From the first time that I spent with you in Chicago, it was apparent that Saint Heron was bigger than most people knew, and that it occupied a bigger place in your heart than maybe even the expression had manifested at that point. In the church they might call it a burden, not necessarily in a negative sense, but like a calling. It’s even possible that there’s not one eternal self. There could be the eternal selves within the larger practice. I could also feel in you that just because we’re called in one area or known for one thing, it doesn’t mean that our lives are singular.
Saint Heron
the Encyclopedia of Saint Heronica • VOL XVI
Index
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Interview by Theaster Gates
Photography by Kobe Wagstaff
Additional Imagery Courtesy of Saint Heron
Saint Heron | saynt ˈher-en |
noun. institution
[ from Saint, denoting sacred devotion, + Heron, the wading bird long regarded across African and diasporic traditions as a symbol of patience, solitude, and transcendence; founded by Solange Knowles, serving as Founding Editor and Art Director, 2013, United States ]
Cultural Institutions & Preservation · Black Arts · Interdisciplinary Practice · Intergenerational Transmission
Multidisciplinary platform and institution that seeks to amplify vital voices and works in art, design, music and literature. With an urgent mission to preserve, collect and uplift the stories, works and archives of Black creators, Saint Heron remains dedicated to empowering future practitioners of art by reverencing the spiritual act of creating and spotlighting artists' unwavering devotion to the intergenerational language of expression.
Theaster Gates:
Solange Knowles:
That’s very real. I was looking through our archive and I found this conversation Saint Heron hosted with young Chicago authors and Nuotama Frances Bodomo, hosted by film collective Black Radical Imagination at the Black Cinema House [as part of the 2017 Pitchfork Music Festival; Gates launched Black Cinema House, a film and archive space on Chicago’s South Side]. You so graciously opened your doors to Saint Heron. I thought about it today because it was a pivotal moment when I realized, I don’t need to be here. I felt so held by my broader team and their execution of a conversation that was very near and dear to me that I thought it would actually be a bit of a distraction if I was there. These women had such an insightful point of view that did not require my voice. That represents the symbolism behind Saint Heron: I’ve tried to build a space that can exist without me. Or with me, depending on the statement, conversation, or expression.
TG:
In that sense, I think a lot of people might ask you, Solange, why — if you’re already killing it in this one field — take on this burden? This is a question that I ask a lot of my colleagues, other Black artists who are successful. Why do you feel so compelled to do all this other stuff? It’s not about the idea that you couldn’t represent yourself in an artistic manner and create a platform for others, but it’s that people really want to love you in one way.
SK:
Starting at the beginning is really important. I had just left a major record label. In my career, there’s the before True and after True — two different arcs of a career. The True EP [2012] was my first album that I truly had the freedom to make every creative decision on my own. I stepped into all these roles, from graphic design to choreography and set design. Prior to that, my career was always sort of a negotiation between me and my collaborators, between me and my record label, and the broader public, of what I stood for at that time. This was the first time there was no negotiation. It was my first full expression as an artist. I went to shoot the “Losing You” video in South Africa, which was inspired by the sapeurs, who are these incredible dandies from the Congo, who had a subcommunity in South Africa that was resonating across the African diaspora. I ended up shooting the video through a historical lens, trying to really understand this subculture and its artistry. It was a very delicate and sensitive historical context to enter into as a Black American, and I wanted to hold that space in a sacred way. Once the video was done, the in-house publicist at the indie label I was distributed by asked me where I wanted to premiere it. Thirteen years ago, there were not a whole lot of nuanced conversations happening at the intersection of Black music and art, especially as a Black woman. They gave me a list of music and culture blogs, but none really represented my people or my spaces, and I felt like I was going to leave a lot of people out by choosing one. We were not a monolithic crew. So I said, I should probably start that blog, so I can reach all those people. I remember thinking, I’m sure there are so many other artists who feel like I do, who don’t feel like there’s a space for them, so I’m going to build it in the hope that we can be a small droplet that can grow into the sea of creating better, more careful conversations, certainly in the contexts in which we release our art. So that was literally the birth of Saint Heron. We had some incredible women and other writers covering the broader context of the culture around us, but it started off grounded in music. It started as a music blog.
TG:
Rather than just trusting preexisting infrastructure, you decided to build your own. Saint Heron evolved from a digital platform into this living ecosystem. It’s a lot of things. In my own practice, building spaces and institutions has become a form of sculpture. I make objects, but I also use the same brain to sculpt how people imagine what the South Side of Chicago is, and what artists think they have the right to produce. We have the right to produce bigger things. Do you see Saint Heron as an extension of your artistic practice, as a gesture of generosity toward the cultural sphere that needs it, or an institution that you’re in the process of building?
SK:
I sometimes struggle with the word institution, although that feels like a concise expression of what we’re trying to build. There is freedom in the fact that, at this stage, Saint Heron doesn’t have to choose. I have begun to see it as a living, breathing metamorphosis that continues to develop all these tentacles that service a specific need at any given time. My design practice is an example of that. I began to create these glass objects, and when I entered the space of design, I recognized all of these checkpoints were necessary, but our ecosystem that services our people always had to come first. That’s not to say we won’t be excited to engage within those frameworks at some point, but the conversation surrounding the way that we want to show up in design as Black people is an entirely different expression. So now, Saint Heron has to evolve and transition to support that practice. I think Saint Heron is a call and response between some of my own vested interests in my practices and creating new spaces for them to exist in, and then a broader community conversation where I am more hands-off, where I can just lift people up and be in service. I think that they fuel each other in a really incredible way. My work can be very insular and isolated, and then it can create such fruitful, meaningful, spiritual things when you hold a mirror up to someone through collaboration. So Saint Heron supports that mirror. Whereas the work as Solange doesn’t want to consider anyone else.
TG:
Saint Heron feels very intimate. It feels almost like a family archive. It operates at the scale of a midsize corporation or a scrappy yet ambitious institution. When you were in Chicago, we talked about what it means to have that family-like environment — that closeness and care. I’m not sure people really understand the inner relational truth of the project. What is the emotional project of Saint Heron? It seems like you’re building an institution that might outlive you.
SK:
Well, I think that there is something deeply sacred between myself and the women who are part of the broader community of Saint Heron. It is healing for me. I stopped going to public school at 13, in the eighth grade, so my social education was capped there. The world was often a very lonely place, or a place where I was surrounded by adults. And then I had a baby at 18. I lived in Idaho for the first two years of my baby’s life. I was very isolated. Between that time and when I started Saint Heron, I was a touring musician. That has its own family structure, but there is something incredibly sacred about the stability of being able to go into an office, to know what my work hours are, and to be able to come home at a certain time. To have that kind of regulation, and then have it be shared with Black women who make me feel incredibly safe and seen, who have such a deep admiration and respect for one another, I think has made us all much better at what we do in our individual pursuits. I think one of the most incredible things is that everyone at Saint Heron is an artist, whether it be in music, design, or literature, who can pursue other things that bring them a lot of passion and a lot of vigor. But then we all find a sense of structure and stability through this shared entity that we get to contract and breathe within, and that’s by design. Most of the people who work at Saint Heron have been here since the beginning, for ten or 13 years. This is really something very deep for all of us. Sometimes we’ll have meetings and we look up and it’s been two hours and the agenda has not been attacked, and we recognize that as the agenda in itself. A huge reason Saint Heron exists is the fear there won’t be enough spaces in 100 years led by Black women. It’s about understanding the minutiae of the way that our history needs to be recorded. A huge part of the reason Saint Heron exists is out of a deep fear that there just are not going to be enough spaces in 100 years that are led by Black women. The idea that our histories will have to funnel through so many hands and minds that do not look like us creates a constant state of panic for me. I hope that Saint Heron gets to follow in the footsteps of Augusta Savage’s Studio of Arts and Crafts walking Selma Burke through its doors, and those of spaces like Just Above Midtown or Studio Z, where Black women have been making sure that the work is facilitated, executed, and then preserved for us, by us. In that regard, an iteration of Saint Heron has to live forever with or without me.
Theaster Gates
From the first time that I spent with you in Chicago, it was apparent that Saint Heron was bigger than most people knew, and that it occupied a bigger place in your heart than maybe even the expression had manifested at that point. In the church they might call it a burden, not necessarily in a negative sense, but like a calling. It’s even possible that there’s not one eternal self. There could be the eternal selves within the larger practice. I could also feel in you that just because we’re called in one area or known for one thing, it doesn’t mean that our lives are singular.
Solange Knowles
That’s very real. I was looking through our archive and I found this conversation Saint Heron hosted with young Chicago authors and Nuotama Frances Bodomo, hosted by film collective Black Radical Imagination at the Black Cinema House [as part of the 2017 Pitchfork Music Festival; Gates launched Black Cinema House, a film and archive space on Chicago’s South Side]. You so graciously opened your doors to Saint Heron. I thought about it today because it was a pivotal moment when I realized, I don’t need to be here. I felt so held by my broader team and their execution of a conversation that was very near and dear to me that I thought it would actually be a bit of a distraction if I was there. These women had such an insightful point of view that did not require my voice. That represents the symbolism behind Saint Heron: I’ve tried to build a space that can exist without me. Or with me, depending on the statement, conversation, or expression.
TG
In that sense, I think a lot of people might ask you, Solange, why — if you’re already killing it in this one field — take on this burden? This is a question that I ask a lot of my colleagues, other Black artists who are successful. Why do you feel so compelled to do all this other stuff? It’s not about the idea that you couldn’t represent yourself in an artistic manner and create a platform for others, but it’s that people really want to love you in one way.
SK
Starting at the beginning is really important. I had just left a major record label. In my career, there’s the before True and after True — two different arcs of a career. The True EP [2012] was my first album that I truly had the freedom to make every creative decision on my own. I stepped into all these roles, from graphic design to choreography and set design. Prior to that, my career was always sort of a negotiation between me and my collaborators, between me and my record label, and the broader public, of what I stood for at that time. This was the first time there was no negotiation. It was my first full expression as an artist. I went to shoot the “Losing You” video in South Africa, which was inspired by the sapeurs, who are these incredible dandies from the Congo, who had a subcommunity in South Africa that was resonating across the African diaspora. I ended up shooting the video through a historical lens, trying to really understand this subculture and its artistry. It was a very delicate and sensitive historical context to enter into as a Black American, and I wanted to hold that space in a sacred way. Once the video was done, the in-house publicist at the indie label I was distributed by asked me where I wanted to premiere it. Thirteen years ago, there were not a whole lot of nuanced conversations happening at the intersection of Black music and art, especially as a Black woman. They gave me a list of music and culture blogs, but none really represented my people or my spaces, and I felt like I was going to leave a lot of people out by choosing one. We were not a monolithic crew. So I said, I should probably start that blog, so I can reach all those people. I remember thinking, I’m sure there are so many other artists who feel like I do, who don’t feel like there’s a space for them, so I’m going to build it in the hope that we can be a small droplet that can grow into the sea of creating better, more careful conversations, certainly in the contexts in which we release our art. So that was literally the birth of Saint Heron. We had some incredible women and other writers covering the broader context of the culture around us, but it started off grounded in music. It started as a music blog.
TG
Rather than just trusting preexisting infrastructure, you decided to build your own. Saint Heron evolved from a digital platform into this living ecosystem. It’s a lot of things. In my own practice, building spaces and institutions has become a form of sculpture. I make objects, but I also use the same brain to sculpt how people imagine what the South Side of Chicago is, and what artists think they have the right to produce. We have the right to produce bigger things. Do you see Saint Heron as an extension of your artistic practice, as a gesture of generosity toward the cultural sphere that needs it, or an institution that you’re in the process of building?
SK
I sometimes struggle with the word institution, although that feels like a concise expression of what we’re trying to build. There is freedom in the fact that, at this stage, Saint Heron doesn’t have to choose. I have begun to see it as a living, breathing metamorphosis that continues to develop all these tentacles that service a specific need at any given time. My design practice is an example of that. I began to create these glass objects, and when I entered the space of design, I recognized all of these checkpoints were necessary, but our ecosystem that services our people always had to come first. That’s not to say we won’t be excited to engage within those frameworks at some point, but the conversation surrounding the way that we want to show up in design as Black people is an entirely different expression. So now, Saint Heron has to evolve and transition to support that practice. I think Saint Heron is a call and response between some of my own vested interests in my practices and creating new spaces for them to exist in, and then a broader community conversation where I am more hands-off, where I can just lift people up and be in service. I think that they fuel each other in a really incredible way. My work can be very insular and isolated, and then it can create such fruitful, meaningful, spiritual things when you hold a mirror up to someone through collaboration. So Saint Heron supports that mirror. Whereas the work as Solange doesn’t want to consider anyone else.
TG
Saint Heron feels very intimate. It feels almost like a family archive. It operates at the scale of a midsize corporation or a scrappy yet ambitious institution. When you were in Chicago, we talked about what it means to have that family-like environment — that closeness and care. I’m not sure people really understand the inner relational truth of the project. What is the emotional project of Saint Heron? It seems like you’re building an institution that might outlive you.
SK
Well, I think that there is something deeply sacred between myself and the women who are part of the broader community of Saint Heron. It is healing for me. I stopped going to public school at 13, in the eighth grade, so my social education was capped there. The world was often a very lonely place, or a place where I was surrounded by adults. And then I had a baby at 18. I lived in Idaho for the first two years of my baby’s life. I was very isolated. Between that time and when I started Saint Heron, I was a touring musician. That has its own family structure, but there is something incredibly sacred about the stability of being able to go into an office, to know what my work hours are, and to be able to come home at a certain time. To have that kind of regulation, and then have it be shared with Black women who make me feel incredibly safe and seen, who have such a deep admiration and respect for one another, I think has made us all much better at what we do in our individual pursuits. I think one of the most incredible things is that everyone at Saint Heron is an artist, whether it be in music, design, or literature, who can pursue other things that bring them a lot of passion and a lot of vigor. But then we all find a sense of structure and stability through this shared entity that we get to contract and breathe within, and that’s by design. Most of the people who work at Saint Heron have been here since the beginning, for ten or 13 years. This is really something very deep for all of us. Sometimes we’ll have meetings and we look up and it’s been two hours and the agenda has not been attacked, and we recognize that as the agenda in itself. A huge reason Saint Heron exists is the fear there won’t be enough spaces in 100 years led by Black women. It’s about understanding the minutiae of the way that our history needs to be recorded. A huge part of the reason Saint Heron exists is out of a deep fear that there just are not going to be enough spaces in 100 years that are led by Black women. The idea that our histories will have to funnel through so many hands and minds that do not look like us creates a constant state of panic for me. I hope that Saint Heron gets to follow in the footsteps of Augusta Savage’s Studio of Arts and Crafts walking Selma Burke through its doors, and those of spaces like Just Above Midtown or Studio Z, where Black women have been making sure that the work is facilitated, executed, and then preserved for us, by us. In that regard, an iteration of Saint Heron has to live forever with or without me.
The Saint Heron Universe
Saint Heron Dossier
SAINT HERON DOSSIER COMMISSIONS, HOUSES, AND SHOWCASES THE WORK OF ARTISTS, SCULPTORS, PHOTOGRAPHERS, DESIGNERS, AND ARTISANS THROUGH STORYTELLING. THE DOSSIER PUBLISHES CONVERSATIONS, PROFILES, AND EDITORIAL WORKS THAT SURROUND REIMAGINING THE URGENCY IN BUILDING ARCHIVES AND COLLECTIONS OF BLACK ARTISTS, COMMUNITIES AND FAMILIES. AMONG MANY OTHERS, THE DOSSIER HAS FEATURED AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR EMILY BERNARD FOR “THE WOMACK ORIGINALS,” AN INTIMATE PROFILE ON THE STORY OF LINDA AND CECIL WOMACK (KNOWN CREATIVELY AS WOMACK & WOMACK); “FLUID DELIVERANCE,” AN AUDIO PODCAST AND EXHIBITION EXPLORING FEMININITY, SAFETY AND CREATIVE SYNERGY AS TOLD BY MULTI-DISCIPLINARY ARTIST OKWUI OKPOKWASILI IN CONVERSATION WITH ACTRESS, SINGER AND WRITER HELGA DAVIS; AND A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARTIST BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD AND AUTHOR AND EDUCATOR ILYASAH SHABAZZ EXPLORING THE RITUALISTIC PRACTICE OF STORYTELLING (IN SCULPTURE AND IN WRITING).
Saint Heron Library
THE SAINT HERON LIBRARY IS A FREE COMMUNITY LIBRARY OFFERING RARE, OUT OF PRINT, FIRST-EDITION AND INSCRIBED TITLES SPOTLIGHTING THE RICH HISTORY OF BLACKNESS IN POETRY, VISUAL ART, CRITICAL THOUGHT AND DESIGN IN PRINT MEDIA. THE LIBRARY’S MISSION IS TO BROADEN COMMUNITY ACCESS TO HISTORIC BOOKS BY THE GLOBAL DIASPORA’S CREATORS FOR RESEARCH, STUDY, INSPIRATION AND EXPLORATION. WITH A GOAL TO SPARK NURTURING CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE BREADTH OF ARTISTIC EXPRESSION AND STYLISTICALLY COMPLEX MEDITATIONS OF INTERNATIONALLY-KNOWN AND SELDOM-LAUDED AUTHORS, POETS, PLAYWRIGHTS AND ARTISTS, THE LIBRARY’S EVOLVING AND GROWING COLLECTION, SO FAR, INCLUDES PUBLISHED WORKS BY LEROI JONES, MAREN HASSINGER, RUBY DEE AND OSSIE DAVIS, GWENDOLYN BROOKS, LUIS LOPEZ, OCTAVIA BUTLER, MAYA ANGELOU AND MORE.
Saint Heron Set Design
SAINT HERON’S SPATIAL DESIGN UNIT MARRIES ARCHITECTURE, INTERIOR DESIGN AND LANDSCAPE ELEMENTS TO BUILD VALUE IN SPACES ACROSS PUBLIC AND PRIVATE REALMS. SPECIALIZING IN SCENOGRAPHY FOR EXHIBITIONS, PERFORMANCES, SCREENINGS, STAGE PLAYS AND OTHER ACTIVATIONS, WE CREATE A SPIRIT OF VISUAL SCRIPTING TO ACHIEVE THE VISION OF OUR COLLABORATOR. HEIGHTENED CONCENTRATION ON LINE, COLOR, TEXTURE, FORM, SPACE, MOVEMENT, AND SHAPE PROVIDES OPTIMAL SUPPORT FOR A PRODUCTION’S VISUAL AND ARTISTIC GOALS. THE AGENCY’S INDOOR AND OUTDOOR SITE-ORIENTED DESIGN APPROACHES ARE BASED ON AN UNDERSTANDING OF HOW PEOPLE MOVE AND INTERACT IN THE SPACES THAT MATTER TO THEM. SAINT HERON ALSO CREATES INNOVATIVE, SUSTAINABLE WAYS OF WORKING WITH MATERIALS, INCLUDING REDESIGNING EXISTING SPACES.
Saint Heron Music
SAINT HERON IS A COMPILATION ALBUM RELEASED BY SOLANGE KNOWLES' RECORD LABEL, SAINT RECORDS, ON NOVEMBER 11, 2013. IT FEATURES THE ORIGINAL RECORDINGS OF SEVERAL CONTEMPORARY R&B ARTISTS, INCLUDING KNOWLES (WHO ALSO CURATED THE PROJECT), JHENÉ AIKO, CASSIE, BC KINGDOM, JADE DE LAFLEUR, KELELA, KINGDOM, PETITE NOIR, IMAN OMARI, SAMPHA, INDIA SHAWN AND STARCHILD. THE INTENT OF THE ALBUM WAS TO "FEATURE, HIGHLIGHT AND ALIGN A NEW MOVEMENT OF CONTEMPORARY, GENRE-DEFYING R&B VISIONARIES" AND TO SERVE AS A "SEGUE INTO THE DIVERSE EVOLUTION OF THESE INDEPENDENT ARTISTS AS THEY SHARE THEIR VOICES AND WORDS AS ONLY THEY CAN – THROUGH PURE, UNADULTERATED MUSIC."
Saint Heron Films
THE SAINT HERON VIDEO ARCHIVE IS A GROWING COLLECTION OF AUDIOVISUAL RECORDINGS DOCUMENTING PAST SAINT HERON EVENTS, ACTIVATIONS, AND PERFORMANCE CURATIONS. IT SERVES AS A LIVING RECORD AND MEMORY OF THE STUDIO’S EVOLVING PRACTICE. EACH ENTRY CAPTURES NOT ONLY THE FINAL PRESENTATION, BUT ALSO THE ATMOSPHERE, COLLABORATION, AND EXPERIMENTATION THAT SHAPE THE WORK. THE ARCHIVE IS INTENTIONALLY MAINTAINED AS A SPACE OF REFLECTION—PRESERVING MOMENTS IN TIME WHILE ALLOWING PATTERNS, IDEAS, AND RELATIONSHIPS TO EMERGE OVER TIME. MORE THAN DOCUMENTATION, THE VIDEO ARCHIVE ACTS AS AN EXTENSION OF THE STUDIO ITSELF: A RESOURCE FOR REVISITING CREATIVE PROCESSES, HONORING CONTRIBUTORS, AND GROUNDING FUTURE WORK IN A TANGIBLE HISTORY. THROUGH THE VIDEO COLLECTION, SAINT HERON AFFIRMS ITS COMMITMENT TO ARTISTIC PRESERVATION, CONTINUITY, AND THE MEANINGFUL ACCUMULATION OF EXPERIENCE.
Saint Heron Design
SAINT HERON’S DESIGN AND ARCHITECTURE DIVISION EXPRESSES THE SPIRIT OF INTENTIONALITY IN A RANGE OF IDENTIFIABLE SIGNATURE WORKS THAT DEMONSTRATE SCULPTURAL AND ARCHITECTURAL VIGOR THROUGH MEDITATIVE PROPAGATIONS OF CREATIVE DESIGN. WITH THESE THOUGHTFUL PROJECTS AND COLLABORATIONS, WE REPRESENT OUR UNINHIBITED INNOVATION AND SPIRIT ACROSS MEDIUMS OF ART AND DESIGN. WORKS RANGE FROM LARGE AND SMALL SCALE FUNCTIONAL SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURAL OBJECTS, FURNITURE COLLECTIONS, LIGHTING DESIGN, HOMEWARES, EXHIBITIONS AND MORE.
SAINT HERON AGENCY SPATIAL DESIGN
Saint Heron’s Spatial Design unit marries architecture, interior design and landscape elements to build value in spaces across public and private realms. Specializing in scenography for exhibitions, performances, screenings, stage plays and other activations, we create a spirit of visual scripting to achieve the vision of our collaborator. Heightened concentration on line, color, texture, form, space, movement, and shape provides optimal support for a production’s visual and artistic goals. The agency’s indoor and outdoor site-oriented design approaches are based on an understanding of how people move and interact in the spaces that matter to them. Saint Heron also creates innovative, sustainable ways of working with materials, including redesigning existing spaces.
SAINT HERON AGENCY SPATIAL DESIGN
Saint Heron’s Spatial Design unit marries architecture, interior design and landscape elements to build value in spaces across public and private realms. Specializing in scenography for exhibitions, performances, screenings, stage plays and other activations, we create a spirit of visual scripting to achieve the vision of our collaborator. Heightened concentration on line, color, texture, form, space, movement, and shape provides optimal support for a production’s visual and artistic goals. The agency’s indoor and outdoor site-oriented design approaches are based on an understanding of how people move and interact in the spaces that matter to them. Saint Heron also creates innovative, sustainable ways of working with materials, including redesigning existing spaces.
SAINT HERON AGENCY SPATIAL DESIGN
Saint Heron’s Spatial Design unit marries architecture, interior design and landscape elements to build value in spaces across public and private realms. Specializing in scenography for exhibitions, performances, screenings, stage plays and other activations, we create a spirit of visual scripting to achieve the vision of our collaborator. Heightened concentration on line, color, texture, form, space, movement, and shape provides optimal support for a production’s visual and artistic goals. The agency’s indoor and outdoor site-oriented design approaches are based on an understanding of how people move and interact in the spaces that matter to them. Saint Heron also creates innovative, sustainable ways of working with materials, including redesigning existing spaces.
SAINT HERON AGENCY SPATIAL DESIGN
Saint Heron’s Spatial Design unit marries architecture, interior design and landscape elements to build value in spaces across public and private realms. Specializing in scenography for exhibitions, performances, screenings, stage plays and other activations, we create a spirit of visual scripting to achieve the vision of our collaborator. Heightened concentration on line, color, texture, form, space, movement, and shape provides optimal support for a production’s visual and artistic goals. The agency’s indoor and outdoor site-oriented design approaches are based on an understanding of how people move and interact in the spaces that matter to them. Saint Heron also creates innovative, sustainable ways of working with materials, including redesigning existing spaces.
SAINT HERON AGENCY SPATIAL DESIGN
Saint Heron’s Spatial Design unit marries architecture, interior design and landscape elements to build value in spaces across public and private realms. Specializing in scenography for exhibitions, performances, screenings, stage plays and other activations, we create a spirit of visual scripting to achieve the vision of our collaborator. Heightened concentration on line, color, texture, form, space, movement, and shape provides optimal support for a production’s visual and artistic goals. The agency’s indoor and outdoor site-oriented design approaches are based on an understanding of how people move and interact in the spaces that matter to them. Saint Heron also creates innovative, sustainable ways of working with materials, including redesigning existing spaces.
TG:
That makes me think about my own definition of technology. Technology, for me, has nothing to do with the digital sphere. It has to do with accumulated knowledge that transfers and gets more sophisticated as the generations go. It’s how we get from flat painting to perspective drawing to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. That is 400 years of evolving craftsmanship of cultural consciousness accruing. That kind of institution-building is what you’re doing. It’s way more important than a building. Not to say that buildings aren’t important, but institutions aren’t just about the bricks and mortar. It’s about passing down knowledge and the deep empowerment that instills in people.
SK:
In terms of the building and physical space, a pivotal moment for me was going to Underground Resistance’s (UR) Detroit Techno Museum and the Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum in 2020. It was so profound for me because for so long I felt bound and confined by the idea that an institution had to have physical space to exist. What it would mean for me to have a physical building for Saint Heron, knowing that I am still evolving and figuring out life — that kind of scale and permanence was really unobtainable for me. I’d venture to say the Techno Museum is 1,500 square feet, but it holds some of the most monumental tools, objects, and synthesizers that permeated into a global sound. And then I went down to the Dabls African Bead Museum, which was about 400 square feet. Olayami Dabls had amassed his own value system of what the bead meant that surpassed its diasporic history as a currency. That was the turning point for me with Saint Heron. I went back to New York, and I said, we just need a room. From that, we created the Saint Heron Studio. We started to interpret what our archive looked like. The Studio houses our collection of works from the Saint Heron in-house design studio, which produced the sofa, the chair, and the desk, but also objects that we’ve collected, be it pieces from our ceramic residency program or from our Ekoi mask collection. We have our digital archive where we can display all of our films and past interviews. We have our library. We have all our vessels that we’re starting to number, our glassware collection, and our decanter collection that Small Matter will be releasing soon. We have all our publishing materials. We’ve now published five titles, and our other printed matter includes programs, library cards, and architectural models of spaces that we want to build. It’s a small but mighty space. That’s how I describe her.
TG:
It’s a proper design house and archive. The archive is not a historical artifact. It’s a library of knowledge that people can pull from. I want to ask you about slowness. It took us over 1,000 years to get to Augusta Savage. And then it was only 15 more to get to Selma Burke. When we allow time to move at its pace, sometimes great leaps happen, but sometimes it has nothing to do with time — it just has to do with the right moment. I really think slowness is an essential component of your whole practice — it’s your beautiful partner in crime. It’s not about moving slowly. It’s about not being in a hurry.
SK:
Don’t get me started. Everyone needs to slow the hell down. We require slowness. I was willing to be more flexible on that in the past, but I am no longer able to really compromise on that because our health and our wellness have to come first. For us to know where we’re going, we have to be present. We need the time to process what we can stand behind in 40 years or 100 years. I think as a personal practice, that’s been very easy for me. But I think when you are trying to run and lead an institution, with the speed at which the internet moves now, with that life-or-death urgency that people feel — that is something I resist and I reject. When I think about D’Angelo and the body of work that he left behind, or when I think about Sade, or the patina of a sculpture by Barbara Chase-Riboud, I know these things had to live and breathe before they could be shared with us.
TG:
You were saying that Saint Heron is not a monolith, and that one path within this multivalent world has to do with spirituality and a big cosmology. How does the invisible world fit inside craft, or the visible world?
SK:
My dad used to sell MRIs, X-rays, and Xerox and copy machines. The top regional salesmen were going to get awarded a trip to Egypt. My dad hustled and hustled, and because my mom is a drama queen, she decided that if he won, she would conceive a new child, as a reward, so to speak, for my daddy. So he sold all the damn MRIs, X-rays, and copy machines he could, and they went to Egypt. My mother was deadass. They got to work, and I was conceived on a riverboat on the Nile. I was too young to know this for most of my life. But I have always felt such a pull toward Egyptology. When I saw the album cover of Earth, Wind & Fire’s Spirit [1976] as a ten-year-old at my mom’s salon, I knew I was from the same tribe as those beautiful Black people in white linen in front of those pyramids. I learned more about Egypt the older I got. I learned that the pyramids in Giza align with the constellation Orion, and that so does the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, where I had a very profound moment with my son when he was younger. I just had all these revelations that connected the invisible dots. I ended up designing a lot of the album artwork for A Seat at The Table [2016] based on the Orion constellation. I got a tattoo of it to commemorate that. I was also reading about the Egyptian martyr Saint Heron. I had been thinking a lot about forgotten Black Saints and wanted to reclaim that history. And Gil Scott-Heron’s dad, who was one of the first Black soccer players in the U.S., was named Saint Heron. My father was one of the first college basketball players to integrate his teams growing up in the South. So Saint Heron literally is an amalgamation of the invisible spirits that are guiding forces for us. It’s how and why this exists. There’s such a powerful force that leads so much of the work, and you can’t see it, but you can feel it in every corner. I think that force is illuminated most when we are all in conversation with one another. I think one of the reasons I fell in love with both resin and glass as materials is because they synthesize something that comes from the earth in a moment’s time. You get such a short window of time, and in a way these materials sort of freeze and frame that. So it’s very telling that those were sort of the first objects from the design studio, because there’s luminosity and reflection, but it comes from the earth.
TG:
What is Saint Heron up to these days?
SK:
One of the things I’m most excited about is this sofa, with a new, modular iteration of its design. It’s my baby. I’ve been perfecting it for four years now. It can be converted in 30 different ways. I really want my designs to be democratic for my people. So if you have a small space, you’re able to start with two pieces. And maybe you go from that space to your first home, and you’re able to collect two more. It’s an object designed to grow with you over these different phases of your life. It’s also designed so you can adjust it based on your daily experiences and needs. I’ve worked tirelessly to get the perfect magnet that makes it easy enough to arrange in a full circle, so everybody can face one another at a cocktail party, or you can make it a C-shape to be more isolating. I am also very excited about an exhibition of hand blown glass decanters I designed and fabricated with Jason McDonald. I’ve had to learn functionality when it comes to my design practice. I’m a dreamer. So a lot of the time, during the process, it’s like, well, how’s that gonna work, Solange? Sharpening that has been super fulfilling for me. And then we are going to spend the next year organizing and releasing moments from our digital archive. We have stories that are very precious to us, from some of our blueprints and our ancestors. We want to treat those with care as these are all very sacred cultural conversations. Then we go into web design, which is something that I took a great interest in when we started this site, learning how to build a digital expression that still synthesized energy. I think the digital installation we did on Cassandra Press is some of our strongest work. The redesign of my sister’s website which launched the Cowboy Carter tour is also in our design portfolio. A lot of this stuff sits on the Saint Heron agency side, which is a phenomenal sort of tool and footing to have when we talk about the many facets of the way that I see the world. Even when I think about the Saint Heron Library web design, that level of accessibility and functionality within technology is something that we’re really proud of in terms of our evolution.
TG
That makes me think about my own definition of technology. Technology, for me, has nothing to do with the digital sphere. It has to do with accumulated knowledge that transfers and gets more sophisticated as the generations go. It’s how we get from flat painting to perspective drawing to Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. That is 400 years of evolving craftsmanship of cultural consciousness accruing. That kind of institution-building is what you’re doing. It’s way more important than a building. Not to say that buildings aren’t important, but institutions aren’t just about the bricks and mortar. It’s about passing down knowledge and the deep empowerment that instills in people.
SK
In terms of the building and physical space, a pivotal moment for me was going to Underground Resistance’s (UR) Detroit Techno Museum and the Dabls Mbad African Bead Museum in 2020. It was so profound for me because for so long I felt bound and confined by the idea that an institution had to have physical space to exist. What it would mean for me to have a physical building for Saint Heron, knowing that I am still evolving and figuring out life — that kind of scale and permanence was really unobtainable for me. I’d venture to say the Techno Museum is 1,500 square feet, but it holds some of the most monumental tools, objects, and synthesizers that permeated into a global sound. And then I went down to the Dabls African Bead Museum, which was about 400 square feet. Olayami Dabls had amassed his own value system of what the bead meant that surpassed its diasporic history as a currency. That was the turning point for me with Saint Heron. I went back to New York, and I said, we just need a room. From that, we created the Saint Heron Studio. We started to interpret what our archive looked like. The Studio houses our collection of works from the Saint Heron in-house design studio, which produced the sofa, the chair, and the desk, but also objects that we’ve collected, be it pieces from our ceramic residency program or from our Ekoi mask collection. We have our digital archive where we can display all of our films and past interviews. We have our library. We have all our vessels that we’re starting to number, our glassware collection, and our decanter collection that Small Matter will be releasing soon. We have all our publishing materials. We’ve now published five titles, and our other printed matter includes programs, library cards, and architectural models of spaces that we want to build. It’s a small but mighty space. That’s how I describe her.
TG
It’s a proper design house and archive. The archive is not a historical artifact. It’s a library of knowledge that people can pull from. I want to ask you about slowness. It took us over 1,000 years to get to Augusta Savage. And then it was only 15 more to get to Selma Burke. When we allow time to move at its pace, sometimes great leaps happen, but sometimes it has nothing to do with time — it just has to do with the right moment. I really think slowness is an essential component of your whole practice — it’s your beautiful partner in crime. It’s not about moving slowly. It’s about not being in a hurry.
SK
Don’t get me started. Everyone needs to slow the hell down. We require slowness. I was willing to be more flexible on that in the past, but I am no longer able to really compromise on that because our health and our wellness have to come first. For us to know where we’re going, we have to be present. We need the time to process what we can stand behind in 40 years or 100 years. I think as a personal practice, that’s been very easy for me. But I think when you are trying to run and lead an institution, with the speed at which the internet moves now, with that life-or-death urgency that people feel — that is something I resist and I reject. When I think about D’Angelo and the body of work that he left behind, or when I think about Sade, or the patina of a sculpture by Barbara Chase-Riboud, I know these things had to live and breathe before they could be shared with us.
TG
You were saying that Saint Heron is not a monolith, and that one path within this multivalent world has to do with spirituality and a big cosmology. How does the invisible world fit inside craft, or the visible world?
SK
My dad used to sell MRIs, X-rays, and Xerox and copy machines. The top regional salesmen were going to get awarded a trip to Egypt. My dad hustled and hustled, and because my mom is a drama queen, she decided that if he won, she would conceive a new child, as a reward, so to speak, for my daddy. So he sold all the damn MRIs, X-rays, and copy machines he could, and they went to Egypt. My mother was deadass. They got to work, and I was conceived on a riverboat on the Nile. I was too young to know this for most of my life. But I have always felt such a pull toward Egyptology. When I saw the album cover of Earth, Wind & Fire’s Spirit [1976] as a ten-year-old at my mom’s salon, I knew I was from the same tribe as those beautiful Black people in white linen in front of those pyramids. I learned more about Egypt the older I got. I learned that the pyramids in Giza align with the constellation Orion, and that so does the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico, where I had a very profound moment with my son when he was younger. I just had all these revelations that connected the invisible dots. I ended up designing a lot of the album artwork for A Seat at The Table [2016] based on the Orion constellation. I got a tattoo of it to commemorate that. I was also reading about the Egyptian martyr Saint Heron. I had been thinking a lot about forgotten Black Saints and wanted to reclaim that history. And Gil Scott-Heron’s dad, who was one of the first Black soccer players in the U.S., was named Saint Heron. My father was one of the first college basketball players to integrate his teams growing up in the South. So Saint Heron literally is an amalgamation of the invisible spirits that are guiding forces for us. It’s how and why this exists. There’s such a powerful force that leads so much of the work, and you can’t see it, but you can feel it in every corner. I think that force is illuminated most when we are all in conversation with one another. I think one of the reasons I fell in love with both resin and glass as materials is because they synthesize something that comes from the earth in a moment’s time. You get such a short window of time, and in a way these materials sort of freeze and frame that. So it’s very telling that those were sort of the first objects from the design studio, because there’s luminosity and reflection, but it comes from the earth.
TG
What is Saint Heron up to these days?
SK
One of the things I’m most excited about is this sofa, with a new, modular iteration of its design. It’s my baby. I’ve been perfecting it for four years now. It can be converted in 30 different ways. I really want my designs to be democratic for my people. So if you have a small space, you’re able to start with two pieces. And maybe you go from that space to your first home, and you’re able to collect two more. It’s an object designed to grow with you over these different phases of your life. It’s also designed so you can adjust it based on your daily experiences and needs. I’ve worked tirelessly to get the perfect magnet that makes it easy enough to arrange in a full circle, so everybody can face one another at a cocktail party, or you can make it a C-shape to be more isolating. I am also very excited about an exhibition of hand blown glass decanters I designed and fabricated with Jason McDonald. I’ve had to learn functionality when it comes to my design practice. I’m a dreamer. So a lot of the time, during the process, it’s like, well, how’s that gonna work, Solange? Sharpening that has been super fulfilling for me. And then we are going to spend the next year organizing and releasing moments from our digital archive. We have stories that are very precious to us, from some of our blueprints and our ancestors. We want to treat those with care as these are all very sacred cultural conversations. Then we go into web design, which is something that I took a great interest in when we started this site, learning how to build a digital expression that still synthesized energy. I think the digital installation we did on Cassandra Press is some of our strongest work. The redesign of my sister’s website which launched the Cowboy Carter tour is also in our design portfolio. A lot of this stuff sits on the Saint Heron agency side, which is a phenomenal sort of tool and footing to have when we talk about the many facets of the way that I see the world. Even when I think about the Saint Heron Library web design, that level of accessibility and functionality within technology is something that we’re really proud of in terms of our evolution.
Digital Archive
2017
2024
2017
2021
2016
2016
2023
2016
2017
2024
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2017
2017
2016
2024
2016
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Saint Heron Agency
TG: So the creative agency is a separate entity within Saint Heron?
SK: Yes. The Saint Heron Agency is a full-service creative agency that supports projects, brands, and artists to fully realize their creative endeavors. That includes everything from stage design to web design, album cover art and packaging, creative direction for photoshoots and videos. That is so fun for me because I absolutely love and value the skillset and knowledge that I’ve amassed through my own creative endeavors, but I don’t necessarily have to be the face of it. So I’m able to provide that support for other artists with the intel that I have. I love that shit.
Saint Heron Press
Cowboy Carter Tour Book
Azurest Blue
Azurest Blue
A Seat At The Table
TG:
It’s amazing to see the dexterity, the variety of projects that you’re doing and clients that you have. I love that you’re able to help produce stories and content for other artists, and that production becomes its own new content. Maybe this is a good time to bring your crew in.
SK::
I’ll introduce everyone. Sablā is responsible for a lot of the graphic arts in terms of the web design and the print materials. She is an integral part of shaping the look and the feel of Saint Heron, and she has been with us for seven years now. Shabazz is the OG. She was one of the first original five women who helped birth Saint Heron and is its pulse, its heartbeat — it does not exist without her care. Shantel is our editorial manager, who has also been with us for 13 years. She is responsible for quite literally giving Saint Heron a voice, contextualizing all of these ideas and actually bringing them to life. So this is a small and core part of the strong and mighty Saint Heron team.
TG:
It’s so good to meet y’all. Saint Heron is at a pivotal moment, which has everything to do with the work you all are doing collectively. It’s one thing for the founder to talk about it, it’s another for the crew to talk about it. What’s top of mind as you make this pivot, and what do you want this next moment to look like? What is the future of Saint Heron?
Shantel Aurora:
It’s so mind-growing to be a part of this institution, especially having been a part of it now for almost a decade, seeing it grow from this sort of small online cultural hub that was still making a major impact to this institution that has its reach in not just art and culture but in design and film. It grows your mind on an individual level as well. Saint Heron always puts the future at the center of what we do. Solange talks a lot about wanting this to be here centuries from now, and I think about that so much. Somebody is going to be able to look back and find this amazing collection and creation of work.
Sabla Stays
One of the things that I appreciate is how Saint Heron is always in conversation with the past, present, and future. Not only with our archive but tapping into other individual’s archives and bringing that to light. One thing we always talk about with the Saint Heron library is how so many books are out of print. There are so many things, once you unearth it, it’s like, why is this not in everyone’s hands?
Diane "Shabazz" Varnie
I personally come from a music background, so being able to have my hands in all these different things within the arts is very inspiring. I definitely love being a part of something so big when it comes to archiving. If I think of the immediate future, I would love to see Saint Records flourish. But just knowing what Solange has in mind for now and the future, it’s just amazing to be a part of it.
TG:
Now that we’ve entered this age where it’s okay to be a multihyphenate, I feel like it’s most important to do things really, really well. Just because you shot five minutes on your iPhone doesn’t exactly make you a movie producer. There’s a deepening of one’s craft that only happens with time. My prayer for Saint Heron is that the whole ecology grows deeper in wisdom, in grace, in love, and that the creative impulse is met with mastery, with a deployment strategy that helps Black and brown people to go deeper. It’s like the first time I read Foucault. I was like, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I want to be smart like this. When I read Audre Lorde, I was like, I don’t know this manner of love she’s talking about, but I want to love like this. Great people make you want to be better. Saint Heron makes me want to be a better artist, director, producer, and it makes me less apologetic about the hyphens.
SA:
Back when Saint Heron first relaunched, we had all these words that we were calling it. Saint Heron is an evolution, a process. And one of those words that is still so resonant was practice. Saint Heron is a practice. And there are things that we’re being introduced to through these works, through Solange’s ideation. And being novices, we, too, have to practice.
TG:
Being an artist is an ongoing practice. If we settle into imagining that we know something, it means that we are keeping ourselves from the potential growth of the thing. I can feel this maturation happening in Saint Heron that is so beautiful, and it’s only because you’re realizing in order to be great, you’re going have to master multiple things.
SABLĀ STAYS
DIANE "SHABAZZ" VARNIE
MOTISOLA ZULU, ESQ.
SHANTEL AURORA
TG
It’s amazing to see the dexterity, the variety of projects that you’re doing and clients that you have. I love that you’re able to help produce stories and content for other artists, and that production becomes its own new content. Maybe this is a good time to bring your crew in.
SK:
I’ll introduce everyone. Sablā is responsible for a lot of the graphic arts in terms of the web design and the print materials. She is an integral part of shaping the look and the feel of Saint Heron, and she has been with us for seven years now. Shabazz is the OG. She was one of the first original five women who helped birth Saint Heron and is its pulse, its heartbeat — it does not exist without her care. Shantel is our editorial manager, who has also been with us for 13 years. She is responsible for quite literally giving Saint Heron a voice, contextualizing all of these ideas and actually bringing them to life. So this is a small and core part of the strong and mighty Saint Heron team.
SABLĀ STAYS
TG
It’s so good to meet y’all. Saint Heron is at a pivotal moment, which has everything to do with the work you all are doing collectively. It’s one thing for the founder to talk about it, it’s another for the crew to talk about it. What’s top of mind as you make this pivot, and what do you want this next moment to look like? What is the future of Saint Heron?
Shantel Aurora
It’s so mind-growing to be a part of this institution, especially having been a part of it now for almost a decade, seeing it grow from this sort of small online cultural hub that was still making a major impact to this institution that has its reach in not just art and culture but in design and film. It grows your mind on an individual level as well. Saint Heron always puts the future at the center of what we do. Solange talks a lot about wanting this to be here centuries from now, and I think about that so much. Somebody is going to be able to look back and find this amazing collection and creation of work.
Sabla Stays
One of the things that I appreciate is how Saint Heron is always in conversation with the past, present, and future. Not only with our archive but tapping into other individual’s archives and bringing that to light. One thing we always talk about with the Saint Heron library is how so many books are out of print. There are so many things, once you unearth it, it’s like, why is this not in everyone’s hands?
Diane "Shabazz" Varnie
I personally come from a music background, so being able to have my hands in all these different things within the arts is very inspiring. I definitely love being a part of something so big when it comes to archiving. If I think of the immediate future, I would love to see Saint Records flourish. But just knowing what Solange has in mind for now and the future, it’s just amazing to be a part of it.
DIANE "SHABAZZ" VARNIE
TG
Now that we’ve entered this age where it’s okay to be a multihyphenate, I feel like it’s most important to do things really, really well. Just because you shot five minutes on your iPhone doesn’t exactly make you a movie producer. There’s a deepening of one’s craft that only happens with time. My prayer for Saint Heron is that the whole ecology grows deeper in wisdom, in grace, in love, and that the creative impulse is met with mastery, with a deployment strategy that helps Black and brown people to go deeper. It’s like the first time I read Foucault. I was like, I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I want to be smart like this. When I read Audre Lorde, I was like, I don’t know this manner of love she’s talking about, but I want to love like this. Great people make you want to be better. Saint Heron makes me want to be a better artist, director, producer, and it makes me less apologetic about the hyphens.
SA
Back when Saint Heron first relaunched, we had all these words that we were calling it. Saint Heron is an evolution, a process. And one of those words that is still so resonant was practice. Saint Heron is a practice. And there are things that we’re being introduced to through these works, through Solange’s ideation. And being novices, we, too, have to practice.
MOTISOLA ZULU, ESQ.
TG
Being an artist is an ongoing practice. If we settle into imagining that we know something, it means that we are keeping ourselves from the potential growth of the thing. I can feel this maturation happening in Saint Heron that is so beautiful, and it’s only because you’re realizing in order to be great, you’re going have to master multiple things.
SHANTEL AURORA
When I talked about the sofa earlier, going from the birth of an idea to release is a very long, intentional mastering. I want to operate with humility when entering a new space. I have such reverence and respect for someone who decided at an early age to design products, to live, eat, breathe, sleep, bleed design. So there is a level of humility in being able to say, I’m a beginner at this and this is going to take me some time. It’s also why I work with these ladies. They’re part of how I’m able to grow and evolve. I can draw out my designs on a piece of paper for a website in great detail, but I didn’t go to Parsons, and I can’t bring them to life in the way that Sablā does. I can’t take something I wrote as a paragraph and expand on the vernacular of that like Shantel can. I can’t produce Eldorado Ballroom, with the amount of care it takes to move a 40-piece choir from Alabama to Los Angeles, like Shabazz, using the expertise in promoting shows and parties she’s built for almost two decades. So I appreciate you saying that and noticing that, and hopefully that is something that is coming through in the work that we do — the amount of care and humility it takes to be students and lift each other’s work and vantage points in the process.
Interview by Theaster Gates
Photography by Kobe Wagstaff
Additional Imagery Courtesy of Saint Heron
Design by Sabla Stays
Development by Studio Otto