Interview with Amos Kennedy Jr.

Sophia Abrams 0:00 No, not really, or, yeah, it's okay. Well, first off.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 0:05 I won't do it for a minute. Oh, okay. Don't worry, I won't do. Okay.

Sophia Abrams 0:10 Um, well, first of all, I just want to say thank you so much for allowing me to interview you again. Um, I really enjoyed our first interview, and I was really mad that the interview didn't save and whatnot. But I'm so thankful that you agreed to do it again. So, I'm really appreciative of you, um, allowing me to re-interview you.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 0:31 Okay, no problem.

Sophia Abrams 0:34 And I guess we can kind of consider that, like, another pre-interview. So hopefully, it's even more well rounded. So I'm just gonna jump into it again, and do the intro again. All right, this is Sophia Abrams interviewing Amos Kennedy, Jr, for the UW Black Artists Project. I am currently in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and he is in Detroit, Michigan. Today's date is Wednesday, March 17, 2021. And it is currently 7 p.m. Central Time. And then, so I'll ask some of the same questions, but I have some new questions as well. So my first question is: so, as we've talked for your career, you don't consider yourself an artist, even though that's kind of what I'm calling my project and whatnot, but rather you consider yourself a maker, and call yourself a humble Negro printer. So can you talk about the importance for you to make this distinction and why it's important for you, as you're like, as you know, you're a printer, and whatnot?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:42 Well, the reason I don't call myself an artist is because for me, that is a category that does not include the work I do. It is a category. It is a definition that, for me, just oozes with exclusivity. And I do not want to participate in exclusivity. Art, and what we call the art world, in the latter part of the 20th century, and the first part of 21st century, I think is a more objection of the capitalist mentality that defines this era. And I now really don't call myself a printer out of respect to those individuals who have spent their whole lives as printers and have dedicated it to it and do exquisite work. I'm just a person with a printing press. That's what I will say. And I like to make stuff. And I am to the point in my life where if you simplify things, it becomes much easier for me to understand, and just say 'I'm a human being who makes stuff just like every other human being' is about as simple as it can get for me.

Hello. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello. Did we just drop? Hello? Hello. Okay, hear me? Can you hear me? Me? Hello?

Sophia Abrams 4:20 Can you hear me? Oh, no.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 4:29 Hello.

Sophia Abrams 4:31 Can you hear me?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 4:33 I can hear you now. Yes. Okay, perfect. Did you-- 'Cause there was a great deal of silence there and I didn't know what was going on.

Sophia Abrams 4:41 Oh, yeah, I could. I could hear you the whole time. But okay, good thing we've got that.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 4:49 That's what I meant. I'm trying to use my --. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello?

Sophia Abrams 4:56 Testing.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 4:57 I can hear you, yes. Okay, yeah. This technology is beyond me.

Sophia Abrams 5:05 Oh same, okay, we're good. Okay, so then from, like, that, you being able to kind of simplify things and make that easier-- I'm curious to kind of go into how you found yourself, like pursuing printing or whatnot and like, whether, like, perhaps like that notion of simplification and doing kind of what you want to do, serves in some ways as an impetus for you to decide to go to grad school when you were around like 40, at UW Madison?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 5:44 No, this all took place, the simplification and everything has taken place in the last 10 years. What motivated me to go to Madison was at the time I wanted to be a book artist. And Madison was the university where Walter Hamady taught and well at the time Walter Hamady was one of the, of the leading book arts professors in the US. He and a number of his students catapulted the book arts in academia. And so, since he was the one who taught most of the people who were teaching book art, I felt it was best to study under him and not his students.

Sophia Abrams 6:40 That makes sense, going off of that, can you kind of talk a little bit about that process? A little more if there's any more to really add about deciding why Madison. I mean you talk about what yourHamady and whatnot, but like, um, So was he, like, the final push factor for that or, or pull factor other? Or were there any other schools that you were considering?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 7:05 I had considered a couple other schools that again, they were the programs being run by his students. So I was like, nope, you know, if you can, if you can study under him, why go to the students? You try to study under the most influential person that is out there. And also, I appreciated his press work. And I appreciated his aesthetic, the way that he made his books.

Sophia Abrams 7:45 From that, when we last talked to you said that your first impressions were, of Madison, was kind of like you could really focus on learning. And like, learning the ins and outs of being a printer, but also you were a commuter student at the time as you had your own shop, and then you would commute Tuesdays and Thursdays from Milwaukee. So can you talk a little bit more about like your first year. Or just I guess this kind of encapsulates your whole experience, but just kind of your first impressions of it. And then your general experience from that.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 8:28 Okay, my first year at Madison, I was actually living in Illinois. So I was an out of state student, so I had the privilege of paying out of state tuition. And that year, I took the first semester, I think I took nine hours. One course was under Walter, one was under Phil Hamilton. And I don't recall what the other course was. That's how exciting it was. And again, I was commuting two days a week, because the courses I was taking were taught on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And because I did not have an art background like most of the students, most of the graduate students had. So there was a lot that I didn't know. And I was just intrigued. You know, I didn't feel like oh my god, you know, I don't know art. I don't know the different schools of art. I don't know the different movements of art, the history of art and all of that, because I was just going to learn how to print and make books. And so that was my focus. And because I was a commuter student, I didn't and I had my own shop. I would have to stick around and see people use the facility. He's at the university. So I would just come and go and have my work done because I could do it at home. And so yeah, my first year was just, you know, just with my first semester was just kind of a difficult sort of year for me. I was, and again, I was so much older, I was at least 12 years older than most of the students. And then 20 years older than some of them. So I was this old man. And I didn't, you know, the way that, you know, thinking back now, the way that my college life was, I just went to college to get a degree. I didn't go to college to party and to hangout and to you know, and to make long lasting relationships for the rest of my life. It was just like, "Hey, I'm going here to get a degree and then from there I'll see about getting a job, and then we'll see what life holds and has in store for me." Yeah, so yeah, I was just kind of a weird student in many respects.

Sophia Abrams 11:14 I'm curious to know, you talked about how when you started, you didn't have an art background or anything, or not anything, but you didn't have an art background, but you were just really fascinated and intrigued. And so I'm kind of curious. During your first year grad progressed,

Amos Kennedy Jr. 11:40 Did we get dropped? I can't hear you.

Sophia Abrams 11:46 Research, and be like, research can be pretty--

Amos Kennedy Jr. 11:48 Can we start over again, because you got, we got dropped again.

Sophia Abrams 11:51 Oh, okay. Going off of that. So you talked about how, like, starting grad school, you were very much intrigued by printing. And just really fascinated by it but didn't have an art background. But from them curious to know.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 12:15 You got dropped again.

Sophia Abrams 12:17 As your graduate career progressed, how you went about finding inspiration or like creating work. Because I'm sure like, as you learn more, like you were more informed or, like, just what was your process like to create work at that time?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 12:35 Well, a lot of the work I created was, I was like, Okay, I could do the project, you know, and try to do it as creatively as possible. I would say that one of the big benefits that for me, at Madison was Bill Bunce, librarian at the Kohler library. And I would have long conversations with him about books. And you know, he would show me books that he thought were important, and I should look at. And so I found that to be extremely beneficial for me. But my assignments were, I like to tell people that I was focused on making a book, at every opportunity, I could a -- simple book or complex book, I didn't care because the more books I made, the better I understood the book itself, and the better I could make books. So every whatever class I took, they've ended up in some way having a book associated with it except the press or take on storytelling from school or library science.

Sophia Abrams 13:52 How many books do you think you made during grad school?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 14:01 During grad school, I made about 10 books.

Sophia Abrams 14:13 I also have so in my notes, like we talked about--

Amos Kennedy Jr. 14:18 The books that would end up someplace. A lot of books. Well, I took one course, a reading assignment, one page paper on that reading, and I figured out a way to turn that into a book out of one sheet of paper. And so I will make my assignment will be turned in on a half sheet. The size of the paper in the form of an eight page book, I think.

Sophia Abrams 15:03 That's interesting. I also have in my notes about Bill Bunce, the librarian, how, when you all would often talk about our theories and whatnot, and how like that was important for you in terms of like, kind of just exploring the medium of printmaking, and bookmaking, can talk about perhaps what art theories, you all may have talked about at that time?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 15:31 You see, I didn't consider it theories, it was just talking about books, and you know, like he would show me a very interesting book and tell me why he would like it. We did not go into in-depth about, you know, like, what is the structure saying about, you know, the development of the book, I guess, you know, there was no note, like basic, like, basic stuff that you would teach it to elementary kids, like, here's this, here's a book. And I remember, he had a book that was made out of abaca paper, but every sheet was beaten at a different, for different time. And so as you turn the pages, you know, each sheet made a certain sound, there was no text in the book, it was just blank sheets of paper that you know, which was like, that's kind of cool. But the paper, you know, that tactile-ness of the book was what was so exciting, the fact that the book could be blank. And there's still a book, a blank book in terms of one that you put something into it, but that is the finished product that is it. This is that you experience. We do experience a book when we read it. But because reading is so fundamental to Western civilization, we think a lot of people don't appreciate it as an experience.

Sophia Abrams 17:16 That's interesting and a really thought provoking point. Going off of that, do you think that so you kind of talked about that. Was it a core part in your curriculum? To kind of like, I guess, book making is a bit different than reading as you were talking, but like, to was like the appreciation for the art or like, I guess, was appreciation, something that was heavily talked about in your courses? Can you hear me?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 17:53 Yes, I did, I heard the question, but I need to get it repeated again.

Sophia Abrams 17:57 Just kind of going off on that, like, you talked about how people don't really appreciate, you know, the form of a book and whatnot. So it was that kind of appreciation, was appreciation something that was taught in your classes? Not for like the students, but, like, in terms of like, understanding, like the form of it, or like the craft of it.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 18:23 Yes, that was one of the things that was taught that, you know, this is an object. That this has that into it, because what you have to realize is that book design is not really taught in graphic design, it's kind of skimmed over as a subject, but very few graphic design programs have a course, you know, a one semester course on book design. And so, that is one of the things that that, you know, the book arts did is that it took this iconic object. And so, and basically said, let's explore it in different ways. Let's see all the things that we can do to it. And it can still be a book, you know, you have all the books, you have blank books, you have, you know, different format books, accordion books, guidebooks, you know, pop up books, all these are different. You know, so what is book making, I guess, would be the thing. So that is one of the things that was explored courses I took. Yes.

Sophia Abrams 19:48 Can you talk a little bit about what it was like to be a student when, with Walter Hammady was your professor. Perhaps, maybe go into more of like your first impression of him and kind of like, as you mentioned, he was a big pull factor as to why you decided to go to UW Madison for grad school. Um, so just what was it like to study under him?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 20:15 Right. Oh, well, Walter, Walter had a command in the classroom, and Walter was difficult to read if you didn't know how to read people. So, but he, he was extremely passionate about the subject matter he taught. And that's one of the things I enjoyed about his classes, that he really got involved. Walter would tell us that if there was a subject you wanted to study, or you know, have a class in as an independent study, if you didn't get, I think at the time, you had to have five students in the class, if you can get four other students, then he would teach that, you know, we would come up with a, you know, with a syllabus, so that course could be taught. So I remember, one class was about children's books, because that's what somebody was interested in. So we looked at children's books and picture books, and, you know, and how they differed from an adult book, which is when you look at children's books is extremely boring, because it's just pages of text. And so it's all about the narrative, not about the book itself.

And so I think that, you know, by looking at, you know, by, I don't even know if he taught that children's class, you know, children's book class again. But that was a very informative class for me, because I had to go again, and look at children's books to see how they were illustrated and see how the illustrations are played against the text and vice versa. And it was extremely interesting. Yeah. And there's other courses, you know, he taught and he did demos, and his demos were extremely thorough. And I think that he made sure that everybody could, everybody understood the process that he was showing, and if they could execute it, without him being there, watching over them, you know, like a mother hen, I guess.

Sophia Abrams 22:45 That makes sense. Kind of going off that, so you talked about how like, the children's class was really or the children's book class was really influential. So were there other classes or maybe experiences that you had while in grad school, that were kind of similar to the class whereas like, there, it's kind of an unexpected find. But when you reflect back on it, it's now meaningful. And you see how that course impacted you.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 23:26 I did an independent study under Jim Escalante, where I made paper.

Sophia Abrams 23:35 Did that impact your work?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 23:39 What was that? What's that?

Sophia Abrams 23:41 Oh, maybe? Sorry.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 23:47 I'm sorry, I couldn't hear what your comment was.

Sophia Abrams 23:51 I think it maybe cut out cut, because I asked, 'How did that course impact you?'

Amos Kennedy Jr. 23:58 It was, I think, because it was just the discipline that was required to make that paper. It was very much an intense session with a lot of labor, a lot of work involved in it. And that gave me the stamina to move on, you know, to understand that you know making books and [conditioning] books are extremely labor intensive processes. Because normally, the project was a project that I was doing, that I had gotten, and paper was for that project. And it was a very large project. I ended up making about 24 very large accordion books of Martin Luther King's quotations. And so it was, and it was just really getting in there working with paper, beginning to understand. And that's where I really saw the experience come to light, you know, I really saw what experience does, because the first sheets were extremely cumbersome to make. But after about a month, it became almost second nature. And I could tell by the, by the pull of these, of the mold and deco of the that, how the sheet was gonna turn out before it was dried and everything. So it was just that learning experience. Phil Hamilton, who taught graphic design once said that, you know, that with all the tools out there, the human body is still the ultimate tool for someone who makes stuff. You have to, you can have all the jigs you want, but you still have to have your body trained. And your body has to know the materials that you're working with, in order to really make an object to take that thought and turn and bring it to the physical world.

Sophia Abrams 26:21 Going off of that, how you mentioned how you made accordion books of MLK quotes. How was that received?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 26:32 Well, the client really loved it. It was a, it was a project for the client. And they really loved it. And I think it's still on exhibition, it was for the Martin Luther King branch library of the Milwaukee Public Library.

Sophia Abrams 26:55 In similar gears, I want to talk about your Strange Fruit. So what was-- what year did you make that? Or? I don't know if you remember.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 27:11 Um, I don't know.

Sophia Abrams 27:12 What, what was the process like, in terms of making I know when we talked, you said how, at the time you're interested in looking at lynchings. So can you just talk a little bit about what drew you to that?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 27:28 Well, my whole focus and in what I do has always been driven by the inclusion of the Negro voice in, in fine print, book arts, whatever you want to call it. Because I found just with a very small survey of titles, that there were no titles by black authors. And we on, we're, like, you know, someone did a-- someone did a copy of "Up from Slavery" by Booker T. Washington. And someone did a book of poetry by Rita Dove while both of them were at University of Iowa. But when you look at records, we look at fine printing, you find that people would do Moby Dick 400 times, some other books, you know, a thousand times, you know, over and over again. Or, you know, like, "Oh, we'll I'm going to do a Hemingway book." But no one was looking at, you know, the voices of black people. And that's primarily because there were no black people making books. And so, everything I did, everything I did was about, I guess you could say, I was the last of the raceman where, you know, it was about lifting our race, you know, kind of Marcus Garvey, you know, 30s 40s mentality. And I, I had been interested again, even when I, before I went to graduate school, I've always been interested in-- it was this whole thing, I did two projects, I'd actually did three projects around murdered children. And somehow I got hold of lynching and I just like, yeah, I think it was because I read Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Haunted Oak," which was a poem about an oak tree where an innocent man had been lynched. And then that led to Strange Fruit, which was you know, this very anti-lynching song. And Walter had given us an assignment to make a book from a single sheet of paper that the book had opened up to the full size of the Parent Sheet. So it was 11 and a half sheet of paper. You couldn't cut it up into individual sheets, you had to keep the sheet whole, and then it opened up. And I made a very small book with "Strange Fruit" in it, and some more information. And I brought it to class and Walter looked at it, and not only looked at it. And when I say looked at it, I mean he looked at it. And he said, is that the best you can do? And so I went back, and I expanded it to where it became, you know, the book that's in the library now. And that was all printed on handmade paper. And, you know, it was just, it was just the way that it evolved. I do remember when I finished the second one, I stopped in to see my friend, Karen [Hef], who lives in Racine, Wisconsin, and whose paper mill I would use to make paper. And I made the paper for "Strange Fruit" there. And she was just kind of blown away by it. No, she said, "Yeah, this is really good." And I made a box for it, a clamshell box. And the thing was that the clamshell box was about a 16th of an inch thicker than the book. It should have been the same thickness of the book. Yeah, however, he kept that book. So maybe he kept it as an example of a bad, of a bad book. I like to think he kept it because he's like, yeah, this is something I want to have.

Sophia Abrams 32:05 So you mentioned how Karen [Hef] and Walter, they both responded overall, pretty positively to it. How did your peers, peers respond to it?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 32:22 Disturbing. No one... Yeah, the thing is, is that when you're the only black person in the class, white people don't want to talk about, you know, race. It's very embarrassing for them. You know, how the, what are we going to talk about? Because one, they were told where the number of lynchings that took place? You know, they may have known black people in lynched, but you know, oh, yeah, they lynched, you know, that was a form of punishment. So, you know, they probably watched a TV show where someone was bent down, a cowboy movie, you know? And so they thought, Oh, yeah, yeah, they were not aware of the number of black men and women. So it was disturbing for them.

Sophia Abrams 33:21 Going off of that, so in addition to making that book for your MFA exhibition, you went back to the subject of murdered children. Can you talk about what that process was like, and kind of creating that in terms of creating that exhibition?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 33:48 Well, that's one of the overriding factors, the exhibition, it was, how do you display information in a meaningful way? And so I had these 62 panels that I have exhibited, one is, you know, eight rows and eight columns, you know, one through 64. But, you know, that was powerful, but I wanted to do something different. And if you've been to the main library, you know, they have that big wooden wall when you walk in. And so I had that, and I think the ceiling, I mean, I think those walls must be like 16 feet, or 12 feet, really up there. And so what I decided to do was to display the information in chronological order, but also by the age of a child, doing it on the vertical axis. So the horizontal axis was, you know, January 1, 1993 to December 31, 1993. And then the vertical axis was like, the age from like, six months to 14, each one at a certain level. So you can see, you can look across and see all the six year olds that were murdered, all the 14 year olds that were murdered, that sort of thing. So I wanted people to look at it that way, too. So it was about information display, as much as it was about the text itself. And then on the floor, or in chronological order, I just had little four by six cards, of all the children that were murdered in another year. And then I don't know how the library's laid out. But you come into one door, and they have to walk around and go out through another door.

Sophia Abrams 36:10 They still have that

Amos Kennedy Jr. 36:14 Well, as you-- before you go to that door, there's like a little lobby or something like that. And there's a display case there. And that's the final installation was, and that was a, it was a it was like a, a setting for a tea. And there were all these little formal regret cards for the victims in Milwaukee, where I think there must have been, like, 12 children murdered. And so they had been invited to a tee by the mayor of Milwaukee. Well, it was but it was, yeah, it was originally by the mayor that ended up I had to change that to the President of the United States saying I regret that I won't be able to change your tea, because I was murdered on this date. And I think that that really, later defined the fact that I will, I liked installations, and I like creating these objects that then I can use in installations.

Sophia Abrams 37:27 I'm going off of that. I know that when we talked, you said that. There were kind of two themes. There are two, like, showings of this, like, the first week, it was up for two weeks. But like there weren't any words attached to it. And then like later on, after you move out

Amos Kennedy 37:58 the library requested that it go up, again, with some sort of explanation, just because I didn't have my name on it. Because I don't believe in, you know, like, this is your own. Where's your artist statement? Where's your you know? Where's the written document that explains or that helps to explain this work, and I'm just kind of like, I don't need to do that. You need to figure it out yourself. Because you have all the capabilities. And first, you may see something that I don't see. So if I tell you to go look for something, then you got to look for that. And you probably, you may stop once you find it. But if I don't tell you what to look for, you're gonna be like, okay, what's going on here? What is this about? Why are the 63 children that are murdered? This is really happened? Is this a joke? You know, did they just kind of make this up to say, look, what would -- this is what 62? You know, this is what the quantity looks like. And so I you know, I and then, I mean, they got the military personnel in the library that question, what is this? And they said, was somebody's thesis from the art department? Oh, you know, and people were actually moved to see it. And these are children that have murdered, have been murdered. These are not adults. These are small, you know,five, six, three, four, 10, 11-year-olds. And that I think we think the next one, you know, they put my name on it and it was "Children Don't Count," you know, a, an installation, honoring or memorializing children that were murdered in Chicago for two years and Milwaukee for one.

Sophia Abrams 40:06 That's really powerful. Um, I'm curious to know. So you talked about one thing he had in it was regret cards. But at first he had a sign from the mayor, then the president. But then when I was watching the documentary on you as well, I noticed that you also had postcards that you had sent when you were at Indiana. I'm curious if, like, there were other forms of this when you were at Madison?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 40:45 No, no, there weren't any forms of this when I was at Madison. Ah, you know, Madison, I was in school, so I was like, that was my focus. And so I was, I did not get involved in any sort of political activists, movements associated with the university. You know, I was just there Tuesdays and Thursdays, from eight in the morning till five in the evening. And then I just went home, I didn't, I didn't know what was going on, at the University. You know, I think when I was there actually, the art department was-- some of the graduate students were protesting the high fees and the really lousy studio space that they had.

Sophia Abrams 41:38 That makes sense. That's kind of another question kind of from this, too. So like, as we like, wrap up in terms of your UW experience. Would you say? What kind of or I guess not what changed? But like, when you look back at your time, at UW, like, can you think are there any, like noticeable changes that you saw? When you were a student, like learning the process, or like the craft of printing, or like anything, no, more like notable things to get out? Or like, what really kind of like, when you look back, like, what comes to mind, when you just like, reflect on what you learned there.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 42:31 The-- what comes to mind was the incredible resources that were available to me there. You know, not just the faculty, but and, and the technicians. But you know, just the equipment itself. And the strength of the book arts collection in the Kohler library was really beneficial for me. Because I was able to see all sorts of works, you know, fine print, to, you know, the most innovative artists. That was a remarkable collection.

Sophia Abrams 43:18 Kind of similar to that. So, prior to grad school at UW, you left the corporate world. And what was that transition like for you in terms of like, you know, one day, or I guess, like, for, up until up to that point, you had been going, and like working in the corporate world, and now you left that, reentered academia, but now you're in the printing world.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 43:51 Well, that was about a two or three year, that was about a two year period that I left after I left the corporate world and before I went to the university. So it was a time that I, you know, I learned more about printing commercially. And I was trying to do a little commercial printing, which turned out to be very unsuccessful. So going to graduate school was just like, okay, if you're really serious about doing books and listening to someone said if you were serious about doing books, you know, you should study with Walter Hammady, you know, like, someone said you should go to graduate school and here are the different places that teach book arts because only one university had MFA in book arts and that was University of Alabama. But Iowa had a two-part program and Madison had one. And then I think Karen said, you know, you need to go study with Walter Hammady. And she had been his student. And like me, she was older. And she already, she was a textile major, but she transitioned over to the book when she started making paper. And then she just loved the process as you continue to make books.

Sophia Abrams 45:32 Yeah, um kind of going off of that, too. So one thing that I've been looking at for this project is just like, analyzing, or not analyzing, but just seeing what it was like to be a black student at that time. So in addition to like your work, focusing on black subjects and whatnot, and like, obviously, you are a black man, were there any other notable experiences on campus that you faced as a black man?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 46:08 No, no, again, because my, I went to the art department and went home, you know. I walked from the Student Union Building over to the art department, I stayed in the art department, I may have gone to lunch someplace. And then I would just go back home again. So I wasn't, like, I wasn't bumping into a lot of people. And the people that I bumped into, were people that, you know, I'd met and I kept up with, you know, I would see on a regular basis, because we would go into classes together. You know, and then after class, it wasn't like, let's go get a coffee, Amos, and sit around and have a chat. I was very focused, I guess, you know, on, like this is what I do. And it may have also come from the fact that in the corporate world, we would have these training sessions, that would be extremely intense. And we'd go for a week, and it would be like, eight hours a day training that you would do. It was like, okay, that's my job. It was kind of like my job. I'm doing my job. I'm going home. My job is not, my job is not my social life. My social life is separate from my job. So that may have been something that I brought from the corporate world because I did my job. And I did not socialize with coworkers.

Sophia Abrams 47:38 So do you think that that's perhaps one, I guess, do you think like, had you not had experience in the corporate world that you would have ended up a printer?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 47:55 Well, I really can't answer that. Because there's so many things going on. Yeah, it's like, if I had had a corporate life, then I may not have taken my trip to Williamsburg. And, you know, you know, I started, as I mentioned, in our last conversation, I changed the printing to calligraphy. And I learned calligraphy because I was working in Maryland. And one weekend, I didn't have anything to do. And I got a speedball, you know, lettering book. I just practiced that for the whole weekend and went back to work. And you know, my letters were different and people were like, "Oh, that's so nice." And so I kept it up, and then eventually at a course in it. You know, but that was because I was working in corporate America. I had to find something to do on my days off.

Sophia Abrams 48:50 No, that makes sense, and I guess I just have like a few more questions in terms of post-UW life. So in our last conversation, we talked about the documentary "Proceed to be Bold." And how, in that documentary, the viewer is able to learn about printmaking, but also learn about you as a printer. So can you just kind of talk about what that what it was like to like, be the subject for that documentary, but also like that came out in 2007. So if I had this really 10 years after you have gone to grad or graduated from grad school at UW-Madison, so can you talk about the work that you did up until that time, but then also the experience of finding yourself being the subject of a documentary as well?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 49:53 Well, after I left Madison, I went to Indiana University for three and a half years and attempted to be a part of academia. But that did not bode well with me. And in 2001, I left academia with no job. And I ended up in Alabama. And I would like to say that in Alabama, is where, for lack of a better term, what people say there, I found my voice. I found the posters that I enjoy making. And I really began to hone my skills as a printer in Alabama. And that was a very, that was very well, it was like, my post my post graduate work. It really defined me and let me do research on my own, sort of, speak if you were thinking about it in an academic way. Um, yeah. So that's where, and there, when I was at Indiana, I happened to meet Laura Zinger who made the movie. Laura Zinger has worked in the Special Collections department at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. One day, when she asked the head librarian, what's the most interesting book that you have here? The library went back and brought out one of my books. And she was like, Oh, I thought you were gonna bring out like the early version of the Bible or, you know, a portfolio of Shakespeare or something like that. But she brought up this Bible. This is a church book that I did. And then, I guess Laura got interested and saw, looked at what else was in that collection at the time. And then. And then she contacted me, and did an interview for a little magazine that she was doing as an undergraduate. And then in 2007, we kept in touch. But in 2007, she had the bright idea that she wanted to make a full-length documentary. And she asked me if I was, if I wanted to have a documentary about letterpress printing. And I say, eah, you know, not, you know, I do, like, "Yeah, why not?" You know, and she was under 30. And just she wanted to do this and like, okay, you want to do this, this is your dream? Why shouldn't I help you make your dream come true? You know? And she followed me around for about a year, maybe 2006. And then she followed me around for about a year. When I say follow me around, you know, you can see that she has images of me in Alabama, and Italy, and in Chicago and other places. And, and then she put together this remarkable documentary, that at, you know, when you look at it, I'm not really in it that much. It's like a 90-minute documentary. And if I got 15 minutes, that's still 15 minutes of screen time, not talking time. That's amazing. But it was, I consider it, because I've watched it so many times. I consider it more a documentary on the relationship, of what we call art, to our civilization, and how people react to art. Assumes that she used me to get a bigger message across. Yeah. And then you know, and so that was that. That's what that was about, as far as I'm concerned. You know, it's like, yeah, that's kind of cool.

Sophia Abrams 54:04 So then, after that, well now, I guess, in present day 2021. You now live in Detroit, Michigan, and you have your own print shop. So can you talk a little bit about what that's been like for you?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 54:22 Oh, moving to Detroit has been an adventure because Detroit does have a stellar reputation for a place to live. But it is a beautiful city. It does have many problems but all cities have many problems. And the people of Detroit really are passionate about the city and are doing good things to make the city happen. And I'm glad to be a part of, you know, this continued redefining of Detroit. In light of his past, because Detroit was one of the first cities where there was a large middle class of people who were laborers. You know, they would be middle-class but they would be doctors and lawyers and shopkeepers and small business people. But Detroit was one of the first places where the laborers could, could rise to what we call the middle class. And so this is a unique city in that respect. And that is one of the things I enjoyed about Detroit.

Sophia Abrams 55:43 So we kind of already talked about this a little bit, I'll just ask it again. So now 20 plus years after your time at UW, how do you continue to see, like, your time there influencing you today?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 56:03 I see as a formative time that allowed me to develop as a human being, I did establish a very strong relationship with my African art historian, Professor Henry Drewel. And Henry continues to visit and print with his wife, Sarah Kahn. And that has been a really great relationship, ongoing relationships that was established While I was at Madison. And unfortunately, Bill Bunce died a couple of years after his retirement. So I definitely miss him. And, you know, Walter, some days Walter wanted to see me, some days Walter wouldn't want to see me so. And I'm, I'm too old to play that kind of game, you know. So it was just like, I think last time I spoke to Walter, before he passed was maybe about two or three years before he passed. But that was like, occasional conversations on the phone would be it.

Sophia Abrams 57:27 And then I guess,

Amos Kennedy Jr. 57:30 But all in all, Madison proved to -- Madison proved to be beneficial to me because I was, I earned the credentials that was like the union card, I got the MFA. So if I wanted to play in that circle of book artists and academia, I had the credentials. Which proved really beneficial, because as letterpress printing became more popular, especially in the late 2000s, in the early teens, 2013, universities needed to have visiting artists. And they're not going to bring, you know, somebody who has a high school degree and 15 years of printing experience, they would rather bring somebody who had an MFA, and two days of printing experience, because, you know, why would I have someone who doesn't have the degrees teach, teach at a university? That would encourage, "Well, why do I need a degree? Because this man made it or this woman made it. Why do I need to have the degree?" So that's why I say it's kind of like the union caught in that respect. Because the university would not hire someone nowadays that did not have an MFA degree. I don't care how accomplished they were in their field.

Sophia Abrams 59:24 And then my last question is, are there any important topics about your time at UW or post-UW that you think are important but we didn't discuss that you think are worthwhile, worthwhile to this interview?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 59:43 Yes, I think an important topic to discuss is the total and absolute lack of desire to recruit people of color to the university as on any level that you want to take it, because they are the gatekeepers, they determine who is there. And if they don't help, why is it that that University of Wisconsin football team can be like 50% Black, but nothing else is 50% black except maybe the basketball team? You know, what would the University of Wisconsin say if they had a department head, and over the course of 20 years, everybody-- a department head that was black, and over the course of 20 years, everybody they hired was black, would they say something is wrong? Why do you have all these black people here? And I mentioned that in the movie, but there's also academia, too, you know, very few departments at the University of Wisconsin have more than more than 1%, 10% of their faculty black. You'll find most black professors in you know life in African American studies. Most black, most black--. How do we say this? Not staff, I don't know what they would be called. But like oh, you go to like the athletic department, they may have you know, like 20 % black. But in any of the academic departments, you won't find 20 or 30% black.

You know, in administration, you won't find that. You won't find a, you won't find an administrative department that is like, "Oh, Damn, you know, that's 60% black people." And, yeah, I'm saying black, but that includes. Well, that would include for me, Indigenous, Latinx. Yeah, you know, Asian, Southeast Asian, you know, you will find that they bring them in a lot easier and a lot faster. And they will bring in an Indigenous person, a black person, a Latinx person, and they said, well, you know, they just, you know, they just, they're more of them in the Ph. D. program. So we have a bigger pool to pull from. You know, my, well, there's a lot of Asian young men and women who play basketball, how come they're not on the basketball team?

Sophia Abrams 1:03:00 How many black professors did you have while you were a grad student?

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:03:11 None. They didn't have a black professor in the art department. That was physically there. I think. Warrington Wickham Colescott Jr. I can't think of his name now. I think he was kind of on faculty, but I never saw him there. And so I had no black professors. And the art history department had no black professors. Despite the fact that there's over 100 historically black colleges and universities in the United States that graduate people, you know, the physics department has no relationship with any of those universities. The art department has no relationship with any of those universities to bring their graduates into their program to get an MFA.

Sophia Abrams 1:04:16 No, that's definitely an important point that you bring up and I'm--

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:04:21 However, however, the basketball coach got a relationship with every black high school in Milwaukee. And other states too. You know, they're watching, they're looking, they're, they're out there actively recruiting young black people for athletics, but no one is recruiting black people for academia. Oh, yeah. Now, I think you have this new program. I don't know what, it's some sort of hip-hop.

Sophia Abrams 1:05:00 They have First Wave, but it's kind of expanded to include visual art now too.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:05:09 Yeah. Right. Right. And, and that's like, "Oh, that's really cute. But that's like putting us in a ghetto." And if you can do that there, how come you can't do it in the English department? You know, not not structure something specifically for that, you know, for a hip hop generation, but get people that are that same age, who are interested in English, and have them in the English department or in geography, or in sociology.

Sophia Abrams 1:05:48 Yeah. Well, people who are a part of First Wave, like they do. It's just they people major in a variety of things who are First Wavers like neurobiology and whatnot.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:06:07 Right. But you know, what I'm saying is that they had kind of made this little "Oh, we gonna make a special department called the First Wave, or whatever it's called. "And this is really gonna be, you're not just, you know, people of color. But also, you know, it's like, oh, I'm interested in theater or whatever. That's great. But what do you consider the traditional university? What are you doing? That's the innovative university. Okay, what is the traditional University doing? And don't say, well, the big university, oh, in the big picture, we have this one little section over here. So what about all the other sections? Oh, we have, you know, the First Wave has, you know, like, 30% Black people in it. Well, what about agriculture's [inaudible].

You know, if you can have whatever the statistics are, for the makeup of the First Wave, if that isn't universal in the university, it doesn't help. And actually it's an indictment that the university doesn't want to do that. They don't want to have true integration of the facility. They want to continue to exclude people, we, we will, we will include you only here. Amos, you can come here because you can play football. But you can't come here because you want to be a kid. We will find money to play football, but as a chemist, we won't find a dime for you. You want to come, come on your own. Well, I don't understand why. Well, you know, how many black people can afford to go to the University of Wisconsin-Madison? None. It's priced out of our -- it's priced out of our budgets.

Sophia Abrams 1:08:22 Well, you definitely bring up a really good point that hopefully people will consider and hopefully perhaps like this project, in terms of the art department can have some say in hoping to change that in some capacity.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:08:46 Well, it's gonna change because this nation is browning, it is no longer a white nation. The demographics are going to make it change. Because there is not going to be a mass exodus of people from Europe to the United States. We have nothing to offer the Europeans.

Sophia Abrams 1:09:16 Yeah, that will be interesting.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:09:21 Still, most, most countries in Europe, college education is free, so why would you come here to get into debt? When you look at the graduate school, the graduate schools are norm-- the graduates are normally from Asia and the southern hemisphere. Very few are from Europe.

Sophia Abrams 1:09:47 That's-- yeah, that's interesting. Well, thank you so much for taking some time out of your Wednesday night to speak with me again. I really enjoyed hearing about your experience. And--

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:10:04 Not a problem.

Sophia Abrams 1:10:04 And had fun talking to you a little more than we thought but it was still really important.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:10:14 Okay, great. So keep me in the loop.

Sophia Abrams 1:10:14 Yeah. This one will stay so that will all be good. All right. Take care.

Amos Kennedy Jr. 1:10:24 Okay then, thank you very much. I appreciate it, Sophia. Okay, cha cha, bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai