Interview with Steve Prince, The Block
And I think that's power, and I think that's so powerful for us in what we do as curators of art, as makers of art, as collectors of art, as showcasers of art, all these ways in which we interact and engage art. I think these elements are just so important because in essence, what you and I are doing is preserving history. We're preserving something that's going to outlast both of us that gets passed on to someone else. And I love the fact that the significance of this moment that we are sitting here together talking and engaging, and this is important that we are living, breathing, we both got all of our faculties and we are able to talk about this work.
Steve Prince, 2025
Hi, this is Lee Matney of the Matney Gallery. I'm here with Steve Prince, distinguished artist in residence and director of engagement at the Muscarella Museum of Art. Hi Steve. What it's new in your practice?
Steve Prince: I have several different things going on. One of the last pieces I created was over at East Carolina University—a piece called The Block. It’s a pretty epic vinyl cut, measuring two feet by seven feet. I partly based it on the history that circulates around the Black community in Greenville, North Carolina, as well as around East Carolina University.
Interestingly enough, the history I referenced in the piece, for lack of a better word, exposes itself. It’s a story you’ll find in many communities across the United States—Black communities that were thriving within spaces of constriction, where they weren’t allowed to thrive in terms of access outside of their space. But they still found a way—made a way out of no way—within the context of their own communities.
And I find myself making work about that over and over again. I think what happens is that I begin to reflect upon my parents and their struggle, and I reflect upon my father. The fact that my father had artistic acumen, but it was a dream deferred—something he was unable to accomplish because of the times he grew up in, because of the constraints of those times. But my parents, of course, worked very hard and created space for me to do what I do. It is only fitting that I pay homage to those who did so much to create a space for me to do something that they were denied. So when I make this piece The Block, I’m reflecting not only upon the community I descend from, but also upon the community that I was reared in
In that image, I pay homage to a woman named Laydonna Wright. Laydonna Wright was an advocate for African-Americans' healthcare concerns. Then there was another woman named Francis Hopkins, who did something very similar to what a man named Blaine Blayton did here in Williamsburg. Black people weren’t allowed to access different hospital spaces, so instead of complaining about the situation, they created their own. Blaine Blayton in Williamsburg created a hospital for Black people, and Francis Hopkins turned her house into a hospital. She was a nurse, and she wanted to ensure that people received proper medical care and didn’t die from treatable conditions, allowing them to live longer, healthier lives.
In that same composition, I have a character I’ve been incorporating into several pieces now—my Grio character, which is my storytelling figure.
This person is’s timeless—she’s the past, the present, and the imagined future. I’ve used her three times recently. First, I used her in The Block, then in a piece called Peace Quilt which is the mural here in Williamsburg that we discussed in the podcast on your site. I also used her in a piece called Peace Table, which is part of an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum at the University of Oregon. This woman recurs over and over again, and in the piece I did for East Carolina, She’s holding a Sankofa staff in her hand. The Sankofa is a mythical bird from Ghana, Africa, that moves forward while looking back..
And then inside that image there is an homage to the corn, the tobacco, the cotton, and the sugarcane, and those different crops that those bodies were subservient to and building industries that are still living in this nation was made upon their backs. They're almost like sedimentary rock or sedimentary soil that has been built upon their bodies.
And so also in that image I showed the every day a woman braiding the hair of her loved one, a couple dancing on the street with a boombox going, which alludes to the 1980s and the burgeoning of hip hop and a lot of those musical forms coming out of New York and out of California and out of Chicago. And there's musical forms of which we know is hip hop that has spread globally. And also in that image is a guy grilling, just making some food and flipping some burgers and some dogs.
Those things that we know of in the everyday that even in the midst of our pain and our struggle, we still find places of respite and that's in there. And then I end that piece with a couple of really heavy concepts or constructs. One, there is a funerary march that's happening inside the composition. And that dirge is a person's being carried on into the afterlife, but then walking right beside it as a mother with child, with child, there's a child that she's walking beside, but she's also pregnant. So as that life leaves, another life is coming in its place. And I think that that be speaks of those kinds of things, of those generations. It be speaks of the idea of the Sankofa to get us to remember to remember as we go forward. And then there's a house in the background.
Because one key thing, Lee, is when I was traveling from Williamsburg and going to East Carolina, going to Greenville to do this work, I passed through Edenton, North Carolina, and not many people know the history of circulating around Edon North Carolina. There was a woman by the name of Linda Brent who wrote under the pen name of Harriet Jacobs, and she wrote a book called Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. And in that book, she basically talks about escaping from the overtures, the sexual overtures of her slave master by hiding in the attic space of a grandmother's house for seven years. That's extraordinary with this woman, the lens that she goes through to hide away from this terrorism that's happening to her body. And the only reason why she did that, she didn't flee. It's not that she couldn't, she didn't because just as many other women did.
She had two children that she wanted to stay near and she did not want to leave her kids behind. So these extraordinary stories that are embedded within the fabric of our nation that shape us, I think is so important as the artists to be able to tell them and to share these stories, to be truths sayer. And it ties right back to the other piece I told you called Peace Table, which is about 42 inches in diameter. And that piece that I created, I literally carved the table, carved out the message there. So when everyone that comes to that table and touches it, they are reminded of that history and all that gets embedded within that space and that table becomes a silent participant. And all that happens in the context of the sacred space of a kitchen and then the mural.
I love doing that piece here in Williamsburg as an extension to what I do as an artist along with galleries and museum spaces that you and I work in. But the mural is this public space that is not meant to be there forever. And I love that. I love the temporality of it because in essence, the mural is just like us. It's like a living, breathing entity that is out in the public to consume, but over time it will wither away. So it's here for a little while. Then I love the fact that we are in this kind of medium that we in essence get to keep at least a memory of it alive and we got photographic references of it, and then there's just going to be a small sector of people that actually saw it.
And I think that's power, and I think that's so powerful for us is what we do as curators of art, as makers of art, as collectors of art, as showcases of art, all these ways in which we interact and engage art. I think these elements are just so important because in essence, what you and I are doing is preserving history. We're preserving something that's going to outlast both of us that gets passed on to someone else. And I love the fact that the significance of this moment that we are sitting here together talking and engaging, and this is important that we are living, breathing, we both got all of our faculties and we are able to talk about this work.