Seaport’s first artist in residence uses scraps to address weighty issues
Mystic — Sitting next to a 12-foot skiff filled with scraps of wood, rope, metal and even a wooden horse head on Tuesday, Kevin Sampson of Newark, N.J., called Mystic Seaport Museum the “best junkyard in the world.”
“They have so much stuff here, it boggles the mind,” he said, taking refuge from the hot sun under a small tent.
It’s that “junk” that will soon become the latest creation from the retired Scotch Plains, N. J., police detective, who holds the distinction of being the country’s first African American uniformed police composite sketch artist, and who has kicked off the museum’s artist-residency program.
He will be at the museum through July 14, living aboard a boat and working in his open- air studio, where vistors can watch him work and discuss his art.
Sampson is known for taking bits of everyday materials and transforming them into sculptures or monuments that speak to issues that range from loss and family to slavery and gentrification.
And a few steps away in the museum’s Mallory building, there is new exhibition entitled “Monument Man: Kevin Sampson in Residence” that features about a dozen of his intricately crafted pieces, many of them in the form of boats, that honor a wide range of people.
Among them are pieces featuring a lower Manhattan fire company that amazingly lost no firefighters in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, abolitionist Harriet Tubman, a Danish slave ship, Chinese immigrants who built the great western railroads,
and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, where one of his mentors was dean of the cathedral. All are crafted out of tiny pieces of wood, metal, beads, string, mesh and chain, with items such as pipes, gauges or dominoes thrown in. When the skiff is done it will join the exhibit, which runs through next spring.
“Kevin Sampson is showing our audience that there is a completely different perspective on what the American maritime experience is from what they might expect. We are excited to provide him a voice and platform to share that story,” said museum President Steve White.
Sampson, who grew up as the son of civil rights leader, said that he began creating his memorials in the early ‘90s to deal with loss and tragedy not just in in his own family, but in the larger community, where people were dealing with the ongoing effects of the 1967 Newark riots and AIDS. His works honored not only those who were lost but also mentors and historical figures.
“It helped me work through things,” he said about his art.
Over a two-year period, he said, he created about 50 memorials from scrap materials he collected and gave most of it the away to family and friends.
He said he also began drawing cartoons of people he worked with and left them in their lockers as a “way to break the ice” in the police station.
After two years of what he thought was an anonymous activity, he said the police chief called him into his office and said he wanted to send him to school to learn how to draw composite sketches of suspects.
After the death of his wife, he retired from the police force after 20 years. He has a grown son and a daughter, who is also an artist. They display their works at Cavin-Morris Gallery in the Chelsea section of New York City. Sampson now lives in the Ironbound district of Newark, which is known as a center of African American contemporary art.
Samson’s road to the Seaport, which he had never visited until his arrival on June 30, came from his 20- year- long friendship with Nicholas Bell, the museum’s vice president for curatorial affairs.
“He knew my work and knew I had done a lot of residencies,” he said.
Since arriving at the Seaport, he said, he has walked around Mystic and the museum, including watching the museum shipwrights at work, to get a feel for the place and look for objects for his sculpture. He said he has been collecting items piece by piece on the museum grounds and then returning to the skiff to see if they will work. “I don’t rush,” he said. The piece Sampson is currently creating at the museum honors the 86- foot- long ark that Kea Tawana began building in 1982 in a downtrodden Newark neighborhood. Using scraps from demolished buildings, she meant the vessel to go to sea one day and even developed a plan for a helicopter to lift it there from her neighborhood.
But in 1987, Newark’s mayor said the ark was an illegal structure built without permits from the city. A year later she began deconstructing it so the city would not demolish it.
“In its short life, Kea’s ark became a symbol of life for a Newark desperate for recovery,” states the museum’s explanation of Sampson’s project, which is entitled the “USS Kye Kye Kule.”
Sampson said he has chosen to honor Tawana because she has always been an inspiration to him with her work in the wake of the riots and urban renewal.
“What was she trying to say? She put out a call. But she never got the respect she deserved,” he said.
“But now Newark is coming back. Gentrification is chang- ing the face of the city. Middle-class and poor people are being driven out of the city,” he said.
Sampson said he leaves it up to people who come to see his work, to determine what they take away from it.
“I’d rather have people hate it or love it. I want them to see you can make art out of nothing,” he said.