There's a beauty shop companion called School of Beauty, School of Culture at the Birmingham Museum of Art. I got an email that said a couple had a guerrilla wedding in front of that picture. They slipped into the museum with a preacher and had their wedding ceremony in front of it. It turns out that the woman is a beautician and the man is a barber, they had seen that picture, and they said it was the perfect place to get married.

No one has a right to occupy the privileged position all the time, so it should be contested. It should always be messy in there.

If you have a dream: Number one, make a plan. And then execute that plan. And there will be failures along that line. Don't let that discourage you. Because failure is part of the process ... make the necessary adjustments and you can be successful at whatever you do.

I think we need to remember...that a lot of energy was put into changing things to get us to the point where we are now. But being where we are now doesn't mean that we don't have to put in the same kind of energy to get us to a place where we ought to be.

[My picture A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ] was a way of demonstrating that there was a broad range of possibilities and fairly unlimited utility for a black figure that didn't have to comprise its blackness in order to preserve a place in the field of representation.

There's a beauty shop companion called School of Beauty, School of Culture at the Birmingham Museum of Art. I got an email that said a couple had a guerrilla wedding in front of that picture. They slipped into the museum with a preacher and had their wedding ceremony in front of it. It turns out that the woman is a beautician and the man is a barber, they had seen that picture, and they said it was the perfect place to get married.

It's forcing the issue of perception by rendering an image that is just at the edge of perception, which in someway forces you to look more closely and for you to adjust your vision so you can see in the dark.