In the neighborhood where my studio is, in South Central Los Angeles, there are a lot of immigrant-owned businesses. I'm constantly amazed at the level of work they do. It's above anything. For me, I think I pattern myself on that work ethic.
At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do it.
Generally, when I tell people I'm a painter, they ask me if I have a card: 'Yes, we'd like this room in this color.' I still might get cards that say 'Mark Bradford. Painter.'
I don't know why so many artists talk about the mainstream's problems from the fringe. I think, unfortunately, it's almost like our education makes us too safe and terrified to step into the world.
I don't know why we, in the art world, cannot unpack things and sort of make hybrid notions of a practice. We're very rigid. It's funny, though; in music, we have no problem sampling, mixing and remixing. But in the art world, why can't we take little parts of history and mix it together?
I have always been very intrigued by the outside of buildings. I can just walk down the street and be content with watching facades. I don't have to go inside.
I just like artist-driven projects, but for artists themselves: artist spaces, artist mentor programs, and artists buying buildings and making lofts. Doing whatever we can do. Because at the end of the day, I really think that we as a community only have each other.
I never expected to run into a room and suddenly I belonged. I figured people who live on the fringes of society, they're more free. They can choose to visit anywhere; they don't belong to anywhere. It's like being without a nation, in a way.
I've always been inspired by small details that make me wander. My mother would ask me, 'What are you looking at so intensely?' I would answer, 'Everything and nothing.' She really supported my wanderings, called me Marco Polo.
Life, work - it's all very organic and fluid, a laboratory. I always tell people: whatever your thing is, you just have to be in it. Jump in; you'll figure it out.
My mom was an orphan, and there was never anybody to tell her what she could or couldn't do. At the core, she's probably an artist - an artist and a feminist.
That's how I make work. Along the way, I take notes, I read about history and popular culture. Sometimes I act out things in the studio. I go back to my mother's hair salon so I can hear three voices going all at once. I pull inspiration from everything.
The freeways create economic and racial borders in Los Angeles. South of Interstate 10 is one group of people, west of the 10 another, and south of the 405 North yet another.
The funny thing about being creative is that, especially high school people, I kept noticing I'd always go to these certain materials. I'd always be picking up trash and picking up paper and using it.
The sheer density of advertising creates a psychic mass, an overlay that can sometimes be very tense or aggressive. As a citizen, you have to participate in that every day. You have to walk by until it's changed.
When I was thirteen, I was in a supermarket with my mother, and for no reason at all, I picked up a science-fiction book at the checkout stand and started reading it. I couldn't believe I was doing that, actually reading a book. And, man, it opened up a whole new thing. Reading became the sparkplug of my imagination.
When you're as tall as I am, you have no public privacy. People are constantly coming up and talking to you. Constantly. You have one of two ways to go: you engage with people, or you become really bitter. I choose to engage.
