By KATHERINE BLOOD
Artist-filmmaker Camille Billops took her audience on an enthralling journey during her slide and film lecture on May 27 in the Library's Mumford Room.
The program was presented in conjunction with the Library of Congress-International Print Center New York exhibition, "Creative Space: Fifty Years of Robert Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop," which was on display at the Library through June 28 and is now online at www.loc.gov/exhibits/blackburn/. The exhibition honored Blackburn's remarkable contribution to creative life in America and beyond. Billops was a longtime friend and colleague of Blackburn, who died on April 21 at the age of 82.
Drawing on her vast personal experience as a collector, visual artist and publisher, Billops began her talk with an appreciation of libraries as "ancestor altars" and a discussion about the value of collecting and documenting peoples' work. She said: "One of the most revolutionary things you can do is to write a book about your work and about people who love you and define your work." Also crucial, she said, is to recognize the value of one's personal history and things as close to you as your own home, and to leave a clear plan for their long-term preservation.
Billops has followed her own advice, making a series of acclaimed films about her life and family, including "Finding Christa," for which she won the Grand Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992.
She is well-known in arts and scholarly communities as co-founder with her husband, James Hatch, of the Hatch-Billops Collection—an extensive archives of African American cultural history. Billops is also co-publisher with Hatch of the journal Artist and Influence, a vehicle since 1981 for interviews with a veritable "Who's Who" of visual artists, as well as a forum for poets, writers, critics, theorists and other creators. A recent volume includes interviews with artist Allen Edmunds, founder and director of the renowned Brandywine Printmaking Workshop in Philadelphia, and Samella Lewis, a premier historian of African American art. While the journal is independently published by the Hatch-Billops Collection Inc., Billops acknowledges the long-term support of the National Endowment for the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts.
Billops' artworks have been exhibited throughout the world at venues such as the Gallerie Akhenaton in Cairo, Egypt, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her artistry encompasses ceramic sculpture and printmaking, and examples of her prints from the Library's collection were on display during the lecture.
The Asilah Printmaking Workshop
The centerpiece of Billops' lecture was a slide show chronicling her experiences working with master printmaker Blackburn and other international artists in 1978 to establish the first printmaking workshop in Asilah, Morocco.
"I was in Morocco," she began, "because of Bob Blackburn." Blackburn changed the course of American art through his groundbreaking graphic work and his Printmaking Workshop, which he founded in New York City in 1948. Conceived as an open, democratic space where printmaking was the common language, Blackburn's Printmaking Workshop became a cultural crossroads, attracting artists from around the world and helping to seed similar workshops in the United States and Africa, including the printmaking workshop in Morocco.
The first Asilah Cultural Moussem (festival) in Morocco was launched in 1978, with an invitation to artists and performers from around the world from then-mayor Mohamed Benaissa, later the minister of culture, and now Morocco's foreign minister.
Representing the Printmaking Workshop were Blackburn and fellow workshop artists Billops and Mohammed Khalil. The site of the new printmaking workshop was in the Raissouni Palace. Originally built in 1909 and once home to a famous pirate named Ahmed-al Raissouni, it was renamed the Palace of Culture around the time of the moussem. In founding the festival, Benaissa worked with painter Mohammed Melehi, who founded the Moroccan Association of Plastic Arts.
In their joint essay for the book "Asilah: First Cultural Moussem July/August 1978" (Shoof Publications, 1979), Benaissa and Melehi wrote: "The first cultural ‘Moussem' of Asilah was set up during the months of July and August 1978, around the existing remains of its historical sacred past. The ministry of culture restored a section of the city ramparts. We refurbished the large and luxurious ‘Raissouni Palace' and transformed it into a ‘palace of culture.' We installed art studios and equipped a hall, which was reserved for cultural gatherings. We created an open-air theatre in the old section of the city within the Portuguese walls. We also provided an area for film projections and organized a permanent exhibition of plastic arts."
Visiting and local artists, including children, painted colorful murals on walls throughout the city, and this practice continues to be a hallmark feature of the annual festival.
Billops showed slides of the splendid palace architecture, sun-soaked courtyards and scenes of printmaking in the Asilah Workshop studio, often with master printmaker Khalil at the press. Billops pointed out the young crown prince, Prince Sidi Mohammed, now King of Morocco, among the onlookers in the workshop.
Above all, Billops' slides were portraits—portraits of fellow artists and Moroccan friends, and equally, portraits of a particular time and place and atmosphere. Her photographs showed the artists at work and out exploring the town, in open air markets, at cafés, discotheques and musical performances. Included were many portraits of Blackburn himself, seen at a gathering where everyone had flowers tucked above their ears and in their hair, standing at a balcony during a quiet moment. Her slides from a second trip to Asilah in 1988 included a wonderful small series of Billops performing a joyful impromptu belly dance.
Billops recalled that the artists felt honored to be invited and to be part of something so special. She likened the energy in Asilah to other vital cultural centers, such as New York's Harlem. As envisioned by Benaissa and Melehi, the festival attracted many tourists to Asilah and helped boost the local economy. In "Asilah: First Cultural Moussem" they further underscored the intent of the festival: "… on Arab soil, in Asilah, a fragment of the Third World, where men from North and South will find a permanent centre for cultural diffusion, rich in authenticity and steeped in heritage … where people will be able to define their distinctive features, their fundamental characteristics and their values."
The inaugural group of international printmakers participating in the Asilah workshop included three women and nine men: Malika Agueznay (Morocco), Billops (United States), Nilde Carabba (Italy), Roman Artymowski (Poland), Rodolfo Abularach (Guatemala/United States), Blackburn (United States), Farid Belkahia (Morocco), Antonio Boça (Portugal), Salem Debbagh (Iraq), Khalil (Sudan/United States), Nacer Soumi (Palestine) and Shu Takahashi (Japan).
For 25 years, the moussem at Asilah has been an important creative destination for international artists, and Khalil continues to oversee the Asilah printmaking workshop during the annual festival.
Billops concluded her program with a short excerpt of a mid-1980s video interview with Blackburn by Kellie Jones, art historian and daughter of poet Amiri Baraka. The video was made for the Jamaica Arts Center exhibition "Masters and Pupils–The Education of Black Artists in New York 1900-1980," which Jones curated.
Following the video, Billops spoke frankly and with affection about her long personal history with Blackburn and offered insights into his life and work.
Katherine Blood is fine prints curator in the Library's Prints and Photographs Division.