Interview Transcription

 Luvon

She [Almeta] had a group of kids that she taught to dance through Garth Fagan dance, it would not have been if it wasn't for her. Talking about history. This is a gift. This is a gift to us. But also, she's gifted to be able to talk to young people and to get it across to them so that they get it.

They almost killed me, those kids almost killed me when we were told that she couldn't teach the class anymore. I thought I was going to lose my life by the kids. That's a shame you get beat up like that by kids, and I think the majority of them were girls. That's a sorrowful death. They were so mad at me, you wouldn't believe it.

Shania

No, I'd believe it. I'd be mad too.

Luvon

But what she did there was a miracle. And I got a lot of accolades back then. Always in the newspapers.

Almeta

Television.

Luvon

I didn't have a real ego that big, okay? But I've never had anybody to support me like that. Never in my life, still yet, I get support.

Almeta

Anytime I put my life on the line, when I believe in something, I put my life on the line.

Luvon

You can't go wrong with that. You can't go wrong when you know somebody back there is behind you like that. Paulette Davis was another one.

Shania

Who's Paulette?

Almeta

Paulette Davis. She's a fiber artist. Oh my God. Black woman.

Luvon

We used to do Soul-Ins at the Memorial Art Gallery. Miracle, the Soul-In's. The kids would do a dance performance. We had barbecued chicken—

Almeta

Which my sister and the mothers, we would sit up all night cooking that chicken in my sister's kitchen and it would feed hundreds of people the next day.

And the Soul-In, it was an annual event at the Memorial Art Gallery. It was a day for the community and the theme is anything Black, and we were there. Art, dance, lectures, performances, all kinds of things were put in place where people, the everyday people—like Sly and the Family Stone, “I am everyday people”— everyday people who had never set foot in Memorial Art Gallery because they couldn't afford it or they were thinking, “Oh, that's not about me.” And they would come in and find themselves.

Luvon

We would have people like Eddie Davis. He was a ceramic artist.

Almeta

Oh, Eddie. Great sculptor.

Luvon

He would bring his potter's wheel in and right there in front of people, do a pottery demonstration of raising a pot. These magnificent, big, beautiful pots. He would just create it right in front of an audience of three or four hundred people and it looked like he got so much joy out of it. He was just so gifted. We had the first Black aesthetics, we called it the Aesthetics of Black Show. I wish I had done—Jim Pappas, Eddie Davis, David McDonald.

Almeta

Jim Dennis.

Luvon

Jim Dennis took the photographs. Jack White.

Almeta

Joan Beckles.

Luvon

Jack White. Joan Beckles was on the board of directors at All of Us. But the Aesthetics of Black Show was those four artists. Jack White. James Pappas from Buffalo, he used to be the head of the Black Studies Department and did art on the side, ran that program for many years at Buffalo State. Started in the Black Studies Department and ran it for many, many years. Eddie Davis, first black graduate of the master's program in ceramics at RIT. Then, David McDonald, who was just a premier ceramicist at Syracuse University. When he talked, he sounded like a machine gun. “Ba ba ba,” stuttered, you know? But you listen to that “ba ba ba ba ba,” and you hear wisdom that was like, mind blowing.

As far as Black aesthetics, that was like the seeds of Black aesthetics. There was a wind that blew. There was a movement, but without the right people in the right places, I tell you, it was something that my soul still just reverence over.

Fifty years ago, over fifty years ago, she [Almeta] would dance, teach that class on Saturday mornings, and storytell. Unbelievable.

Almeta

And majored in economics, and graduated with a 4. 0 average.

Luvon

Sure did, sure did.

Almeta

Commuting to Brockport before there was a 451.

Luvon

That's right, that's right.

Almeta

And raising two kids. And as Garth would say, “You can eat off Almeta's floors.” I was cooking from scratch 'cause I told my children when I started college, we're not eating meat 'cause we can't afford it. You can eat meat at anybody else's place, but I'm not buying it 'cause we can't afford it.

Luvon

And back during that period of time when we had models—

Almeta

Oh, that's right. I forgot about that.

Luvon

I'm not gonna go into all of that. I'm gonna get a little piece of it. But we never had a Black female model.

Almeta

Figure, model, figure drawing classes.

Luvon

Figure model, she was the one. She was the one, she did it all. You're talking about multi-talented, gifted, that's the miracle. That's a miracle as far as I'm concerned, to have somebody come up from Rochester, from my home, you know, homegrown. I mean, we get people from Philadelphia, we get people from Chicago, we get a lot of rich personalities, but homegrown.

Almeta

And you too. Cause I grew up on Leopold Street and you was one block over.

Luvon

That's right, that's right.

Almeta

In Northeast Rochester.

Luvon

That's where I came from, Kelly Street. Beer bottles, people getting murdered, you know, beat up, and all kinds of crazy stuff. But also, very rich, vibrant community

Almeta

It was so diverse that Russians, Ukrainians, Polish, Germans, Jewish, Puerto Ricans, somebody else. I'm missing somebody else. There's one more I forgot.

Luvon

Monroe Avenue is really the relic of Joseph Avenue. When you look at Monroe Avenue, all the way out to Winton Road back there where Fox's is, Fox's used to be on Joseph Avenue, right across the street from No. 9 school.

Almeta

It used to be across the street from No. 9 school!

Luvon

Cathay Pagoda used to be right next to Fox's. I can remember here in Rochester, where we grew up and when we were raised up on the north side there, you had restaurants and bars and stuff that was on the same scale as going to New York City.

Almeta

Cotton club. We had our Cotton Club on Joseph Avenue. I used to sit there and watch the people going in and out. “I want to go to the Cotton Club when I grow up.”

Luvon

We had theaters within blocks of each other. You can walk to places and eat the best food, hear the best music.

Almeta

Thank you. And it was within 10, 15 minute walk, or less. Five minutes if it was on the corner from your street. And of course there were the shopkeepers.

Luvon

Yeah. Yeah.

Almeta

I've said this a lot and they're gonna get tired of hearing it, but if your mama didn't have money to buy, she could go to that shopkeeper and say, “I need something for my kids.” And that shopkeeper said, “Just get whatever you want, pay me when you can,” or they say, “Just get what you want. Don't worry about it.” You could go and buy some furniture and pay $5 a week.

Luvon

And the Rainbow Fish Market.

Almeta

Oh, the fish market. Yes.

Luvon

The guy who ran Rainbow Fish Market, he used to give me free fish whenever I would walk in because I taught his son art. Just because I taught him in one of those storefront art classes that ABC started, Action for a Better Community. So we had storefront art classes—like what this is here, it was like a school.

Almeta

It was Wall therapy. Before there was Wall therapy.

Luvon

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When I was a student at RIT I used to do that.

Almeta

Now, I want you to just give some honor to your mom.

Luvon

Oh Lord have mercy.

Almeta

Because she had the nerve to be a female preacher back in the day. It's like, I don't want no woman in the pulpit.

Luvon

Yeah, let's start from the beginning. Let's start from the beginning on that. My mother came up here on a migrant truck. Not a bus, but a migrant truck. But Odessa Shepard, who rode up here on a migrant truck—

Almeta

Tramp trucks. Tramp trucks they called them.

Luvon

Yeah. Came up here, ran away from the family of my father—my father was in the army at that time—because she felt she had to make more money, wanted to get out of Sanford, Florida. She wasn't making anything there, wasn't doing anything. Came here, made enough money working on a farm in Sodus. Made her way back into the city and worked as a maid in a hotel. Until she earned enough money to get her own apartment and then she came back to Florida and stole me and my two brothers from my father's parents who did not want us to go. I can remember being on the back of a pickup truck and seeing the dust flying up in the air as she stole us away while they were working. And when she got us here, the one thing she said to me, or I heard her say in my earshot when I was a little kid, five, six years old, is that “When I get my kids up north, the one thing that I want is for them to finish high school.” And when I heard that, I gave one step up above that which landed me at Roberts Wesleyan College.

And after Roberts Wesleyan College, I got drafted in the army. Started to give it up then, but after they put a little boot leather in my butt, I said, “I better keep on going.” So, I went on to RIT. Had to start all over again after two and a half years at Roberts Wesleyan College, didn't want to do that. I used to see my friends in the city, and they'd say, “Man, what you doing?” I'd say, “I'm still going to school.” They'd say, “You mean to say you haven't finished school yet? What's wrong with you?” Then I finally finished.

But my mother, I saw her from an 18 year old woman, cigarette smoking, cussing, fighting little lady with the little legs and hips, walk proud all the time, then looking at her and stuff like that but she had a mission and nobody could get to her. She kept her eyes on the sparrow as far as raising her kids, but then she had a sister who was not as fortunate as her, didn't have the strength, she had to keep trying to help her out raising her seven kids. She had three of her own and then her sister died with a brain tumor at a young age, maybe 27, 28 years old. My mother took all seven kids.

She couldn't buy a house at that time, so she found this Italian family and this guy that owned a home, one of those add-on-to houses, just one of those little houses and they added more house to it as his family got bigger, and she moved all seven of those kids and us. It was like three apartments in the house. Me and the boys we stayed in one part, my mother stayed in the bottom part, and I think she rented out the top floor so they can make extra income. She would save pennies, kept pennies in a jar, big jar. My job every month or two months was to take that jar of pennies to the bank. She would save enough money to pay part of the mortgage.

She worked at Genesee Hospital carrying bedpans. By the time she graduated from Genesee Hospital, she was head of the nursery department that was newly formed at Genesee Hospital. The head of it. And I can remember her sitting down and saying, “You see that little baby over there?” The baby was no more than one or two years old. “He's like an old man. Pay close attention to him and you'll learn something. You listen to him and you see that old man that I'm talking about.” And I kept paying attention to that little kid. I started, I thought I was seeing an old man. An old soul.

But that's the kind of visionary she was. She was the kind of person that if somebody was talking about her, she could hear her. Ha ha ha ha ha. People, they didn't like her because she was a little thing and she was feisty. They didn't like that because they wanted people to bow down to them. My own relatives. Even though she helped them to come here to get a better job, she helped to raise their kids. And even now, some of those kids talk better about her than perhaps I can talk about her.

Almeta

That's a legacy.

Luvon

She raised a whole community almost. And she became a minister. She started off with another group of women that was into the ministry, almost semi witchcraft as far as what I think. But then I came back one day from the army on furlough and I heard this strange sound. You call it speaking in tongues. And I heard her up in the attic. She moved from downstairs up to the attic in the house and I heard this guttural sound coming from them. I said to myself, “What in the world was that strange sound, what's wrong with them? Just my crazy mama again.” I happened to be passing by her bedroom and I saw this Bible laying on the table. I looked at the Bible, and I pulled it open and looked at it, and there was a picture of me with my big cheeks, and this here army cap. She'd been praying for me the whole time I was in the army. Now, I didn't want to go to no army. That was at the time when people didn't, they were running off to Canada and everywhere else.

Almeta

Thank you. Who wanted to go to Vietnam? Nobody.

Luvon

When I came and asked her, I said, “Mom, they're trying to send me to Vietnam.” She looked at me, she says, “Well, son, that's your duty. I'm no better than any other mother. If their son got killed and something happened to you, then I just have to bear it.” That really freaked me out. She said, “You gotta go.” Next thing I know, I'm off to nowhere, a mama's boy, I mean a total mama's boy, because whatever my mama said, I believed, whatever somebody else said, you know…

Almeta

You ain't my mama.

Luvon

Plus, I was a fighter, that Leo in me. But also I was a fighter. I would fight people who tried to, I would protect my family 'cause I saw her protect her family. I saw her protect her sister from men who was taking advantage of her because she was weaker and so I grew up like that. But I saw her transition from one extreme of who she was to becoming a minister.

Almeta

Into the fullness of being who she is.

Luvon

Coming into it. One day she said, “Well, I'm going to go into the ministry.”

Almeta

And it's what she had been prepared for.

Luvon

What she had been prepared for.

Almeta

And why she was in this life to begin with. To be what she became, and all of those experiences prepared her to be the woman that people still talk about today. That was a powerful woman. Powerful.

Luvon

She was. She really was. Way beyond anything that I could comprehend. One day, and one of those times when I was sitting there at the Soul-In, it came to me because things were too wonderful. We had the dance troupe. It was just all made out. It was just too beautiful. And I said to myself, “Luvon, you're doing a good job here.” And then something said, “This is better than you. You know you can't do that. You know the extent of who you are.” And then it occurred to me, it's not me. It's those prayers.

Almeta

We talked about that because at the time, remember, I had my sons under the teachings of Reverend Marion Newby at the Church of Divine Inspiration, the spiritualist church. So a couple times we had little conversations on that because that's where my sons and I were worshipping. Back when I was at All of Us Art Workshop.

Luvon

Somebody was with it, it was in there and I felt it, but I didn't know it. One day, I started to think about it, and I was in my basement painting, and it came to me, there's something out here, beyond me, and I've been knowing that, I knew that ever since I was nine years old, but then it came to me again, and it came to me when I was at Roberts Wesleyan, studying history but getting interested in the ministry because I saw them ring those cowbells for people coming down to the altar. I saw it. And something was tugging at me. But, later on in my life, I saw a need to fully look at this thing that I thought could possibly be God. I tried Buddhism. I tried all kinds of other mystic kinds of movements. And then it occurred to me, my mama made that transition before I did, let me go talk to her. And when I went to talk to her, she sent me to this church and hands were laid on me and I fell out under the spirit. I was “slain in the spirit” that's what they call it. And when I got up and looked at nature, Mother Nature, Mother Nature never looked the same as Mother Nature used to look. I transformed and didn't know I was transformed. And in that transformative period, I realized that my mother was closer to the truth than I was in spite of all of the education that I thought I had. So I went back and started working with my mother and I played the keyboard and I sang a little bit but it was all rock and roll. So she finally said to me one day, “Son the Lord said for you to sing the songs.” And I started trying to play the songs and sing the songs. And I did it. And I started playing for her in the church. And that went on for six or seven years until she finally retired.

But yeah, this place here is called the Joy Gallery. And the church that she used to run was It's called the House of Joy. And the House of Joy was a non-denominational church opened up to everybody just like this gallery is opened up to everybody. Come as you are. Little kids, big kids, fat kids, other kids. All kinds of kids, races. Whoever you are, if you're interested in art. But yeah, that's my mama. That's the legacy, but she died being a believer. She died and she never told me about God. She never told me specifically who Jesus was. She let me come to Jesus. You know she never spoke to me about speaking in tongues, but one day I woke up, I couldn't keep my mouth closed.

Almeta

It's a wonderful feeling when it hits.

Luvon

It is. Yes it is. Yeah. The I Am visited me but I still don't know who he is but I'm learning. And when he said he speaks in a small still voice. It is so true and if you read the scriptures long enough, you'll hear it. But you can't do it in the natural. It is what it is.

Almeta

Be open and it comes. There's too many of the cares of the world.

Luvon

I still try to do it all myself.

Almeta

Of course. You think I don't either? But, I'm learning. And just to have these wonderful young students, catch the vision of what I want us to do, what we're doing with you right now. Collecting these community stories of the Northeast, and they listen to me and they appreciate me in a way that I don't feel like I deserve. They help make me understand that just because I can't do physically what I used to be able to do, those people like me, we still have value.

Luvon

The spirit, the spirit man, still lives. And the spirit was, is, and will be.

Almeta

Always will be. I wanted them to hear your philosophy about art, and how it connects to life, because these are anthropology majors and they're looking at the human story. So, I don't know if that's putting you on the spot or not, but I say y'all have to sit and listen to this man.

Luvon

I've been academically trained, and so form is line, shape, value, texture, and color. I think I mentioned five. Everything that we see is made up of those elements. How we associatively put those elements together and how we, in the deepest pathos of our common sense and thinking, we can conceive and think. Then, there's that intuitive kind of thing that happens in dreams and visions, and you only know as you know. So I find that those three elements that I read historically concerning another famous artist's work many, many years ago, Joseph Turner and a man wrote about him and it mentioned those three elements: the associate, the conceptual, and the intuitive response to making art.

Those three elements, I'm still learning. I'm still asking God about it. I'm still looking into it knowledge-wise, and I'm still knocking. I'm asking, I'm looking, seeking, and at the same time I'm still knocking, trying to get there. And in the process of all of that, things come to me every day that are more beautiful than the day before. So I can look at something that is nothing, and by the end of the week, it's like the whole world. On top of my education. I'm well educated. I have my so called master's degree, I got my bachelor's degree, plus I went to school earlier for two and a half years and don't know what to do with that.

Almeta

And you are the retired chair.

Luvon

No, I'm not retired. No, I'm not retired. I'm full time at RIT and I've been there for 52 years.

Almeta

Who told me that lie?

Luvon

No, no, no. I mean, I should be. I'm 83 years old. Going on 84.

Almeta

Yeah, I know. You got me by a couple years.

Luvon

And somebody just came into my life recently that's done upped the ante for me to keep it up. Just like you elevating her. She should have been gone. But it's something about the juices and the energy that you bring and once it engages she started feeling something, and she just can't shut up and it gets sweeter. It gets better and better.

Almeta

Take one to know one.

Luvon

But you know, that's magic.

Almeta

And it is. People today are so technically oriented, they've forgotten the magic. And magic is such an important element of life. It's just—

Max-Yamil

Formula.

Almeta

A formula. It's a formula for life. If there's no magic, there is no life. And, it's the art, all of the art forms that embody the magic and keep that energy going. So it just out and everybody catches it. And “What was that? Oh, that was magic. And I didn't even know it.”

Luvon

In the Book of Deuteronomy, somewhere around Chapter 32, it talks about these artists, Oholiab and Bezalel, I think—that God put the spirit in them to create art, but then he added the wise-hearted or the anthropologist.

Almeta

Thank you. The anthropologist.

Luvon

The wise-hearted. They were inseparable and one can't grow without the other. The craftsman was to create the temple. The craftsmen were to create a place that reflected the word of God, the law. And people gave to that, supported that, and God blessed it. But I think God is still doing that. We're now living in a time of that number five that you see there, with Obama, the painting behind you. See that number five? That's grace. That took place in the acts. It's in the clouds. It took place in Acts, and that was a time when the Holy Spirit came in, it blew in, and they began to speak in other tongues and all that kind of stuff and then this whole new church thing started.

But now, we live in a time of grace. We live in a time now where the world that we all know and think of is going through birth pain.