depending on the size of the canvas and the detail, it can take up to an hour or two or as long as two weeks.
SAH: Who are your biggest influences? Is there a particular artist that inspired you to pursue art?
ZB: Having been born and raised in NYC, I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to visit great museums like MOMA, the Guggenheim, The Whitney as well as explore galleries in Soho and the West Village. These places inspired me and fed my creativity.
My first personal inspiration was my mother, although she never finished Fashion school ( she attended Fashion Institute of Technology in 1970 while pregnant with me) she learned about design, textiles, sewing and draping which I picked up on as a child and continued to learn about especially for my first collections that have Senegalese printed fabrics and Kente cloth throughout.
As far as other artists. There are European influences such as Picasso, Mondrian, Pollock, Franz Marc, Rothko and Kandinsky.
Contemporary African American artists of the early 20th century include Alma Thomas, James Van Der Zee, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Gloucester Caliman Coxe and Charles Alston. More recently, Kehinde Wiley & Aramis O Hamer.
SAH: Do you remember the earliest memory of when you wanted to do what you do today?
ZB: As a child as early as 2 years old, I had always been imaginative and creative, a shy, quiet introverted child who spent lots of time alone with my colouring books and toys. My mother would cultivate my learning of shapes and colours with purchasing art supplies, Dr Suess books and watching Sesame Street which was an education program created for inner-city children like myself at the time.
She helped me create a doodle scrapbook that included magazine clippings and my own chaotic squiggles with titles such as "my house", "the park" and such. When I was 12, I painted garden stones plucked out of my paternal grandmother's backyard at her Brooklyn home and sold them to people on the street. I developed an interest in creative writing at 15 yrs old then around 17 I started experimenting with fashion illustration and painting.
SAH: What kind of impact do you hope that your work has?
ZB: That it inspires people to pursue their passions, that my contributions to the Arts are meaningful and recognized, cultivating creative growth in the industry especially with black and latino artists under 40 yrs old who need more role models in Fine Art specifically.
SAH: How has your style changed over time?
ZB: It's changed dramatically due to learning more about technique and color, tonality and depth.
It's definitely matured, but then you never really stop learning about how to improve your work.
SAH: Art School vs Self Taught, what's your thought?
ZB: I find creative people fall into three categories. Formally Trained, Free Skilled and Hybrid Specialist.
The former are people who aren't particularly gifted and or talented but have a strong interest in learning the basics from Art history to classic techniques.
"Free Skilled" are naturally gifted, right-brained with no particular former training except their own through trial and error. They would also have inherited talent from their parents or traits from someone in their immediate family. I fall into this second category as not only my mother but maternal grandmother and great grandmother were talented seamstresses and crafters.
The last category, "Hybrid Specialist" can be a combination of the first two or someone who developed an interest in a particular discipline and cultivated it through apprenticeships under experienced artists.
So overall, I would say that Art school and Self-taught have their place but the two aren't the only avenues of creativity to explore.
SAH: What advice would you give somebody who has just started their art career
ZB: Make certain that this is a career path that is right for you. With millions of artists on social media doing their thing and everyone wanting to be noticed and followed, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons. 70% of it is business, 30% is actual creation because marketing and promoting yourself as an artist takes lots of time, effort and patience.
Do your research, understand the industry, find your niche, what makes you stand out, get to know who's hot right now and why.
Talk to other artists, read, read, read! Start with your immediate location, what's the Art scene like where you are or the next city or state over.
Organize your time between half self-promotion (try to find as many FREE ways as you can first, don't spend money you don't have) and developing your style. Don't spend too much on supplies, there are many low cost and places online that sell in bulk, just comparison shops. Make sure your space has adequate space and light. Join free groups on social media, follow artists whose work you like, take a class, follow artists on youtube teaching techniques and sharing their stories and most of all, take care of yourself! Mind, body and spirit. A healthy creative is a Happy one.