Interview 25 // Verneda Lights

Hello, my name is Colin Goldberg, and today is Friday, February 3, 2023. That's 2-3-2-3. I'm here today with artist Verneda Lights, and we're going to be having a little conversation, and I'm going to start out with some general questions. Vernada, could you tell us a little bit about your background, such as where you were born, where you live and practice now, and your cultural influences?

Oh, certainly. It's my pleasure to be here today, Colin. I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, and I currently live and practice and grew up in Port Royal, South Carolina. Both areas, both places are part of the South Carolina Lowcountry, and it is known to be the home of the Gullah Geechee Nation, which is a community, a nation, actually, of African Americans whose ancestry dates back to the times of slavery, shadow slavery here in the United States. And it involves geographically the coastal areas from Greenville, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida.

Verneda Lights

And the Blacks, of course, were brought here as forced laborers, to run the indigo, rice, and cotton plantations that built so much of the wealth of the American South and of the nation as a whole. And actually, when combined with the Caribbean plantations and other areas, such a system actually built the wealth of Europe and the United States that would last for centuries.

Could you talk a little bit about your cultural influences? I know that you had told me some of your stories related to musicians and specifically some of the jazz musicians that I'm a big fan of. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that.

Okay. Okay. Well, let me say a little bit more about being Gullah. Being Gullah means that we have African retentions in our culture, and that influences music, visual art, because there's Gullah art, which is a genre. And I think that's a really important part of the culture. And I think that's a really important part of the culture. And I think that's a really important part of the genre of art. And it also influences our crafts, rag quilts and whatnot.

Verneda Lights

The African attitude towards art is that art should be utilitarian. So we see here in the West that there's art for art's sake. But the African concept of art from time immemorial, and which has flowed over into the Lowcountry as African retentions, is that art is a form of art. And so, you know, we have a lot of art, but we also have a lot of art that is utilitarian. So we see here in the West that there's art for art's sake. But the African concept of art is that art should be functional.

Verneda Lights

So my art, artistic influence, Gullah wise, is infused with this philosophy that the art must do something. So I started creating art, because I needed to make sense of what was happening to the changing world. I had retired from the practice of medicine and 9-11 happened and I had a series of dreams, premonitions actually, that such an event would occur here in the United States. And I was, you know, somewhat rattled by being thrown into that reality unexpectedly.

Verneda Lights

And I needed to de-stress from the trauma of going from one profession into another, not quite knowing what was going to happen, you know, in the future. And then to be, have to work through or process the dangers. Nascent dangers of terrorism. I had to process that as a citizen and as a physician also. And I had an experience as a poet. I had published a book of poetry titled Dog Moon. It's published by Sunbury Press in Brooklyn, New York. And I tried writing poetry about it, and I couldn't find the words. All I could write was, the one sentence I wrote was, there are no words for this. And so I was basically stuck and stumbled upon graphic design programs in my brother's computer.

Verneda Lights

And the paint, you know, it's rinky-dink. But it opened the window to 16 million different colors. And that intrigued me scientifically. How can such a small thing open up this diaspora of colors? And in a way that was totally unrelated to what I knew of an artist's studio. You know, we're not talking paints and fumes and turpentine and brushes. And my artist friend, my friends had bemoaned the fact how expensive it was to be an artist. And I once encountered a brush that cost 80 bucks. And that was like totally ridiculous. But I was fascinated by the fact that this was free. It was already inside the computer. I didn't have to pay a fee for it. And I decided to explore it. And in the process, I found the colors and I created shapes and initially abstract. And then I started to create art tiles and textile designs.

Verneda Lights

What I focused on. Because I wanted the art to be useful. Not just to de-stress me. But to actually be something applicable. But at that point in time, the designs that I created, there was not a technology that I knew of that would allow me to actually create the product that I envisioned. Nonetheless, I kept the images that I created. And created a collection that I titled Beauty for Ashes.

Verneda Lights

And it was a 9-11 art memorial. And I have some of those, at least one of those images to show to you. And later on, I segregated from doing textile designs and tile designs into doing faces when I encountered caregiving stress. I grew older, retired from the practice of medicine, of course. And then in the process of finding out what I was going to do after medicine, I understood and thought about and pondered and meditated on what would happen to my parents who were, you know, aging. And I had a brother who had a disability.

Verneda Lights

And I made up my mind to put myself in a position where I could help them as they grew older and faced various infirmities, which indeed did happen. So that was another way of becoming useful. And in the process of doing that, I encountered stress. And I also needed to document what was happening because the caregiving situation is something where there's rapid changes taking place. And I needed to document that. And I started to then focus on faces.

Verneda Lights

Again, art becoming functional. Not only to make it complex and multifaceted to document many aspects of the story in a single image, but also to relieve stress, you know, be personally valuable and also to document my culture and what was happening to my family. So my culture pretty much influenced me to find ways to use art, you know, not just to do art for art's sake, but how is this going to be useful for me? And also we have the color, the aspect of color and how I use shapes and whatnot that are involved.

Verneda Lights

The Gullah culture also allowed me to think holistically. In Western civilization, there's either or dichotomy set up. Either you do this or you do that. I, you know, didn't really agree with all of that, which is why when I was in medical school, I continued writing poetry and performing poetry because to me, art is a medicine and medicine is an art.

Verneda Lights

And words are medicines. You can say something to somebody that can make them very angry, and there's a whole host of chemical reactions that cascade from that interaction, from what you hear. You can say loving words to someone and release a whole flood of positive hormones that give you positive feelings and whatnot. So that to me meant that you had to, as a physician, embrace all these aspects in the process of becoming a doctor.

Verneda Lights

Dr.! Dr. K. K. I had that holistic vision and as my artistic career evolved, I continued to see the medicinal, the healing, the synthesis and whatnot. And that likewise is a Gullah influences in African retention. It gave me that philosophical focus. It made it possible for me to remain balanced on stage performing with the band and working with Philadelphia jazz musicians. Dr. K. K. And also while in a clinical setting. It was challenging, no doubt about it. It was very challenging, but it allowed me to express myself in a way that I otherwise would not have had because doctors just don't cut loose. They don't get on stage and that's why I'm here.

Verneda Lights

But I'm here to help to help that kind of process. So I'm here to help you and I'm here to help you to get on stage. And I'm here to help you to get on stage. And I'm here to help you to get on stage. And I'm here to help you to get on stage. And I'm here to help you to get on stage. And I'm here to help you to get on stage. And I'm here to help you to get on stage. In a court setting.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And really interesting, kind of like, you know, transition from one profession into another. Was there any particular event that made you say, you know, I want to be an artist or a specific point in time where you really made a decision to make a change in sort of how you identified maybe or how you went about your day?

Well, when I was 10 years old, when I was three years old, I told my parents I was going to be a doctor. Okay. I had never seen a Black physician. I had never seen a Black nurse. My dad was in the Marine Corps. I had asthma, so I saw a lot of doctors, but they were all white and I didn't really see women nurses.

Verneda Lights

I saw corpsmen. Okay. So they were like male nurses, so to speak. And, but I knew I was going to be a physician and I knew it was possible. There's no doubt in my mind. And throughout school, I was very dedicated to my studies because I knew that I had to do well in school in order to go to medical school. And that was my goal.

Verneda Lights

When I was 10 years old, I told my parents that, you know, I'm going to write, I'm going to be a writer. And they read with that too. No one ever told me you can't be doing all of that. They didn't tell me, you're a little Black girl. You can't be a doctor. They didn't say, we don't know any writers or we can't help you. What not. I had siblings, six siblings. And I became acquainted with the world of poetry. You know, people, traditional poets like Edgar Allan Poe and James Weldon Johnson.

Verneda Lights

And I started to write poetry when I was in high school. And I became the, copy editor for the yearbook. So I guess that was my first published poetry. But I always saw it as being part of myself. You know, something that I needed to express.

Gotcha. And who do you think would be your primary influences if you had to identify them as far as, artistic influences go?

You know, I collected art before I became an artist. I was a patron of the arts.

Okay.

And in my practice, I had many artistic friends, you know, as a poet from my med school years and my Bryn Mawr years. And I knew that they had a hard way to go financially. And I was also sensitive to the needs of musicians and whatnot because of my involvement with the Philadelphia jazz musicians who introduced me to the world of performance poetry. And I saw how they struggled. And I understood that jazz giants such as John Coltrane had passed away, perhaps unnecessarily. Coltrane had a stroke. He had high blood pressure. You know, so he was stressed.

Verneda Lights

So, you know, it's, they impressed upon me the need to do something about it. So what I would do is I knew that many of the artists did not have insurance and could not afford my services out of pocket. So I allowed them to put their, hang their artwork in my practice. And that became their insurance policy.

Verneda Lights

The artwork that was hanging in my practice allowed them to come and see me and get treatment just like anybody else. And when the artwork came down, if they didn't replace it, fine. You know, sometimes I had to plead to hold on to some of the parts that were favorites of mine. But I would say that I was influenced by the music scene in Philadelphia.

Verneda Lights

Unbeknownst to me, it had translated. It had translated into a visual impulse of sorts. And certainly these musicians, they were so heavy. And I used to sit down and talk to them about the music. It was never just music. It was the music. Okay. And they had mathematical formulas and philosophies about music and what it's about and how it affects the world around you. The cosmos, so to speak. There were people like Sun Ra, you know, Bootsy Barnes. I mean, so I was influenced by the funk, which was Gullah, you know, the basic drumbeat, but also the Philadelphia jazz man. And I would add that I was influenced philosophically by the other artists in the Philadelphia area.

Verneda Lights

Because they had a very deep love for people. And they translated this into. You know, incredible works on canvas. You know, the Church of the Advocate at 18th and Diamond Streets was the heart of North Philadelphia. Very hard, hard, hard ghetto, you know, situation had jazz vespers. And they also had the sanctuary itself function as an art gallery, which is another manifestation of the functionality of art attitude that comes from, you know, having an attitude towards the art world. And so I would say that those were two major influences. I can't single out any one particular person. I can't say Romare Bearden influenced me, although I admired his work.

Verneda Lights

And I have artists friends who were definitely influenced by him and mentored by him. But I did not have that particular experience. But I would say the philosophy I absorbed something in the ether. And I would say that was my inspiration.

And I would say that was my inspiration.

That allowed me to when I saw color. All of a sudden, you know, this other thing just started happening.

Interesting. Okay. So before we, you know, look at your work, would you want to speak to your process a little bit in terms of I'm sure there's different sort of streams of consciousness is when you're making work.

But it is. Well, when I started, I didn't know what I was doing. I was not computer literate. Okay. I had to teach myself to become computer literate. So I dissected software programs like paint, paint shop pro. Also, Photoshop. I dissected their command structure. And then experience what each thing, each instrument, each tool in this parameter. Was capable of doing.

Interesting choice of words. Dissected coming from.

Yeah. Retired physician. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I had to dissect it. I did one thing at a time. It seemed these little trees of influences like nerves and tendrils going out into other commands and interacting and whatnot. And I. Sat down. And with the canvas, the blank electronic. The canvas and. Pick colors. That went. You know, had to have a vibe with it. Oh, I moved the cursor around into like something showed up in the little box. They went. And I was like, okay, that's it. Okay.

Do you listen to music when you work visually?

I don't.

Interesting.

That is not the same musical. Project. Processes aren't going on. But.

Gotcha. It.

It resonates. Okay. And I select the colors. And then I started random placements. And applying shapes and lines and. And I sort of just fugue out. In front of the electronic canvas. And. There's a flow. And early on. I likened using computer software programs. To. Vulcan mind meld. And Star Trek. You know. I mind your mind. My thoughts to your thoughts. Right. I would get really close. To the computer.

Verneda Lights

And. In a way project. And try to feel what was coming back at me. And I do believe that. These programs. Many of them are intuitive. And. You can't have intuitive. And. You can't have intuitive programs. Unless there's something to intuit. From. So that would mean. That my mind is being involved. So since like 2000, which was when I be. Became an artist evolving to an artist.

Verneda Lights

I have. Been aware that we do communicate. With the digital realm. When we, when we create art. So in that process. I wait. For the digital. And then I start to think about. What's going on the feedback. In terms of color shape form. In dynamic. And I shape. From that. When I started. Creating. 2d artworks on canvas paper and whatnot. I.

Verneda Lights

Would start off. Initially also with color. And I just. Put the color. Wherever. Okay. And then I would take my tongue blade. And move the. The acrylics or, you know, the oil around. And then. Just sort of in a process, add color, color, color. And then stop. And then. I would. I would. And I hang it up.

Verneda Lights

Facing. East west. Okay. From a window that goes east west. And I watched. The sun rise and set on it. Rise and set. And in the process of that rising and setting. Different shapes. Became visible. Within the. Paint. That was put on the canvas. And. Oftentimes. I would. Take my. Charcoal. And. Outline. The story. And sometimes. Think. And create the visual.

Verneda Lights

On the paper. On the canvas. And. I. Found that process. Very gratifying. You know, very soothing. Mm-hmm. And.

And I think that's what I would say. Would you want to. Show us a little bit of your work. Through a screen share and. You know. Show us how it evolved. Sort of both artistically and technically.

Well. I should add before we do that. My current project. Gala me 2.0 as an NFT project. And I use artificial intelligence. Software. On. Dolly. And I also use night cafe. I found. Mid journey problematic. So I. I shied away from that. But. Yeah, I can. Start to. Hold on a second. Okay, share my screen.

Verneda Lights

Okay. Are you seeing it?

I am. Okay.

Well, here we have Pearl of Great Price and it's part of the Beauty for Ashes. 11 art memorial. And I created it because. The whole. You know, I don't know what it's called. You know, 9 11 terrorism. Disaster. In his destruction of the world trade center and the attacks on the Pentagon and whatnot.

Verneda Lights

Was a wanton destruction of life. But we were. Attacked and subjected to this murderous. Act. In the name of religion. So. I figured that the response. To what had happened. Should likewise. Have. A sacred subtext. So the Pearl of great price is from one of Jesus's parables that are told in the gospel.

Verneda Lights

Where he talks about a merchant. Who was seeking a Pearl of great price. And he searched and searched and searched for it. Church until he found it. And once he found it, he liquidated all his assets, so to speak, and purchased it, took all that he had in order to have this Pearl of Great Price. And in the parables, the Pearl of Great Price represents humanity.

Verneda Lights

You know, the John 316, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So we are the Pearl of Great Price. And therefore, every human being is a Pearl of Great Price. So here we have the Pearl that's still basically inside the clamshell. This is symbolized by the yellow and the glow here. And this is the point of attachment where the clam would be. But the color and the shine, I really can't even explain how it got there. Because the program that I was using, Paint Shop Pro, really, you know, was limited in that regard.

Verneda Lights

So I'm thinking, you know, what I did was, I rubbed the mouse back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, as if I wanted to polish something. And somehow, that translated into many, many, many different movements on the canvas. And when the movement stopped, this is what was visible. The Pearl of Great Price was a finalist in the Boston Cyber Arts Festival, 2003.

Verneda Lights

And it's a permanent part of the Field of Vision, New York City, 9-11 tribute. So here's that.

Nice. Beautiful. Thank you.

This is my first digital painting. And it's titled An American Girl. I did it in 2003. At that point in time, I had signed up for graphic design classes, painting classes, and whatnot. Because as a digital artist, I knew that the digital piece was going against the grain for the arts community, which can be very staid. And I anticipated that, oh, they're going to get you, you know, they're going to come at you.

Verneda Lights

So in order to not get got by traditionalists, I signed up for all these classes. And in the process, I was able to get a degree in digital art. And I was able to get a degree in digital art. So I'm glad that I got that degree. And then I started working with this as I started it. I did not know about layers in Photoshop at that point in time. So everything I did was done directly on the canvas, the electronic canvas. And here we see my dear friend's daughter, who had a collection of American Girl dolls.

Verneda Lights

And of course, there are some of these. But I'm going to show you this. There aren't many American Girl dolls that are dolls in general that are little girls or little boys who are Black, you know, melanated. So I wanted to pay tribute to my friend's daughter, who here is posed as a flower girl for a wedding, and her fondness for the American Girl doll line.

Verneda Lights

So, you know, painting her skin and dealing with her eyebrows and lashes was exceedingly challenging. Because, you know, I had no format from which to work. So I just used the one pixel, you know, brush size. Wow. And did the brows hair by hair. And I magnified it really big. I did the brows hair by hair, added the lashes and whatnot. And the edges of her hair. And then doing the boundaries. I did the boundary in Photoshop. Which, you know, might be pretty obvious. Mm-hmm. So, right. So there's that.

Verneda Lights

And here we have one of the artworks from the World Invisible series. The World Invisible talks about, or pictures, it depicts history. It makes history present in the atmosphere. And so it's like how people think of ancestors or historical beings that give you a heritage. And for me, having grown up in a Christian household and being a Christian myself, many of these paintings are infused with biblical themes. I did not start out to create it as such. But it was what I saw when I told you about how I applied the paint and then watched the sun rise and set. And the figures sort of, you know, emerge from the painting itself. And here we have a story, a garden story. And basically it tells the fall of man, you know. And we have individual faces here.

Verneda Lights

We have Eve in the garden. You know, the garden is deteriorating. It looks like things are basically rotting. And no longer in bloom. And here we see a portrait of the Trinity is sort of presented like a Rubik's cube. You know, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit here. You know, if you can see it almost rotated here in the corner.

Verneda Lights

And you see the blue and the flowers. And the animal faces. And whatnot. Here we go. And it's acrylic and oil. Ink and marker on paper. Measures 18 by 24 inches. And here we have Angels on Assignment, which is another part of the World Invisible series. You don't see it with your naked eye. But, you know, we're told that we have angels all around us. And this is a depiction of that.

Verneda Lights

What I want to do is show that there's the atmosphere. So you see like the cloud-like effects here and here. And it's almost like you're in an airplane or in an aerial perspective looking down. And you see the different colors that could be like. The landscaping below when you're flying over a field of say, of crops.

Verneda Lights

Or a village. Something like that. And you see the geographic demarcations and the water and whatnot. So you have the air and the land. And in between are these beings. Who are, you know, winged. Some of them look like they have a serious case of the blood. Some of them are blue. And others are just very intent.

Verneda Lights

On going about their business. Some in contemplation. You see the garments are elaborately decorated. And whatnot. So, yeah. So there's that. So those are early works. They were done from. Between 19th and 19th century. And then. And 2003. So I'm going to stop screen sharing here. And we can talk a little.

Okay. Thank you. So. What is it that interests you about tax oppression ism and how did you sort of come to find out about it? Yes.

Take expressionism. Is basically. Describes. The. The concept of tax oppression ism. And what I've become. I mean, when I was dissecting the computer and making art. And had no other way to make art. That to me. Says Techspressionism. And of course I was involved in social media. And on Instagram and whatnot. And in the process. I got a.

Verneda Lights

Message from you. About the group. And introducing me to the concept of Techspressionism. And. Asking me to, you know, attend the salons and whatnot. And I said, okay, this sounds cool. I need a community. And I said, okay. I need a community. Community is good. Cause I come from a strong community. So I know what community can do for you. So I attended the salons and, you know, and I said.

Verneda Lights

Immediately. Okay, this is me. So I'm going to plug in. And see what happens. You know, so. The Techspressionism is community. I find them to be very bright. Very. Beautiful. They're very creative with their wide variety of experiences that they bring to the table. And many have been long acquainted. With Techspressionism. Like, you know, dating from the sixties and the seventies and whatnot. And I also am impressed by the.

Verneda Lights

Deep involvement in technology. That you have people who not only use technology for art, but they read science fiction. You know, I'm a Trekkie from way back. I love science fiction. And so you see this secondary layer of literary expertise that pertains to technology and a curiosity, a very healthy curiosity and a willingness to share and learn together. So it's a great adventure.

Verneda Lights

You know, it's a good community to have and I'm glad to be on the set.

Absolutely. It's great to have you. And what kind of work are you working on currently? Or do you have anything that you'd like to share with us from what you're working on now?

Yeah, I have AI work because the AI has a lot of intrinsic bias in it. It doesn't do well with depicting. Melanated faces. It does not do well with women. You know, basically, if you're a white man or an object, you can fare quite well in with AI. And when I got all these distorted images, when I use prompts that pertain to be an African-American, I said, you know what? This is not good. But in my culture, you know, the Gullah culture, in Gullah art, faces are not really relevant. Oftentimes, traditional Gullah art is an iconic. That is, you have a scene, it's often bucolic, you know, very nature oriented, peaceful, loving, joyous and prosperous.

Verneda Lights

Sort of plantation like feeling. But the faces are absent. And I decided to lean into the an iconic quality of Gullah art in dealing with my NFT collection, Gullah Me 2.0. When they gave me, when the AI gave me a face that was not something that I could deal with, it could not be easily corrected or anything like that or enhanced.

Verneda Lights

I just. Would. Just smooth the face out. And shape the pigment. Pixel by pixel until I had the effect that I wanted. So I can. Let me. Okay, here. Okay. Alrighty. Okay. Let me share my screen here. Okay, you see any Gullah Me 2.0 NFT presentation? Let's see. Yep. Okay. All right. So it's a slide show.

Verneda Lights

And it has music and whatnot. But I'm going to walk through it. In, you know, singularly.

And could you tell, before you start, could you tell a little bit about the origin of the word Gullah and where that comes from?

Well, Gullah, it is speculated because, you know, Gullah is just now in the 20th and the 21st century starting to be written. It is theorized that the word Gullah is evolved from Angola. Many of the early Gullah ancestors were brought from the Angola area. And that Angola became Nagola. And from Nagola, Gullah.

Verneda Lights

Gotcha. Interesting.

Yeah. A big interest in etymology. And I think it's always interesting. To see where things come from.

So thanks for that.

Sure. Sure.

That's a really powerful image. I mean, just a completely negative space there. Where the figure's face is. It's really powerful.

And iconic. You know? Because the DAL-E, which is the software that I use, could not give me a face that I could use. As an artist. Yeah. It did great with the moss and whatnot. Which I added my own painting touches to it. What I did was I just, you know, leaned into the Gullah quality of an iconic faces. And decided to just deal with that. And it worked. And here's the Indigo head wrap she has. Indigo was a dye that was grown on the plantations here in the south.

Verneda Lights

And the Gullahni 2.0 tells my dad's history. And in telling my... The history of my father whose portrait is there. Which also there's a photo restoration that I did of him. It tells his story of growing up poor. And his life as a soldier. Right? He was a Marine. And in the process of telling his story, I tell the history of the culture of my people so that people will be aware that my people exist. Because we are under threat of cultural extinction due to gentrification and a paucity of opportunities for young people, which gives very little incentive to stay in the area. So hoping that creating awareness and knowledge would work. And also putting the story on the blockchain gives it a chance of permanence that it would not ordinarily have. Because books are being banned. And we don't want to hear about that.

Verneda Lights

We're uncomfortable, whatever. You know, and all of a sudden your book is no longer available. But you can't do that with the blockchain, you know. So I said, all right, well, then this NFT thing is what we're going to be doing here from now on. Okay. So here we discussed, you know, that I am Gullah. And here we have another an iconic rendering.

Verneda Lights

And the water. Which, you know, is done by hand. The clouds in the sky are truly a South Carolina. These are South Carolina clouds in the sky. Photos that I took of the Carolina sky overlooking my family home. And many of these background photos were taken while my father was still alive. So here we have a young woman. She's presumed to be a slinger. She's a slave. And iconically rendered. And she's at the water edge, possibly contemplating her future. You have many scenes like this in the Lowcountry.

Verneda Lights

Because it is, you know, Lowcountry and there's the Atlantic Ocean right there and the Beaufort River. And we have lots of pockets of water. And we have salt marshes. Muddy salt marshes all around the area. They give it a. A particular smell and feel. And here we see the dolly rendering of what a three year old black boy would look like.

Verneda Lights

There were problems with the face, but I was able to correct it using Photoshop. My dad picked cotton. And I was able to get the! And I also had to hand paint the additions to the cotton to give it a more realistic feel. And here we have where my dad grew up in a, you know, not really a bedroom to call his own. He slept on a straw mattress and there were holes in the roof. And when it rained, he got wet. It rained in his room. And I had to create animate the rain here. Let me know if you can hear it. Okay?

Okay. Can you hear it? Yep.

Okay. And here we have where he dropped out of school in the third grade because he was embarrassed by poverty and discouraged by hunger. Here we have him walking away from the schoolhouse. You know, very primitive. And he's wearing clothes that belong to a neighbor. He wanted to look really nice on his last day of school. But his friend was bigger than he was. So the clothes are a bit too big. The clothes are baggy. His shoes are too large. But he had a good feeling about himself on his last day of school. And here we have him walking on the grass. And the grass is a gray scale image of the grass from our yard.

Verneda Lights

And in areas that dad actually walked on. You know, when he was alive.

It really the quality of the rendering, it reminds me of my dad. It reminds me of like an aquatint or some sort of traditional media. And it's interesting to see that juxtaposed with the sort of photographic grass.

Yes. Yes. I wanted it, the grass, to be real. Because the story is real. You know, it started off, the story started off as oral history. But the oral history is now transitioning to become very fixed. You know? So it's my way of representing that movement into, from the ether, so to speak. Mouth to mouth. Into the three-dimensional world.

Verneda Lights

And here we have a photo montage. I titled it Patriarch and Home. And that is the photo that I restored. It was badly, badly damaged. And I replaced the injured parts pixel by pixel. Which is something I became greatly acquainted with when I started off on this journey of being a digital artist. You know, they now have automated functions that get rid of scratches and whatnot. But I prefer to do it like I'm in an operating room. You know? Like I'm suturing a wound. Pixel by pixel. Fill it in. So that it blends. And you erase the defect.

Verneda Lights

And so it's like my dad's spirit in front of the homestead, which is where I currently live. And you know, the trees in the background, you see some of the sky that function as a backdrop for some of the paintings you saw earlier. So. There we go. Great. Really cool to see that. Yeah. Gala me 2.0. And you can read more about Gala me 2.0. And see the original Gala me series at Gala me.com. G-U-L-L-A-H-M-E.com.

Verneda Lights

And also sign up for notices about when the collection is going to drop. There are many, many, many, many more images. I just shared a few. But they're not live yet on the blockchain. And when they do drop, I will be sending people who sign up a notice to let them know when it goes live.

Awesome. Before the last question, there's sort of a set of questions that serves as a template. There was a story that you had told me recently about your first museum exhibition that I thought was very powerful. And I was wondering if you'd want to share that or some sort of version of that for this interview.

Yes. Well, I had I was asked to be a part of this exhibit called Portraits Americana. That was curated by photographer Glenn Rand. And it was to take place at the Albrecht Kempner Museum of Art in St. Joseph, Missouri. And I had never been to Missouri before. And I was very excited because there were people like Stieglitz, you know, Alfred Stieglitz and whatnot in the show. And to be with artistic luminaries of photographic luminaries dating back 100 years was a big deal. And the things that I had worked on were considered to be the future of where photography would be headed. Photographic portraits would be headed. So I was all excited. It was the winter. It was November of 2017. It was 2018. And I found out that it was the midst of a lot of crises.

Verneda Lights

Police brutality and deaths of unarmed Black men were occurring in 2017, 2018. And I was preparing to travel at that point in time. And the precariousness of my situation as a Black woman was brought to the forefront. When in the process of planning to go to St. Joseph, Missouri, I found out that there had been a lynching two days before I was due to arrive.

Verneda Lights

So I mean, I was really, really, really anxious I'm anxious about that and didn't know what to do. So I called my older brother, you know, he has very boots on the ground attitude toward life. You know, he doesn't play, not like my dad, got that military vibe and everything. And he reminded me, he said, well, you know, you don't have to go. You don't have to go, you know, stressing that I had an option, which is something that many Black people in my position didn't have a lot of back in the day, right? So I said, okay, I could not go. So that's the first decision. Will I go? Am I going to back out because of this? Because the show is going to go on. The work is going to be up. But am I going to stop?

Verneda Lights

From experiencing the opening reception because of this event? Then I made some phone calls and the museum and the people involved with it knew nothing about all the stuff that was going on in the outside world. And they could not help me with respect to finding a place to stay that was safe. So I opted to find out where the curator was staying. He was a white male. So I figured, okay, wherever he's staying must be safe because that's just the lay of the land. Okay. He's going to be in the best spot. He's going to be in the best spot. He's going to be in the best spot. So I found out where he was staying and I booked a location there.

Verneda Lights

And I thought about packing and it was like, you know, freezing in Missouri at that time of year. And I'm in South Carolina, where it's relatively warm. You know, it doesn't get that cold here. And I had this large mink coat. That was the only coat I had that would hold up under that kind of cold. And I said, okay, I'm going to have to take the mink.

Verneda Lights

But then I thought about, oh my goodness. All right. This is a, it's floor length, very expensive. And it's going to put a target on my back. I mean, am I going to get stopped by police? Am I going to have someone in the museum call the man on me or something like that? Because they think I stole something, you know, I would, I was upset about that. And I said, you know what, this really is not fair. This is an unfair burden to be on me. I'm supposed to be able to enjoy having my first museum exhibit. I need to be able to be free to enjoy the fruits of my labor and to network with like-minded individuals, which this opportunity has afforded me. And not have to worry about, am I going to die?

Verneda Lights

And I think because I have on an expensive coat. The coat costs something like 10 grand, okay? So is this going to get me in trouble? And I said, you know, it was so stressful. And then I spoke with my younger brother who has a more faith-based approach, much like myself. And he said, well, you know, you think about how the Black groups of the 60s, how they made it traveling through the South. You know, the temptations, the Supremes, Smokey Robinson. The Miracles. They talk often in their memoirs and in their interviews about how threatened they were physically while performing or even just traveling through the South. And I thought, again, you know, that is such an unfair burden because being creative is enough to be responsible for, you know, to conceptualize this artwork and to bring it into fruition and have the resources necessary to make it a reality.

Verneda Lights

And then on top of that, you figured because I've done this, you know, well, I could possibly lose my life behind a misunderstanding related to the color of my skin. So it was rough. So I in my prayers, I remembered to that I had a neighbor who was a soldier. And the women in my community are like the Dora Milaj, you know, from the Black Panther movies.

Verneda Lights

They are fierce. And it's a military community. So to have a neighbor that I grew up with, who was a soldier, you know, she did time in the army, not the cushy Air Force, the army, you know, she was a real soldier, you know, and I told her about my situation. And she said, Look, Ricky, you know, it's my nickname, Ricky, we're gonna, my husband, I will come get you at the airport, and we'll take you to the hotel. And you know what, we'll go to the exhibit with you and take you back to the airport when it's time for you to go home, you'll be all right. You know, and, you know, and I'm like, I'm gonna go home. And I'm like, I'm gonna go home. And I was moving through the airport when I landed.

Verneda Lights

The only people of color were the people who were busting the floors, you know, and it was it was deep moment. And when I saw her and her husband, I was so happy. And she, she took control of the situation. She's such a soldier. Oh, my goodness, she's retired now. But she just moved through that crowd. Like it was.

Verneda Lights

Like the way it had been paved, I got to the hotel was no big deal got settled in. And when Showtime came, she was there, and I had on my make on. And at that by that point in time, I was fearless. But the memory of that stress lingers. It is difficult. You know, it's a difficult world we live in. But you have to be brave. It takes courage.

You know, and what year was this? This was this was 2018. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, this is present day.

You know, it's just very less than five years ago, really. Because it's November 2018. So for you, a couple of months. So for those of you who don't have such concerns, it's called privilege. Okay. Privilege. Be thankful. Mm hmm. Yep.

Well, thank you for sharing that. That story. And the sort of last question that I'm going to wrap up with is, how do you see the future of art?

Well, I think that art is at the crossroads. It's at a crossroads, I think, because of the artificial intelligence. Okay. Because some of the work produced by AI is very good. Very good. And so now artists are going to have to rethink their relationship with instruments. Before our instruments were our tools.

Verneda Lights

Before software, our tools were inanimate. Paintbrush is inanimate. You know, a pencil is inanimate. We control it with our hand. It moves at our will. It goes where we want it to go. AI is not like that. You know, AI is, has a mind of its own, literally. So now we have to determine how we're going to interact with it.

Verneda Lights

Not just for visuals, but also for the, for writing component. Because we have to write a lot in handling our artwork. Create explanations and discourses and whatnot. So we're going to have to reckon and determine one by one how we're going to interact with this new reality that we have been confronted with. And I think that artists will, artists of goodwill will work to make art a reality. Make AI more accountable.

Verneda Lights

To be accurate and able to create a face for any human being. Regardless of your ethnicity. You know, they should be able to render a woman's face as easily as a man's. They should be able to not associate Black skin with trash. Or destructive elements. You know, not be sarcastic in their rendering. So I think that this is our time to strategize how we're going to shape the future.

Verneda Lights

And of course there are many who don't care. They just want to make money. You know? So it, I don't know who's going to win in this struggle. But I do hope and pray that as artists of goodwill, that we will act in such a way that we have an artistic environment that is fair. Fair to all. And as capable of responding to all as it is to a certain segment of society.

All right. Well, that's certainly a great question. And I think that's something worth heading towards. So I appreciate your time today, Vernada. And look forward to seeing more of your work. And also to our collaboration. Which has been shaping up a little bit with the journal. More will be revealed when we're with regards to that. But.

Colin Goldberg

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So it's. It's an ever evolving sort of social sculpture that we're all part of. And it's been really enjoyable so far. So. I wish you a good weekend. And I am going to stop recording in 3, 2, 1. And cut.