The woman in the picture has a look of worry and determination on her face, but what really draws the gaze is the machine gun she’s pointing a little too close to the viewer’s direction. Even if we’re not the target, we might be in the line of fire. Then there’s the words spilling out all around her. Hustle hard, they say, and keep on with a narrative about just having to provide for a family, defend home. Who is she? Are the words her interior monologue? Or are they both part of a greater whole?
Brian Slattery Photo
The piece is part of a new show up at Never Ending Books on State Street by artist Drew Keefer.
“It’s an image from a film about the Sandinista revolution” in Nicaragua, Keefer said. But the words in the piece are from rapper Ace Hood, associated with the Dirty South school of hip hop. So much of that music is based on the place where it came from, but Keefer is one (of many) who heard connections between it and broader political struggles, in the United States and elsewhere.
Keefer’s work is in some sense a collage of disparate elements, except that “they’re not disparate to me,” he said. They come together in his political activism and in his own experiences and observations of others. Raised and effectively born in New Haven (his family moved to town when Keefer was a month old), the 30-year-old artist attended California College of the Arts, in Oakland.
“When I was in art school I was looking at revolutionary images,” such as the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers, which uses a documentary-film style to tell the story of Algerian resistance against the French in the 1950s. Keefer was drawn to art that facilitated “people speaking for themselves” directly, as opposed to being mediated through journalism or, for that matter, some forms of art.
Developing his particular style of art was “a way to be presenting a voice other than my own,” Keefer said. That he made that kind of space felt imperative “as a White American who happens to be sympathetic” to political movements the world over that involve Black and Brown people speaking out and pushing back against White people who hold power over them.
“What can I do from my coordinates?” he asked himself.
But Keefer’s choice of style allows for personal expression as well. When he first arrived at CCA he wanted to be an oil painter. He also worked with mixed media, exploring the way that “the materials tell you what to do.” But he ended up “falling in love” with using thick lines of charcoal and graphite.
“I’m able to put more of myself into line work with charcoal that’s a bit chunkier,” he said. He also saw the possibilities for expression and interpretation open when he moved away from paints and into charcoal, “even working within the parameters of representation,” he said, rather than going purely abstract.
He also found himself drawing inspiration from contemporary artists at the top of the art game. “Gerhard Richter is one of my favorite artists,” Keefer said. The internationally known Richter paints from photographs and once explained that “making a painting from a photograph forces you to think about it in a higher way,” Keefer said. Keefer was inspired by that. “At the end of the day I’m taking photographs on the internet and copying them,” he said with a laugh, “so I have to find a way to make that interesting.”
Find a way he does, as his compositions are funny and edgy, filled with bile and heart, the raggedness of the style balanced with a keen compositional eye. They’re perhaps most at home on the walls of Never Ending Books. Under the aegis of Volume Two — currently working toward full-fledged nonprofit status after a successful fundraising campaign has allowed a collective of about 10 people to keep the storefront community arts hub open — the space is much tidier and more spacious than it was. But it has preserved the vision and vibe of the storefront as it was before the pandemic. It’s still a place that feels somehow like both a sanctuary and a free-for-all, a place where things happen that don’t happen anywhere else. Maybe even a revolution.
Nice for Drew to give a nod to the film 'The Battle of Algiers'. If you haven't seen this movie, WATCH IT!
Especially salient given what it going on in Afghanistan these days...