Mistake House Magazine: We’d like to begin with a question about materials and memory. In an interview with St. Louis Public Radio, you talk about riding through historically Black neighborhoods in North St. Louis, collecting bricks, burnt wood, and rusted metal from streets and neglected buildings, and reassembling these materials into sculptural forms in your studio. You point to the nature of the neglect that makes these materials available—how, for example, shell companies purchase homes, let them deteriorate, and resell the “repurposed” bricks for profit.
Your work offers a different kind of repurposing, one that interrupts this cycle of for-profit neglect and instead preserves the memories embedded in these materials. What kinds of personal or collective memories of North St. Louis are you most interested in engaging, and how do you see those memories taking shape in your assemblages?
Ron Young: My sculptures are constructed from the remnants of communities that were the centers of African American culture throughout North St. Louis: Carr Square Village, Lewis Place, Fountain Park, Mill Creek, Kingsway West, Hamilton Heights, Old North, Hyde Park, College Hill and Fairgrounds. All communities ravished by “the brick thieves.”
In 2011, at the height of the recession, some developers began using reclaimed bricks in new home construction. St. Louis brick quickly gained popularity nationwide with developers for its unique qualities of color, texture, and durability. This demand for reclaimed bricks led to some developers hiring men to steal bricks from abandoned properties. One of the hardest hit areas by the brick thieves is the Historic Ville Community in the Fourth Ward.
The Ville and The Greater Ville were once home to noteworthy African Americans like Josephine Baker, Dick Gregory, Tina Turner, Chuck Berry, Redd Foxx, and Arthur Ashe. The Ville is home to Sumner High School, the first school west of the Mississippi to provide secondary education to African American students, and the former Homer G. Phillips Hospital, which was one of the first medical institutions in the country to train African American physicians. The Anne Malone Children’s Home, founded by one of the first African American millionaires in the nation, is also located there.
I use bricks in my work as a symbol of strength and longevity of the Black community. More than a pile of rubble, these bricks contain the history and memories of generations of African Americans.
MH: Could you describe your studio practice—how you begin working on a piece, the kinds of decisions you make along the way, and how you physically work with your materials? What does your workspace look like, and what tools or processes are central to your process? Do you think of yourself as a sculptor, an assembler, an architect, or some combination of these?
RY: I think of myself as a combination of sculptor/assembler. My home studio consists of three distinct spaces. A garage workshop, where I do my metalwork, wood fabrication, and storage. My basement studio is basically for painting and storage. And my office is for business-related materials. I like working on multiple projects simultaneously which allows for my ideas to flow. The materials often determine the way I construct my assemblages. For instance, the charred wood I use is very brittle and easy to break, so I must be patient and let the work “evolve.”
MH: The shapes and forms of your assemblages recall the nailed figures of Nkisi Nkondi, associated with the Kongo people of the historical Kongo Kingdom—whose territories included parts of present-day regions of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon. Made collaboratively by artists and spiritual healers known as Nganga, each figure functioned as a spiritual “power object,” with “various metals embedded in the figure’s expansive torso attest[ing] to its central role as witness and enforcer of affairs critical to its community. They document vows sealed, treaties signed, and efforts to eradicate evil” (The Met, “Nkisi N’Kondi). These power figures also played a part in anti-colonial resistance.
You’ve spoken about the influence of Nkisi Nkondi sculptures on your work. When did you first encounter these “power figures,” and how did that encounter shape your thinking about materials, ritual, civic engagement, and healing? What kind of research, if any, has informed your approach to this tradition in your own work? Do you see your sculptures as engaging any communal or restorative functions in St. Louis? For example, when your work is installed in gallery or museum spaces, how do you think about its relationship to those environments and their audiences?
RY: Drawing on the great diversity of artistic practices, many of my artistic ideas have come through travel. In 2019 I did an invitational artist residency with Dr. Esther Mahlangu, a South African artist known for her bold, large-scale paintings inspired by her Ndebele heritage. The experience greatly influenced my interest in using materials from my immediate environment. In gathering materials, I place emphasis on objects with strong autobiographical connotations like tools and cooking utensils. Such objects are “experienced” rather than “used” and are considered more spiritually potent. These power objects embody the collective consciousness of generations of African Americans rooted in the aesthetic traditions of Sankofa, the African concept of understanding one’s past in order to go forward.
MH: The human figure is central in many Nkisi Nkondi sculptures, often shown standing upright, with nails driven into the body and other “magico-religious materials” that “transform the figure into a vessel for a spirit” (Brooklyn Museum). In your work, however, the forms are more abstract and nonfigurative. Rather than carving the wood into human likenesses, you present it in its found state, with nails inserted into it. What draws you to keep the forms nonfigurative, and what does that allow you to do—conceptually or materially—that a more figurative approach might not?
RY: While harvesting and collecting objects throughout the city, I began to notice that many of the materials, especially architectural molding, already had nails embedded in them. Working with objects in their natural found state allows me to create a narrative about the African diaspora tradition of using and reusing material. I place emphasis on using contrasting materials like burnt wood and rusty metals to create juxtaposition. The relationship between the collection of objects and the intrinsic meaning attached to those objects allows me to breathe new life into my mixed media assemblage/sculptures.
MH: In an interview with The St. Louis American, you describe nails as something that “began to appear” in your work, almost before you fully understood their meaning. Could you walk us through a specific piece where this shift occurred—what was the object before the nails entered it, and at what point did you recognize the nails as structurally or conceptually central to the work, rather than decorative?
RY: The search to create a new visual language eventually led me to return to school, and to discover the art form known as assemblage. While attending graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis, I started bringing together groups of objects which may evoke a specific memory when seen alone, but when seen together create a whole new meaning. Searching alleys, vacant lots, and boarded-up buildings of the city, I discovered a treasure-trove of materials left behind that help to tell the story of what we value in our disposable society: an abundance of wood, now burnt and rotten, that was once doors, window frames, and decorative molding; wrought iron; rusty nuts, bolts and screws; old broken tools; ropes and chains; tons of bricks; and thousands of nails. These are the materials I use to explore the concept of the “Power Object,” the spiritual belief that all objects in nature have a soul.
My sculpture Strange Fruit consists of two irregular but congruent blocks of architectural molding, charred black and covered in shards of nails. Dangling from the hook of a curved plant hanger, the piece is based on the song by Billie Holiday about lynching. Incorporating my life experiences into a sculpture, Strange Fruit is my interpretation of legacy sculpture, ancestry figures, power objects and Nkisi n Kondi.
MH: Related to the previous question: In Nkisi tradition, inserted nails often serve specific ritual or social functions. Do the nails in your work—rusty, bent, deformed—carry a consistent function across your pieces, or does their meaning shift depending on the materials and context of each sculpture?
RY: The work is always intentionally ambiguous and full of contradictions. The viewer is required to read between the lines and draw their own conclusions.
MH: The set of four sculptures JuJu—Pitchfork, JuJu—Soldering Irons, JuJu—Electric Boogaloo, and JuJu—Crank Drill all share a similar name and overall structure. Each features a rectangular block of wood rising from a square metal base, with nails hammered into every side (the nails are not fully driven in but lodged so that they hold in place). The point of difference seems to be at the top: in most of the works, the object named in the title is mounted there (for instance, JuJu—Pitchfork includes a pitchfork). But JuJu—Electric Boogaloo appears to break that pattern. What is the object at the top of that sculpture, and how does it connect to the title? More broadly, how do you arrive at titles in this and other series?
RY: The pieces atop Electric Boogaloo are objects I found along the railroad tracks near the flood wall downtown, just south of the Gateway Arch. The round ceramic piece at the end of the hook shape looks like some kind of conductor for electricity current, hence the name. In the beginning, I was just creating work and didn’t think much about titles. Over time I would write down phrases and sayings on the walls and table surfaces of my studio that eventually lead to the creation of a book of names with titles I pick depending on the context of the sculpture.
MH: In your interview with St. Louis Public Radio, you describe your sculptures as physically “dangerous”—capable of scratching or injuring the viewer—and connect this to the “hurt” embedded in the histories of the materials and the communities who experienced them. How deliberate is that translation from social violence into physical risk? Have you ever adjusted a work because it crossed from metaphor into liability, and if so, how did that affect the piece conceptually? More broadly, how do you hope viewers will move around your work? Is physical navigation part of the experience?
RY: I was referring to JuJu Pitchfork. I was concerned about the possibility of injury from that particular sculpture in my exhibition at the Kranzberg Arts Foundation in 2021. The pitchfork edges are rather sharp and pointy. After giving some additional thought, I decided to display the work as it was. I think art should be an immersive experience; therefore, I design my exhibitions as installations and allow the viewer to navigate in and around the work.
MH: In the same interview, you note that you try not to “get into the politics” of this hurt, so as not to override the experience of the work. How do you think about the boundary between political meaning and aesthetic or spiritual experience in your practice? What might be lost if the work were read primarily through a political lens?
RY: I just concentrate on being authentic and creating the best work I can. It’s more important to create art that asks questions and stimulates conversation than provides answers. In the end, the viewer is required to read between the lines and draw their own conclusions.
MH: In your artwork Time, the material elements feel more literal than in many of your other sculptures. The piece centers on a black clock, surrounded by a bone-white crown of thorns and a rusted, cage-like yellow structure, all set on a square marble slab. The clock, in particular, seems less altered than the found materials you often use, which are typically in more advanced states of decay and therefore harder to decipher. Do you remember where you found the clock, and what drew you to include it in this form? How does this more intact or legible object connect to your broader engagement with themes of time, entropy, and change? And how do you decide what to preserve in a recognizable state versus what to transform or allow to become obscured?
RY: I found the clock in an antique shop. It was originally silver and I painted it black. The black and white base is a faux painted finish. The simple design and smooth lines of the clock create an interesting contrast against the aged patina of the cage. There was no need to change anything. All the pieces fit together just as they are. Be intentional and stay in the moment as much as possible. In life the only constant is change, yet no one can outlive time and the certainty of death.
MH: In a podcast interview, you reflect on your 33 years teaching art in schools in St. Louis. How has your experience of working with students, institutions, and communities shaped your understanding of care and intentionality, and the need to pay attention to what’s happening around you, especially in places like North St. Louis?
RY: Although I retired from the classroom in 2013, I continue to work with programs like STL Artworks, a job training program in the arts for creative teens in St. Louis. In my thirty-three years of teaching, I estimate I taught well over 20,000 students, mainly Gen Xers and Millennials. Among my former students currently active in the St. Louis Arts Community are Cheeraz Gormon, activist, spoken word artist, published poet, photographer, and advertising copywriter; Sarah Paulsen, an artist and community activist; and Jayvn Solomon, artist, art activist, and founder of Loutopia.
MH: Does your background as an educator influence how you think about viewers encountering your art? For instance, do you find yourself trying to guide interpretation and understanding in any way, or is it important to you to leave the work open for viewers to arrive at their own conclusions?
RY: It’s important that people come to their own conclusions about the work.
MH: Do you ever play hooky? If you do, what is your favorite thing to do when you take off suddenly, as in a dérive?
RY: For me traveling is playing hooky and I’m looking forward to playing hooky real soon. I’m going to Argentina and Brazil for 10 days in May. Excited!